NO story on TV can ever truly communicate just how badly Dominica has been hurt. You simply won’t get it until you see it. Until you see the trees nearly every one of them stripped of leaves. Until you walk through streets choking with dust as debris clogs both sides of the roads; debris that at one time represented the worldly belongings of some family.
You won’t get it until the stench hits you – the stench of soggy and rotting logs and debris and all the other hurricane after-smells that go with it. It won’t resonate until you’ve walked past shell-shocked Dominicans, many with their eyes focused straight ahead, as if they are afraid to let them wander from side to side lest reality robs them of what little self-control they have mustered.
They seem wary of strangers, even though the familiar Dominican warmth is there under the surface, sparing you a nod or a twitch of a smile every once in a while. Yet, they seize the opportunity, once you’ve opened the window, to offload the burden; over 70,000 stories that want to be told to anyone able to listen.
On a cluttered street headed into Roseau, I saw a group of people rushing to get pieces of a large tuna fish someone had found somewhere, and which my nose told me was a little past its expiration time. But that’s the reality that they face. And as the day crawls to an end, the long dark of a night with no electrical power is what they have to look forward to.
Yet, in spite of the hurt and damage and pain, there flickers here and there glimmers of light, which means that, ultimately, while a lot of this story that I share with you may be sad, it is not one without hope.
I found myself on a boat heading to Dominica on Tuesday, October 3. Our ride was the Flying Ray, a boat that has been doing yeoman service delivering supplies to Dominica since Hurricane Maria hit, and for that we have to thank Brian Devaux. Once again, it was packed with tinned food, water, blankets, sanitary items — you name it — all courtesy the 1500 staff members of Sandals Resorts in Saint Lucia.
While on a wider scale our company has responded with thousands of items in aid through our Sandals Foundation, the Saint Lucian team members wanted to make it personal and I was not prouder when I saw the mountain of things they personally donated to support the work of the Foundation, so much so that we had to cancel using our own boats because they simply weren’t big enough. And so at 4:00 a.m. on that Tuesday, we set sail for Dominica, not knowing what we would find.
The five-hour ride is not for the faint of heart and the channels between Saint Lucia and Martinique and then on toward Dominica can be rather choppy. The sun was already rising by the time I spotted Martinique off to my right. Standing on the top deck of the boat with a soothing, crisp morning wind blasting into my face, the breath-taking magnificence of Martinique’s sprawling mountains awash with the rainbow colours of the early morning sun plastered a silly grin on my face. I had seen the beauty of our islands, but the horror lay yet ahead.
It was just about 9:00 a.m. when the harsh brown outline of Dominica came into view. The gasps I heard from my colleagues around me told me the sight had the same reaction on them as it did on me: utter shock!
Nearly three weeks had passed and still the lush trees that once lined the ridges of the mountains stood bare, plundered of all foliage by the unrelenting winds of Maria. Now they were just lonely sentinels standing watch over a graveyard of arboreal skeletons. Every tree was ravaged, stripped bare, twisted, brutalized. The earth was brown and parched, scoured away in many places.
Soon, the first settlements came into sight and it challenged our perception since nearly every house had a square or rectangular outline. Most were roofless; here and there tarpaulins flapped into the air as families tried their best to cover up. It looked as if some mischievous gargantuan child had kicked through the community, broken pieces were scattered everywhere. Suddenly, the sun seemed a whole lot hotter.
The phones were out by then, cameras going, and I was just about to take a photo of four young children rummaging through piles of debris on the shore when they stopped and looked over. Suddenly, I felt a bit embarrassed. Here we were, just some foreigners on a boat passing through while their lives lay shattered about them. I checked to see if I had taken the picture but I couldn’t find it.
Suddenly, some shouted, “Look over there.”
As I followed the gaze of my companions, I saw a swatch of green, brilliant against the dreary backdrop, new vegetation fighting its way through. Just then a flutter of activity below me drew my eyes to schools of flying fish soaring alongside the boat, our own guard of honour. Around me I saw signs of life and where there is life, there is hope.
As we sailed on, however, the story was the same: settlement after settlement lay smashed and as Roseau came into sight it was clear just how much Maria had hurt the island and its people.
Our first destination was the docks and, usually, there is a queue of boats. So overwhelming has been the response for aid but, fortunately, we were able to dock as soon as we pulled in.
We met our contact and offloaded our goods on the dock. The desperation was evident as our contact was forced to send across security to stand watch as many dock workers themselves were attempting to fill up their bags with tins of sausages, sardines, bottles of water and whatever else they could find. It’s clear there is no easy fix to the challenges facing these people. A few residents told us later that the supplies don’t always get to where they are intended. They did not necessarily blame the government, admitting that it may not be intentional since everyone was so overwhelmed.
Not long after we left the docks and anchored where the old Anchorage Hotel was; this is where we would spend the night. With hours left, we knew we had to see first-hand what was taking place on the island. A few of us jumped on a dinghy and made our way onshore just in front of the hotel. We started seeing the damage up close for the first time. Every room was smashed, filled with debris and mud. The roof was gone, windows were busted open, iron twisted. There was a heavy underlying odour. This was a violent assault; there was nothing subtle about it.
As we looked along the shore-line, it was completely covered with the remnants of trees.
“The river come down,” one local told us. “Some rivers we never even see before.”
The river had indeed come down and stacked the remains of trees so tightly together that we could walk on them as if it were a boardwalk. But not only did the river come down; the sea came in. Nearly every property on the shoreline was devastated. Expensive boats lay in a clutter, piled on top of each other, the owners unable or just too apathetic to even try to pull them out. One of my colleagues told me he saw a boat with two engines that surely cost over US$100,000 each, just buried in the mud.
