I want to thank all my family and friends who reached out with concern after Hurricane Melissa. I am okay, a little traumatize by all of the events, but given the horrors this storm brought, I consider myself not just fortunate, but blessed.
Yes, I lost some trees :my coconut tree, half of my ackees tree, my frangipani, my plantain, banana, and a few others. Plywood blew off one window, there’s some leakage, maybe three windows to replace, a small leak in another part of the house. But in comparison, there really is no comparison. I am blessed.
I’ve been staying with my niece in Kingston: she and her family have been so generous, so kind during this strange and heavy time. There’s still no electricity or water, and I don’t know when Linstead will be restored. Though St. Catherine wasn’t as badly hit, there are trees down, Flat Bridge flooded, landslides, the usual scars of nature’s wrath. And yet, all in all, we are the fortunate ones.
Melissa hurricane has been traumatic, partly because of the long buildup. Five long days of anticipation, anxiety humming in the bones. She landed in my area around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday and she crawled and raged, groaned and dragged her feet, wailed and laid on her stomach, pounding on the ground; I was both tormented and wracked with sympathy for her, just having to listen to her howl, whine and wailed as she tore at our world until about nine that night. I couldn’t sleep. The wind had a voice, ancient, mournful, furious. The leaves and trees cried and tired to withstand the lashing, some did, many did not.
When it finally quieted, my body ached as though I’d been in a battle. The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. My body was in pain, and I realized it wasn’t just physical. It was trauma.
Two or three houses on my street lost their roofs. A man, a few streets over was blown to death after his roof had gone, and thinking the storm had passed, he went to secure it for his family. The wind returned and took him as a sacrifice. Gone, just like that.
They say there so far there are nineteen deaths. I believe there will be more. Some will never be counted, never deemed “hurricane-related.” Statistics cannot hold grief.
The footage I’ve seen since is as devastation like a bombing, like an earthquake. It’s beyond belief. At UWI, though the buildings stand, the beautiful trees — so many — have fallen. I will write poems for them: for my coconut tree that fell, for the ones that shaded the roads, for every trunk snapped mid-song.
Down the road, the roof of a chicken farm was blown away. The poor birds, terrified; we will not be getting eggs for a while. There is already a shortage of eggs and bread. Yesterday at the supermarket, there was no bread. The manager said the bread truck had come, and within half an hour, every loaf and bun was gone.
This is a time of mourning. For all the many-many people, families displaced, for the trees, for roofs, for the animals, for routines, for lives. But also a time of gratitude for survival, for kindness, for the breath in our lungs.
Melissa came with fury, and left us humbled. But we are still here. Rooted. Battered, yes, but alive. We are a resilient people. We survived worse, the Middle Passage and 400 years of slavery, we will work together, we will rebuild, we will grow stronger, and hopefully we will be more mindful of nature and work more in synchrony with her so we can thrive together and create a more harmonious world.
Opal Palmer Adisa 