Sunday, March 15, 2015
ANY chance she gets, three-year-old Shakera Mendez takes up her vocabulary book and tries to teach her 13-year-old brother David Mendez the letters of the alphabet and a word that they spell.
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| Shakera Mendez reads to her 13-year-old brother David Mendez at their home in Clarendon. (PHOTOS: NAPTHALI JUNIOR) |
"M - Monkey," she said as she sat on the bed with her brother, book open and a concentrative look on her face. This was followed by the slow spelling of the word before she turned the page and onto the next letter.
This is something that little Shakera does often in an attempt to teach her brother the basics of the language.
"I play with him and I look in my ABC book and say it for him and try to teach him ABC," the little girl who attends the Leana Jones Basic School in Colonel's Ridge, Clarendon said.
But for David, his sister's voice may be nothing more than a sound he does not understand, even as his eyes pop open. Nonetheless, Shakera still tries to play her part on a regular basis.
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| Shakera Mendez, aged 3, gives her brother David a warm hug after trying to teach him the letters of the alphabet. |
But according to the boy's mother Ethiel Rowe-Mendez, he was born without enough brain tissues, which prevents him from learning and makes him function at the ability of a six-month-old baby. He has never attended school a day in his life.
"Doctors said he didn't have enough tissue in his brain when he was born, so at the time they put a tube through his skull and down to his brain to send medication down there to develop the brain so he could survive, because it was a 50/50 chance they did give him to survive," Rowe-Mendez said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer at the family's Clarendon home. more
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