‘It feels good to vote’
DALVARINE BRUCE felt “good” just being around to vote in yesterday’s local government elections in St Thomas.
Two weeks ago Bruce, who is a supporter of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), lost her left leg in a gruesome accident while campaigning on nomination day.
However, with the help of a wheelchair, her daughter and other family members, she got the chance to exercise her constitutional right.
“Mi want to vote to see a better Jamaica. Mi feel good,” she said in an interview with The Gleaner on Monday.
She was unable to take her position as an election worker for the JLP.
Yesterday she said the accident and life-changing injury have done little to dampen her spirit.
“The only change in my life is that mi no have no foot, but nothing else no change ‘cause mi have life,” Bruce said.
“Mi still have life and I can still help myself. Mi just want it get well and I’m back on my feet again.”
Her right foot, which was also badly injured in the crash, was heavily bandaged.
Bruce remembered everything leading up to and after the crash along the main road in White Horses, St Thomas.
She recounted sitting in the back of a ‘trailer’ travelling towards Morant Bay when it swerved towards the sidewalk to avoid a collision with an oncoming motorcar.
According to Bruce, the rails on the trailer got entangled with shrubs on the side of the roadway, “causing all a the rocks dem fi start come down”.
“When mi realise and fling this (right) foot fi turn mi whole body, mi (left) foot already gone,” she recounted.
“Mi nah lie, m nuh feel when it come off. Mi talk it every day and people nuh believe mi.”
She recalled shouting “mi foot gone”, and watching as others around her “run off”.
“Mi woulda run to and you know why? Fright,” she said.
However, she said others came back to assist her getting to the hospital.
Bruce admitted that being on the motorcade was not part of her plans when she left home on nominations day.
“I went and the excitement sound good, so, through the excitement sound good, mi gone with them,” she said, making clear that she does not blame anyone.
Bruce said she is getting “good support” from the JLP, adding that Prime Minister Andrew Holness and St Thomas Western Member of Parliament James Robertson have promised to provide assistance.