Maude and Meridith: friends forever

Maude Solomon (r) and Meridith Dilbert have enjoyed
a long and lasting friendship on Cayman Brac, since
Ms Maude came to work over 40 years ago.

Maude Solomon

Sharing a joke is the reward of friendship.

Friday,  August 5, 2005

Maude Solomon’s Jamaican patois is still very thick, despite living on Cayman Brac for over 40 years, and her friend Meridith Dilbert sometimes has to translate for her.

Ms Maude is known for the hats she always wears, for her sweet smile and ready laugh, and for a long and lasting friendship with Ms Meridith.

They are always together, at home or at one of the functions on the Island, except when Ms Meridith goes out to work at one of her many cleaning jobs, or when Ms Maude has a spell in hospital.

“I miss her then,” said Ms Meridith, who adds that at such times, she has to go to stay with friends.

“I got ‘fraid when my brother Clarence died right there,” she said, pointing to a spot on the living room floor. That was in 1996. After that, her friend Maude came to live with her in her little house in Watering Place to keep her company.

In return, Ms Meridith, who is 70 years old, takes care of Ms Maude, who suffers from several medical problem, including cataracts, diabetes and, most serious of all, asthma.

“I does for her. I does everything for her,” said Ms Meridith.

Ms Maude was born in 1920. She can’t remember exactly when she came to Cayman Brac, but she remembers that Julie, as first Elected Member for the Sister Islands is known on Cayman Brac, was a baby sitting on the floor.

Leaving five children in Jamaica (Pearl, Iona, Samuel, Iris and Ernest), she worked hard cleaning up yards, washing clothes, taking out the trash, earning enough money to bring her children here to the Cayman Islands one by one.

She worked first for Mary Scott for three months, when she came here in 1962. Afterwards Lee Lee Solomon hired her to work for her parents, Sonny and Dona Dilbert and a handicapped brother Gladstone.

After eighteen years, they had all died, so Ms Maude went to work for the Government for five and a half years, cutting bush by the side of the road with a machete “like any man”, she said.

She was the only woman to do this job. One other woman tried, but gave up after a week. The District Commissioner at the time, Dennis Foster, told her that any woman who works by the roadside must wear pants.

“Mosquito don’ wear pants. Me not wear pants,” she told him. Instead, she wore two dresses, one short and one long and two slips.

When Ms Meridith’s house blew down during Hurricane Allen, she went to live with Sonny, her half-brother, and his family and, of course, Ms Maude until her home was rebuilt.

“Maudie helped back water (pull water up from a well by hand) until I got mine hooked up and started using the pump,” she said. Ms Meridith, no slacker herself, said that Ms Maude has worked very hard all her life.

“There weren’t no easy work here,” added Ms Maude. But now she has her friend Meridith to look after her in their little house by the sea on Cayman Brac.

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