I met a gentleman rummaging along the seashore, mumbling to himself and glancing over toward me. It was clear that he had something so say, so I called out to him. He couldn’t wait to get it all off his chest.
He pointed to some hills over on the left: brown, scattered with leafless trees and covered with smoke as small brush fires started to catch.
“Those mountains used to be blue-green you know,” he reminisced. “Not even Hurricane David was this bad. Everything gone. My house, too, totally gone. Now I’m just trying to find something that can be useful.”
Not only did he not have a roof over his head but without a door to lock security is a major concern since small bands of young delinquents continue to pillage and loot. He told me a story of a security guard just days earlier who had tried to stop three such people from entering a place that sold car batteries and was badly beaten. There were two curfews, he explained: one that started at 4:00 p.m. which was a more relaxed curfew, and one from midnight when you had to be indoors. But, he said, the police needed more support enforcing them.
We made our way out onto the main road leading into the capital and it was clear that at one point it was buried under mud. A narrow passage had been carved out, along which cars were competing for space as they travelled in both directions. Heavy machinery was still on the roadway trying to clear the rubble at the side. People, several wearing dust masks, were weaving in and out of the cars which, ultimately, got stuck in traffic.
Sometimes you had to walk on three- or four-foot banks of mud on either side of the street to make your way. Electrical lines were either hanging low or dragging on the ground. The automatic response was to avoid them, until we saw the locals simply pushing them aside and walking by – power was a thing of the past right now.
As we walked, a steady stream of helicopters buzzed overhead, all shapes and sizes, and from a number of countries.
We walked for about 20 minutes and not a single house had escaped some form of damage. Many residents were at home, staring out from smashed windows, or sitting on makeshift stools in porches still bearing water marks that told you just how high the flood waters had been. There was a low murmur, few raised voices, there was little to be cheerful about. Mud and trees had washed off the hillside on one side of the road and smashed into houses and any cars unfortunate enough to be parked on that road. Some of those vehicles will never be used again.
We stopped just short of entering Roseau. It was five in the afternoon and we knew the first curfew was in effect, even though the streets remained packed. We were just about to make our way back when one of the locals with us asked, “You want a cold beer?” I knew that there was no power, the electrical grid was in ruins, but curiosity got the better of me.
We carefully made our way through a narrow path between houses and back to the shoreline and then over the ‘boardwalk’ of logs that lined the shore and came to a small shop run by a small-statured Guyanese gentleman they called ‘Jenni’. I could clearly hear the sound of a generator running.
Jenni surmised that as bad as things were, a cold beer can help and he was right. The generator was hooked up to his freezer and his fridge. Scores of people filed in and out of his shop, ordering up to six Kubulis at a time! Kubuli is the local beer and while they weren’t exactly cold (since they didn’t get to spend much time in the fridge), they did the job. It was a small sense of normality in an otherwise surreal landscape and people flocked to it. Sharing beers and sharing a chat and a laugh gave them a temporary reprieve.
It was there that I met Stoute. Stoute was slowing sipping on a Kubuli and sharing stories of his own experience. He lived in a place called Fortune. Stoute was a builder and working on roofs was part of his trade so, for the most part, he had secured his roof, except for one small part that he forgot to nail down. Believe it or not, the devilish winds of Maria started picking at that one small part and soon his entire roof was gone, even his mattress went flying.
Stoute was home alone at the time Maria struck. His kids were all grown up and he had sent his ‘lady’ to stay at the shelter in the church, a big old grey structure. He said for one moment he held his head and wondered, “Why me, Lord?” But he soon realised that it was not just him. Nearly every one of his neighbours shared a similar fate. It was at that point he realised that feeling sorry for himself was not going to do him any good. Remember, all of this was taking place in darkness; Maria struck in the night, and power had been one of the first things to go.
When day broke, Stoute had no roof; however, his cupboard in which he wisely stored groceries, was secure. Below his house was buried in mud, the river had come through, and all his electrical tools, over EC$8,500 worth, were gone. But in this 69-year-old man (yes, 69!), I found an amazing will and spirit of positivity. Stoute used his limited tools and set about assembling a roof within two days. The day after that, he was helping a neighbour. Soon after that another, and when I met him by Jenni’s bar, he had just come from helping another neighbour. And at no cost, he said.
“You can’t ask a man for money at a time like this,” he said. “Now we need to come together and help each other.”
Not only that: Stoute had opened his meagre pantry to some of his neighbours who had no food.
“There’s nothing to buy,” he pointed out. “Even if you have money, what are you going to do with it?”
In his spirit and positivity, I felt hopeful. More than anything else, this was the most vital thing if this country is to find its footing again.
I took his number because, credit to Flow and Digicel, cell service was back up in some areas. I promised to try and source whatever tools I could in Saint Lucia, toasted his health and, by then, with darkness setting, it was time to get back to the boat.
As we slowly cruised along the shoreline, you could see candles or lamps being lit. Along the shoreline itself, huge bonfires were set alight. Almost three weeks without power and with no indication of when it would return. Can you fathom that?
Standing on the top deck of the Flying Ray, I watched as a bright moon, partially hidden behind some clouds, slowly rose over Dominica, an almost ghostly setting; dark houses with shadows flickering inside while dozens of bonfires danced along the shore. Another night to survive. It was the new routine. With no school to get the children ready for when day broke, and with no job to head off to, it was one never- ending fight to survive and, hopefully, start to rebuild.
The days, weeks and months ahead are going to be long, very long, and these people are going to need a lot of love and a lot of help. But I have no doubt that Dominica will rise again in all its glorious beauty.
(Sunil Ramdeen was part of the team from Sandals Resorts in Saint Lucia who visited Dominica recently, bringing relief supplies that had been collected by team members from the resorts on island in Saint Lucia.)