Embassy of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago

Annmarie Douglas admits to being a sex worker since age 11.

That was when Douglas, now 32, and who is HIV positive, ran away from her home after being continuously raped by her step-brother.

Since then, she has never had a permanent address until now. That is, if one could call the tiny, wooden shack-about the size of a security guard booth-at La Retrate Extension, Heights of Guanapo, Arima, as a pemanent home. She lives about 10 minutes southwest of the controversial Light of the Lighthouse of the Lord Jesus Christ. Douglas has seven children, ranging in ages 15 to three, with an eight-month-old baby on the way.

In order to survive, Douglas heads to the neighbouring landfill almost everyday to salvage any and every thing she can use.

’My house build off the dump because I get all my material there,’ she said.

’My double-decker bed come from the dump, my small bed come from the dump. I get them bed sheets yesterday from the dump,’ she added, pointing to a green bedsheet neatly spread on a single bed in the shack.

’Yesterday we got plenty things. I got more sheets and clothes, containers to full water, buckets and a barrel. I get meat as well and that is what I’m going to cook today. The food does be good. Everything does be good, you know. Just the outside is be a little dirty.

’Is years now we eating from the dump and we never get sick and we never dead. So we won’t get sick now, we accustomed. It does help we out. It does real help we out, girl,’ she said.

As her four sons, barebacked and shoeless, played outside the shack, a smiling Douglas, seemingly unbothered by her hardships, said:

’What I go do, I have no other choice. I hustle up in the dump. Just yesterday I was up there. When the baby come I will still go and hustle because I does go and hop truck with my belly.’

Douglas said she started squatting at the site about 10 years ago.

’I moved here when the man I was living with died from HIV,’ she said....