Greetings, my friend, how have you been?
My head is mud and fallen trees, fire gashing from electrical wires six feet high in the street, rain slashing down, thousands of homes like chopped cardboard on the soaking ground. Look, this is you’ grandmother shop, an Island woman shows on her video. Caribbean-blue shop lies collapsed.
My eyes cannot unsee a bunch o’ dawgs rushing by on a raft in the flooded gully. Plastic bottles and debris swirl around the raft, moving swiftly past the video-making man.
The gray-brown fields are miles of slush. Carriacou, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, islands green, in good times, lush. St. Elizabeth, St. Thomas, Jamaica. How is Haiti, does anyone know? Cayman Islands? Is there somewhere missing in my head?
My head, my eyes, my ears, my heart used to be the ocean singing her sea-shanties of love-working until she lost her cool-and-easy flow early one morning a few years ago. She flung out a monster-wave towering-tall, more powerful than all the big world leaders colluding as one, and I wept as I watched that nameless-heartless-thing in 2013 barrelling upon our poor Guyana shore. And now the lovely sea, our lullaby sea, has given birth to yet another raging child - Beryl. How many furious children will she throw every other year upon the earth, Gilbert, Ivan, before we can understand what’s been done to our Caribbean, paradise where the less fortunate hold on to faith as they suffer the repercussions of the rich man’s chemicals killing our ocean, and sorrow will mingle with hope, resignation, forgiveness and laughter, because we’re famous for laughter in the face of disaster (didn’t you know), until, one day, if our land is washed away, where will we go?
My friend, lemme just shut my mouth, I don’t want to be the Cassandra they throw into prison for warning the truth. I suspect I lost a writing gig that I used to have, banging on about the poison of plastic and what it does to you, to me, to the sea. Lemme just stop my words this minute, laugh to myself when I hear somebody say, de ocean blow she gasket!
Please take care of you, dear friend. Peace an’ love, neena.
P.S. If you haven’t seen the footage, here are some links.
Carriacou residents’ survival stories:
Touring Carriacou after Hurricane Beryl:
Petite Martinique:
Union Island, St. Vincent & The Grenadines:
St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Grenada seeking financial assistance:
Oh noooo. I have never suffered directly, but living in Japan (a natural disaster magnet) I have learned to feel. To even sniff and tear when watching tv interviews of people who in minutes lost everything. Gulp. Hard to even imagine.
I hope recovery can come soon to your island paradise.
Oooh my I pray for ease and restoration of your homeland. Thank you for sharing these resources too.