Narise Ma­hara­jh, 57, has lived a sim­ple life for many years.

Al­most three years ago, a fire de­stroyed her home at Cen­teno Trace, San Fran­cique. A can­dle caused the blaze as she had no elec­tric­i­ty in the small struc­ture.

Rel­a­tives helped her re­build a small ply­wood and gal­va­nize struc­ture. With the help of neigh­bours, she built a slight­ly big­ger one-room struc­ture out of sim­i­lar ma­te­ri­als.

But her liv­ing con­di­tions re­main the same. She still has no elec­tric­i­ty or pipe-borne wa­ter.

At night a mat­tress on the wood­en floor is where she sleeps. She has no oth­er fur­ni­ture.

Ma­hara­jh sel­dom has any­thing cold to drink and she cooks over a fire­side in the hut.

“Life is hard for me. It is just me liv­ing here,” said Ma­hara­jh. She was nev­er mar­ried and has no chil­dren. Her on­ly com­pa­ny is two dogs.

“May, this year, will make it three years I run­ning around try­ing to get a lit­tle help.”

She has been un­able to get a sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty be­cause she does not have a deed for the land or house or a re­ceipt.

Ma­hara­jh said her fa­ther owned the land but he has since died. She sur­vives on a dis­abil­i­ty grant which she be­gan re­ceiv­ing about 10 years ago af­ter she suf­fered a ner­vous break­down.

Every day, she has to walk about 100 feet to her broth­er’s house to full buck­ets of wa­ter and car­ry them back to her home.

“I don’t have any sick­ness but some­times I just feel very weak. It does not be easy.”

She ap­plied for a grant from the Na­tion­al Self-Help Com­mis­sion af­ter the fire in 2016 but she did not have the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. She has since made some progress and was told that an of­fi­cial will soon vis­it her home. She al­so has to get her birth cer­tifi­cate to ap­ply for so­cial wel­fare grants.

“I feel like I just cut off from the rest of the coun­try be­cause I don’t have no ra­dio or TV to know what go­ing on. Some­times, I don’t even have any­thing to eat but I just try to make do with what­ev­er I have. I am feel­ing frus­trat­ed.”

Ma­hara­jh wants a com­fort­able place to call home. “I feel like I can’t stay here any more. I just want to be com­fort­able.”

While she does not feel un­safe, Ma­hara­jh’s home is not prop­er­ly se­cured.

“I feel is on­ly through God that I sur­vive so long. Some­times when I feel weak I have cer­tain prayers I say that makes me feel a lit­tle bet­ter.”

She said her rel­a­tives were not in a po­si­tion to help her. Ma­hara­jh does not own a phone. Some of her neigh­bours de­scribed her as a qui­et per­son who of­ten kept to her­self.