Here in Jamaica not everyone lost a roof in the storm; but we all lost the ground beneath our feet. Not one of us – in the west or in the east – was spared the dark, looming feeling of uncertainty, of not knowing what tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow will bring for our little island on the front line of the climate crisis.
ERNA BRODBER
You think Melissa stop here? The lady see herself like some monarch of all she survey, stopping like Queen Elizabeth in any Caribbean country she feel like and stopping for how long she want. She even have outriders. Before she land she send on rain to inform the Natives of her coming.
DIANA MCCAULAY
In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa and its impact on the western third – maybe 40% – of the island of Jamaica, my home – the metaphor of a fallen tree, centuries in the growing, is helping me to think through how we may yet live together, how we may use the light let in by a catastrophe.
ROLAND WATSON-GRANT
Get it into your head. It is goin’ to be me, you and Melissa out here. So, when radio and TV say stock up on emergency supplies and batten down roof and window— they just mockin’ people like me and you. Mockin’ you and me like how Facebook can tell people to mark themselves safe. Fuck Facebook.
JIK-REUBEN PRINGLE
In my journeying into the visibly impacted areas of Jamaica, one of the things I was keen to find and document was how people found ways to bring normalcy into their lives through recreational activities that either brought brief windows of joy or a break from the devastation around them.
YASHIKA GRAHAM
I come home and come away
from the dark as much bashed in
as the house I was born in
at once full and empty and still
looking back from the gate