Lisa was a well known hairdresser in Ocho Rios. People considered her one of the best. Then she started complaining about mysterious pain in her back that soon grew worse and took over her body. There were many fruitless visits to doctors and medical specialists. Within a year she was dead. And now the strong suggestions are someone did evil to her. They say it’s Obeah.
Her man says no matter what medicine they got she could never have survived. Someone did her something, he says. Many others believe it was obeah and, apparently Lisa believed it too.
In her thirties with a teenage son and a man devoted to her, things were going well for Lisa. Then she started to complain about pain in her back.
Most people know her as Lisa but her full name was Nadine Roberts. She was 37 at the time of her death. Originally from Mandeville, she came to live in Ocho Rios and had a relationship with Horace Bailey, more popularly known as Wayne, for the last nineteen years. Their relationship produced a son, Raheem, who is a fourth form student of the St Ann’s Bay High School.
Lisa operated her own business on DaCosta drive in Ocho Rios for 12 years until her untimely passing on July 22, 2016.
Wayne says he doesn’t know how he hasn’t gone mad with the mysterious death, especially because she suffered so much pain. “She suffered to the end,” he told the North Coast Times. “Somebody so nice shouldn’t go so.”
Mr Bailey says the painful mystery that led to death started quite innocently. Lisa complained of pain in the back and people dismissed that as occupational reality – hair dressers stand a lot and do have pain in the back. After a few weeks, the pain was all over her body, legs, arms, waist, shoulders, back…And it was horrible.
Hospital examinations, tests including an MRI could find no source of the excruciating pain. She saw a bone specialist. He found nothing. She was referred to a brain specialist. They were still seeing the doctors but Lisa was getting weaker and now, according to Mr Bailey by December last year she was only taking “baby steps”, barely able to walk.
By January she couldn’t walk. She could not help herself.
The money to see more specialists just wasn’t there. She had long stopped working and Horace Bailey, a painter, had stopped working too to take care of her. “Sometime when I put her in the chair she jus stay deh all day like that,” he said, explaining why he had to stop working. Resources were running low and not only were they not able to find the money for all these tests and specialists being recommended but also they had to give up their home in Great Pond, Ocho Rios and move in with his family.
There were days of pain, nights of frustration, and questions with no answers about how she could get relief or a diagnosis that could determine once and for all what was wrong.
Mr Bailey remembers going to the doctor at 3 o’clock one morning after Lisa complained bitterly about a painful episode with her joints. He says the doctor, having examined Lisa, said more tests would not help. He said the doctor asked her if she was a Christian to which she answered no and then said he couldn’t tell her what to do but only ‘spiritual intervention’ could work.
LOST FAITH
Mr Bailey says that was one of the things that convinced him that it was not medicines she wanted and the harm was from someone.
In the interim, he was told that her muscles were going, that her weight loss was continuing, and that even her lungs were getting smaller. Lisa was put on oxygen to help keep her alive.
He said as she deteriorated fast she had to be returned to St Ann’s Bay Hospital where she was admitted. They were told that it appeared she had a rare disease which attacked the muscles and lead to rapid death. He said she was sent again to a specialist in Kingston but by then he had lost faith “I didn’t buy it….The hospital didn’t even send up much (of her records),” to help with the diagnosis.
He said Lisa had told him about an encounter that occurred in the hair dressing salon where she had a station and that had all the hall marks of hate and evil. He says he knows the persons involved but refused to tell The Times. “People have it to say is mash them mash her up.”
He was asked whether he believed what people were saying, that it was obeah. He said he believed it too and so did Lisa toward the end.
“She was one of the sweetest souls you ever come across,” he said “and is dis dem do to her.”
She was buried Saturday after a service in Ocho Rios.
