The bottle lady - Determined single mother supporting five children by collecting and selling plastic bottles

Arthur Hall, Senior News Editor

If you think it is difficult for a woman to raise five children on her own, then think just how much more difficult it is if two of those children have mental disabilities and the woman is unemployed.

But that is the reality facing Victoria Gyliard, a 48-year-old who lost the father of her five children 12 years ago while her smallest child was just six-weeks-old.

"Is just me alone and Jesus. No man and no family other than me auntie who died when me was 36," Gyliard told The Sunday Gleaner.

She said she had been raised by her aunt from she was a toddler and the brothers and sisters she knows about all live overseas but they have not kept in contact.

"Me mother give me to me auntie from me small and from me was 12 years old me start working and sending miself to school."

After leaving school, Gyliard and her children's father started to make a life until he took sick and died, leaving her to fend for herself and her five children.

"Is me and them alone and me never abandon none of them. Me love all five of them just like how me love other people children.

"If me cook and them friends over here playing me share dinner for all of them. Me love every child and me give them a mother's love because me never get no mother's love," declared Gyliard as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Not giving up

But the determined mother is not giving up and for the past three years she has made a living by collecting plastic bottles and selling them to a plant off Spanish Town Road.

"I go out with my cart sometimes and sometimes I just walk around my community and pick up the bottles," said Gyliard.

"Me have to pick up the bottles and sell them so that I can find food for my children," added Gyliard as she noted that she is paid $8 per pound for the bottles.

"It hard, very hard. Sometime me feel pain in mi back because me have to bend down and pick them up - the bottles. Sometimes, me go downtown and me don't carry me cart and me have to struggle with the bag come home."

Each bag weighs between 25 and 30 pounds.

Gyliard stores the bottles in bags close to her house at the intersection of Sutton and Hanover streets in downtown Kingston and calls the company to collect them when she believes she has collected a sufficient quantity to make it worth her while.

"It no really worth it but mi no have no other source of income and me have to do it for mi children because them father died from the last one was six weeks old and come Father's Day a me alone and Mother's Day is me alone again."

Serious mental illness

Her oldest child is almost 20 years old and is seriously mentally challenged while the youngest child is 12 years old and scheduled to sit the Grade Six Achievement Test this school year.

The other children are all at the secondary level with one attending a school for slow learners.

"Sometimes, me no have it fi give them and the lady upstairs will help me with whatever she has," said Gyliard as she indicated that for the start of this school year she tried to get help from the political directorate in the central Kingston community without success.

However, officials at the nearby Fellowship Tabernacle, friends and neighbours provided some assistance.

Now Gyliard is facing another challenge. She has been given notice to vacate the one room she shares with the five children by November 25 and she is yet to find somewhere else to live,

But the never-say-die attitude of the mother of five has come to the fore and she is determined to work it out for her children, one bottle at a time.