The hol­i­day sea­son is sup­posed to be a time of joy and while many peo­ple have the com­fort of abun­dant food and warm beds, one fam­i­ly in Debe is strug­gling to find their Christ­mas hap­pi­ness.

Since the De­cem­ber 12 floods, Mi­nawatie Ram­goolam and her fam­i­ly have been grap­pling with stag­nat­ing wa­ter in­side and out­side their Lal­be­har­ry Trace, Ex­ten­sion home.

Mi­nawatie, 60, lives with her par­tial­ly deaf hus­band, Mahin­dra Ram­goolam and their six chil­dren and grand­chil­dren.

The house has been un­der con­struc­tion for nine years and with their chil­dren’s help, the Ram­goolam’s were able to back­fill por­tions of the land with the hope of build­ing a foun­da­tion.

They had al­ready put up a Christ­mas tree and the fam­i­ly was look­ing for­ward to the sea­son when the floods came.

It rose more than four feet high and every­thing in­clud­ing some of the floor­boards washed away.

Mi­nawatie said, “The wa­ter took about four days to go. It was re­al headache for us.”

Every day, Mi­nawatie has to trudge through mud to go out­side to wash dish­es.

The kitchen has a dirt floor and when­ev­er it rains, the ground be­comes slip­pery.

“I fell down sev­er­al times. My hus­band al­so fell,” she said.

The cou­ple sleeps in a one-bed­room apart­ment. Be­hind their room lives their daugh­ter Leelawatie Ram­goolam and her three chil­dren Si­mone, 17, Daniel, 15, and Le­an­dra Kara­math, eight. An­oth­er broth­er and his fam­i­ly live in an­oth­er apart­ment.

In­side Leelawatie’s apart­ment, stag­nant wa­ter re­mains lodged un­der the floor­boards. The kitchen is cramped and leaks. The sin­gle bed­room does not have prop­er walls so Leelawatie us­es pieces of cur­tains to keep out the rain.

“We used some flash band to stop the leaks on the roof. It is very cramped in here but we try­ing to make it work,” she said. To the side of Leelawatie’s apart­ment, there is al­so stag­nant wa­ter.

“It is not the best place to live right now but we are try­ing our best,” she said.

The sin­gle moth­er said she was hop­ing to find a job so she too could as­sist in re­build­ing the house. She said she was in the process of pay­ing off for a par­cel of land.

Her broth­er Mahin­dra Ram­goolam, who works as a welder and con­struc­tion work­er said they lost all of their valu­ables when the floods came.

“It is hard for us but we try­ing to make the best out of a bad sit­u­a­tion,” he said. He added that it was heart-wrench­ing to see his el­der­ly par­ents sleep­ing in a mud­dy house.

“If we could get some as­sis­tance with ma­te­ri­als, we can put our heads to­geth­er and try and re­build the house,” he added.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact Ram­goolam at 310-6857 or 294-6961.