A Lifetime Of Love

DARLISTON, Westmoreland

At 17, Margaret Mignott could easily pass for one of Vincent and Mizel Allen's granddaughters.
In fact very few people, even in the close-knit Darliston community where they reside, know that she has, in fact, been their foster-child since age 2 and a half.

Mrs Allen, who had raised two daughters and several grand-children before Margaret came along, said she was lonely and wanted company. Especially when her husband went away on long trips on the Farm Work programme.

"Mi always seh God provide her fi mi and mi fi her," said Allen, 73, who along with her husband, 68, is now retired.
She remembers vividly the day childcare workers in Westmoreland brought Margaret to her. In fact the child, then two years and eight months, arrived the same day her husband returned home from one of his repeated trips abroad.

She explains that she had contacted them and told them she was looking for a child and they had just brought the child along. The two jokingly recall how they often joke that he "brought her home in his suitcase".

Underweight and sickly, Margaret was so feeble that she could not even climb unto the verandah chair. "When I got her wi find out she had pneumonia," recalls Mrs. Allen. "It was ( trips to the ) doctors all three times a month."

Now almost 15 years later, Magaret is Head Girl at the Godfrey Stewart High School and an active member of her church - the Darliston Holiness Christian Church.

This evening the Allens will be honoured by the Child Development Agency (CDA) at a function at the United Church Hall in Savanna-La-Mar for their dedicated service to fostering.

Margaret is one of the successes of the programme - a bright, well adjusted teenager who hopes one day to a
become broadcaster.

Up to age ten Margaret thought the Allens, then in their 60's, were her parents. "Then I thought about their names and I thought of mine and I said it can't be biological," said Margaret.

Margaret does not know her birth parents or any other members of her biological family but has no great yearning to find them.

She has had a good life with parents, who though strict, loved and fed her on a diet of " home, school and church".
After the years of devotion the Allens know the day will soon come when Margaret will leave home, especially as she harbours hopes of going away to college. They are not averse to taking in another child. For them fostering is as natural as birthing: "A house without pickney a no house and company good to the grave," says Mrs Allen.

 
Source Jamaica Observer Western News