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Thursday, July 10, 2025

From cow shed to a house

by

Rishard Khan
2159 days ago
20190811

Liv­ing in a cow­shed for years, a Bar­rack­pore fam­i­ly of five is ex­pect­ed to move in­to a new home con­struct­ed en­tire­ly by vol­un­teers and NGO’s, less than one month af­ter a Guardian Me­dia re­port. In just one week they can ex­pect to of­fi­cial­ly get the keys to the new struc­ture, that is if more vol­un­teers come for­ward to help com­plete it.

Since it was first re­port­ed that Soo­ma­tee Sam resided in a one-room cow­shed with her 78-year-old moth­er Sug­a­nee, her 26-year-old daugh­ter Vanes­sa, and her two grand­chil­dren ages one and three re­spec­tive­ly, many in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions came for­ward to do­nate their time, mon­ey and ma­te­ri­als to giv­ing this fam­i­ly a safe place to call their own. They’ve since been work­ing dai­ly, even through­out the week­ends, to com­plete the build.

One of the vol­un­teers who helped with the project, Riza Guyadeen told Guardian Me­dia there were in­di­vid­u­als from as far as San­gre Grande com­ing out and do­nat­ing ma­te­ri­als for the home. “There was a lot of pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions from peo­ple in a neg­a­tive so­ci­ety and this is what we here for and we try to help as many peo­ple as we could,” he said.

Al­though the house is fur­nished with kitchen ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture, Sam and her fam­i­ly still re­side in the tem­po­rary struc­ture the vol­un­teers con­struct­ed for them as the plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal work re­main to be com­plet­ed.

This is why one of the co­or­di­nat­ing vol­un­teers, Den­nis Gop­pie is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic for as­sis­tance.

“We still need to have the elec­tri­cal for this house done and the plumb­ing...if peo­ple could do­nate that as­pect of it, that would be fan­tas­tic and the Sams would be able to move in­to their house as fast as pos­si­ble.”

Sit­ting in her new liv­ing room, a vis­i­bly grate­ful Sam told Guardian Me­dia, “I feel as a brand new per­son...it re­al­ly touched me deeply in­side to know that in about two weeks time I have a new brand home and now I’m feel­ing hap­py...it’s a very beau­ti­ful home and I thank the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Mr Den­nis, the whole team, and all the or­gan­i­sa­tions that come to­geth­er and every­body that come to­geth­er to make me hap­py and bring me a new home.”

“I am hap­py I don’t have rain falling and wa­ter com­ing in and wet­ting me on the bed...and when I get up from the bed I don’t have to put my foot in mud and that’s the beau­ty about it now. I nev­er dream of it (this day) but I al­ways pray and ask the Lord to bless me with a new home. I al­ways prayed for that,” she said.

This ex­pe­ri­ence has brought the strangers to­geth­er and they’ve since al­so em­barked on help­ing two oth­er fam­i­lies with hous­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home on Sat­ur­day, the roof had just fin­ished be­ing placed on the pre­fab­ri­cat­ed struc­ture which was do­nat­ed by the Sai Ba­ba Or­gan­i­sa­tion while the con­struc­tion, from the foun­da­tion, was done by the vol­un­teers. All ma­te­ri­als and labour were do­nat­ed.

Help­ing the fam­i­ly on their jour­ney to a new home were sev­er­al spon­sors such as Lar­ry’s Hard­ware, Dave Sookoo Trans­port, Bound­ary Mi­ni Mart, Ju­nior Shep­pard Elec­tri­cal, Ram­s­ingh In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices, On The Ground Con­struc­tion, and the Sai Ba­ba Or­gan­i­sa­tion and sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als who wished to re­main anony­mous. The vol­un­teers al­so thanked the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of T&TEC who, with­in hours, was able to get the tem­po­rary struc­ture sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty un­til con­struc­tion on the home was com­plet­ed.

The key vol­un­teers in this ini­tia­tive are Den­nis Gop­pie, Riza, Dave, Kevin, and Ravi. For any­one who wish­es to help them com­plete the house, Gop­pie can be con­tact­ed at 303-4918.


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