'MISS Sarah' was 67 years old when she and more than 30 other people who lived on the streets of Montego Bay were ordered into the back of a truck which took them more than 50 miles south and dumped them at the edge of a mud lake in Warminster, south St Elizabeth in 1999.

It took her the entire next day to walk from the bauxite sludge pond just outside of Nain, near to the Manchester border, to Santa Cruz — a straight-line distance of about 10 miles.

Like most of the others, she was mentally unstable and had been living on the streets for years, until they were forcibly removed by agents of the St James Parish Council.

Miss Sarah, as she is affectionately called, has since been stabilised and is far removed from the cardboard huts she used to erect in Sam Sharpe Square, Montego Bay. She lives in a nursing home, paid for by the $20,000 she gets monthly in government compensation for her ill-treatment. She routinely attends the mental health clinic at Cornwall Regional Hospital for medication, and goes to the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI) for occupational and social skills therapy.

However, the events of that harrowing night in July, 11 years ago, are difficult to erase from her memory.

"They come one night and say wi must get in the truck. I say, 'For what?' They say, 'Go in the truck'. They don't tell me for what. Mi nuh want them to lick mi so I go in the truck and they take us to mud lake in St Elizabeth," she recalled.

"When wi reach to mud lake they say we must unload and who didn't come out quick enough, they lick them. Mi jump out and jump away. Yuh waan to see the speed the truck move wid.

"We stay there until day light out likkle then we leave and go out to the main road. We see a man an' we tell him what take place and he put it over the radio," Miss Sarah told the Sunday Observer.

From there, she started her solo journey back to Montego Bay.

"I say, 'If unuh want to come, come'. Nobody don't shift, so I alone walk from St Elizabeth (Warminster) to Santa Cruz. It take me the whole day. I started around 6:30 and when night coming down now I begin to cry because I cyaan find no square, I just walking on the long, straight road," she said.

With the help of concerned citizens she met at a bus stop in Santa Cruz, Miss Sarah got enough money to take the bus the rest of the way.

"I begin to tell them what took place wid me and they chump up and give me money and put me on one of the bus to Black River and tell the bus man to put me on another bus to Sav-la-Mar and when a reach Sav-la-Mar they put me on another bus. That's how I reach to Montego Bay," said Miss Sarah, laughing as she recalled the ordeal.

According to CUMI's records, at least 11 or 12 persons were compensated in similar fashion to Miss Sarah, but health, legal and family issues have stood in the way of others. Still, the second city's problem with homelessness hasn't been solved. It grapples with the burgeoning group, which includes the mentally ill and substance abusers. Nurse administrator at CUMI Joy Crooks, says there are between 78 and 100 street people in Montego Bay who are classified as mentally ill, but who are stable. She said there were 70 or 80 others who are "not necessarily ill", but who abuse drugs.

The lines between the groups are often blurred, Crooks said, but she is anxious for light to be shone on those, like Miss Sarah, who have been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society where they lead "normal" lives. Luke and Winston, whose surnames the Sunday Observer was also asked to withhold, are two examples.

Luke was working in the hospitality industry when he lost his job due to schizophrenia. He was 30 years old at the time. He was diagnosed five years earlier, he said, but had stopped taking the medication.

"I was taking medication and working [but] I took sick on the job and when I go back they ask what kind of illness, so I had to get a doctor's certificate, and when they see that it was a mental sickness, they lay me off," he said.

That was around 1981.

Subsequent to losing his job, while in Westmoreland, where he had retreated and taken up farming, a relative sold Luke's house without his permission or knowledge. It was a harsh blow to his already fragile psyche and the former hotel cook and waiter found himself on the streets, roaming, scrounging for food, and preaching.

"After I took sick, I started to go from Montego Bay to Westmoreland, mi have relative in Westmoreland. I was [there] for a good while and I heard that dem sell mi house and when I come over, I see that they sell the house for true and I couldn't do nutten for I was sick... Mi start sleep under the house, for they did rent it out, then the man who bought it came to tear it down and ah so mi come fi deh pon the street," Luke said.

