The Ramsaroop sisters:
for the residents and they would from time to time be invited out and even though there is a chapel and Hindu temple available, persons would still come and pray for the residents. They also have access to radio and television. While some live in a dormitory setting in the building, others, because of their mobility, have their beds downstairs underneath the building.
At present, there are about 30 residents but daily, persons also visit the home for meals and they are not turned away.
While the Dharm Shala receives a monthly subvention from the government of $1 million, Kella said much more is needed to run the two homes; she and her sister must come up with millions more. Their work (Pamela is a lawyer and does all the secretarial work) is voluntary but they have employees who are paid a stipend.
She boasted that every cent is accounted, and the books are audited in May of each year.
They try not to turn away persons, but Kella said they cannot take persons who cannot help themselves since they do not have staff to give round-the-clock care, nor do they have a nurse or any medical personnel on call. There is a dispensary which is visited monthly by officials of the Ministry of Health.
“So, everyone who comes, I have to see them first before they are accepted because we can’t take persons who can’t help themselves,” she said.
When a resident dies, the police are called, and the government stands the burial cost for that person.
“Some of them live for about 40 years here. A lot of them are from good families, they are not street urchins,” she noted.
Kella shared that while she and another sister were born in Berbice, the family later moved to the Albouystown location where her other sisters were born.
“Our whole life we grow up here, we would have had spells overseas, but this is our home,” Kella said sharing that Pamela now lives between here and the United Kingdom.
All four of the sisters attended what was then known as the St Joseph school in Charlestown which was run by nuns and given a chance Kella would regale anyone who would listen with story after story about how exceptional the school was.
She also has fond reminisces of her “beautiful” mother who died in 1990.
For 20 years, Kella was a confidential secretary at the then Barclays Bank in Guyana, but she later migrated and worked for about five years in the US. It was while she was there that she got a call to come home.
She arrived just a few hours before her mother’s shocking death and decided to remain with her father because she wanted the family’s work to continue and knew he needed the assistance.
Her father’s death in 2013 was another shock for Kella. She said the deaths of her parents were the two most “shocking experiences of my life because nothing prepared me for their deaths.”
Kella shared that she has been associated with charity work for all her life and as a child it was driven by both of her parents.
She knows that one day she and Pamela will be no more, and she believes that her nieces, nephews, greatnieces and great-nephews will keep the home open, but they will not have the hands-on approach as they do not reside in Guyana and will have to hire persons for the day-to-day running of the homes.
But for now, Kella will continue the work and as much as possible provide the food, clothes and shelter to those in need.
For Rodney, the Dharm Shala will be his home for the next 70 years—so he believes—and his only grouse as the assistant cook is the fact that the home does not have a deep freeze facility, nor does it have a big pressure cooker so “that you can get your dhal in half an hour.”
But he enthused, “I enjoy here. I don’t want to leave. I love reading Stabroek News especially on Sunday, you know, I like to read Al Creighton and Ian Mc Donald.”