The metal roof prices had gone up again. Peter did not how he would ever finish his small house with the price of metal roofing material going up all the time.
Here in Jamaica the metal roofing material commonly known as zinc had goon up in price every week for the last two months. The government had a program for people to get the sheets of zinc for free but someone had stolen all the roofing material from inside the secured compound where it was being held for distribution. How this could have happened, no one could say. Everyone knew it was just another case of the political corruption at work.
Most likely, the zinc for sell at the local shop had been part of the free government zinc program. That would not help Peter in any way now. He would have to continue to use two days pay to buy one sheet of zinc. At the rate the price had been increasing it would soon take three days pay to buy a single sheet.
His small home would require 30 sheets of the metal roofing material to cover it completely, and it needed to be covered before the rainy season came in January. Peter did not how he could ever get enough material to finish the job in time. There were only a few weeks remaining before the rainy season started and if the roof was not finished by then all of his meager positions would be ruined. He still lacked at least 20 sheets of the material and at the current rate; there just was not enough time to make the money to purchase them before the rains came.
Maybe he would have to sell the cedar trees at the back of his family’s land. The cedar trees had been there for as long as anyone could remember. They provided shade and were beautiful to look at, but they would bring a good price at the lumber mill. The trees would probably be cut into expensive cedar shake roofing material, which they used on the mansions in the resort towns all over Jamaica.
Peter thought it quit ironic that he would have to sell his beautiful cedar trees and that they would be used to cover the roofs of the tourist’s mansions; just so he could cover his own humble home with a few sheets of the precious metal roofing material. If it were not for the ever increasing metal roof prices, he would be able to keep his beautiful cedar trees.