He lived on the streets for seven years, according to research conducted by CUMI. During that time, according to the 60-year-old man: "Mi go out go preach and mi walk up and down. Mi go all a St Thomas go preach at the market square. Mi carry mi Bible and mi preach."

By the time CUMI rescued him in 1996, Luke didn't even remember his name. It took him six months of therapy to stop calling himself 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John' as per the Biblical gospel writers.

His story is one of physical abuse including being beaten and burnt by young men, but with the help of CUMI, Luke has made a transformation. He has two jobs now. On alternate weeks, he works as the cook at CUMI, and as a street sweeper with Western Parks and Markets Waste Management Ltd, the western arm of the National Solid Waste Management Authority. He earns a stipend from both.

"My life change for good, for it happen that me gwaan until mi buy back a lot of land. Mi use to sell umbrella and things like that and get a stipend from here and mi save it. Mi go in the partner plan and mi get some money and mi pay pon the land," he said proudly, adding that he is awaiting assistance from Food For the Poor, to which he applied for a house.

Like Luke, 42-year-old Winston lives independently — paying his rent, utility bills and shopping for himself — and holds down a job. With the help of Crooks, who first tested him by allowing him to pay taxes and bills for her as well as lodge funds at the bank, he has been working as a messenger with a firm in the city for the past 15 years.

"Is the best job mi ever have," he said, smiling broadly.

"One year, his first year on the job, he got employee of the year, and last year someone sponsored him for the CUMI Come Run 5K walk and he won, so he's a good example for persons to see that even though from a young age he was diagnosed, you can get well and stay well," Crooks said.

Winston was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 16 and was frequently hospitalised before CUMI intervened 16 years ago. Since then, however, he has only relapsed twice: once when he failed to take his medication as prescribed, and another time following the death of his mother.

He's determined that if it's ever to happen again, it won't be a result of not taking his medication properly. In addition to a long-stay injection he gets each month at Cornwall Regional, Winston takes 10 tablets a day. He doesn't always remember the names, but knows them by size and colour.

"Is 10 tablets a day, but five in the morning, yuh have to take. Three of the white one, two more of the white one, two of the big one, one of the small one and two of the green one," he explained.

"Sometime mi seh to myself say 'how long mi ah go take medication?' Dem tell mi say mi ah go take it forever. Mi still take it, mi cyaan stop, but mi wonder if doctor can just tell me say ah the day fi mi stop take medication, but mi cyaan see dat, but mi nah go stop.

"Yuh haffi have it inna yuhself fi know seh, boy, if yuh waan get sick nuh tek dem, but if yuh waan get better, yuh tek dem, so yuh have a choice," he said.

Winston said he used to hear voices compelling him to hurt people or to trick them.

"When the voice deh pon yuh, ah one dangerous something. It hard fi control, but mi can control fi mi. Fuss time mi couldn't control it, but now mi cry or talk it over and try fight it 'til it just go away, but ah long time now mi nuh hear no voice... Since me better fi how much years now people respect mi. Dem wi call mi by mi name and even if dem nuh remember dem wi call mi and ask mi and yuh can have a conversation wid dem," he said.

Crooks, a trained general and psychiatric nurse who co-founded CUMI in 1991, had praises for her rehabilitated clients and applauded the companies that have employed them, saying it went a far way in combating the stigma associated with mental illness and the labelling of those afflicted as "mad" people.

With a budget requirement of "at least $3.5 million" each year or between $200,000 and $250,000 per month, the non-profit organisation is part of a network that offers community mental health services in Montego Bay.

When a patient is discharged from the psychiatric department at Cornwall Regional, he/she is referred to CUMI which provides a daytime rehabilitation facility as a follow-up, particularly for street people who need ongoing observation and treatment. The other partner in the link is the care centre and night shelter for those who are in treatment and who are homeless. It is run by the Open Heart Charitable Mission.