How do you know you’re resilient? What does it take to make a resilient people?
Well, if there isn’t a rift in life that violently goes against our momentum towards our dreams, perhaps no one could tell. Last year October we heard that the rift was a storm and some people were like,
“Yay I don’t have to go to work!”
Then there was me,
“I don’t have time for this right now I have dreams to come true.”
Somebody said “Marshy, girl you a guh get rest, you n’affi come a work!
“You waan come a work?”
“Marshy! You no glad?”
On a regular day my answer would really be well neither here nor there, work is alright. It wasn’t about work for me. It was about the freedom to get what I want and at the time a storm felt like a blockage, a complete waste of my time.
The Arrival of Hurricane Melissa
And guess what it wasn’t just some storm it was a whole category 5 hurricane. It was Melissa. We were warned. She was slow. And in response the people, some were hesitant, some were obedient, some unruly, some in denial and some obedient.
However the people thought, Melissa did not care. She destroyed the lives of the poor and unruly, and the financially comfortable and obedient alike.
Whatever class or creed, taste or distaste she raged like a mother bear at an attacker who dared to threaten her cubs. Except Melissa has no cubs, only her intentions to tear down buildings, shake foundations, throw signs and roofs, scowl at the old, lift the waters, toss, twist trees, and to terrify. Perhaps even to trick, some said she was an earthquake and tsunami too. Multidimensional.
The Aftermath of Melissa
She left some parts of us flattened, some parts frozen in shock, some frightened. But their property? Little to no damage, some scratch free or others ruined. Destroyed. After she passed, we woke up early on a Wednesday, under the grace of a bright smiling Caribbean sun.
My family and I, we walked out on the roads. We met our curious neighbors along the way too. We stepped over heavy tree logs, branches, broken posts, tangled phone lines, light wires, pieces of picket fences and solar panels.
Further along the way we heard people swearing at the memory of her, cursing at her departure “Dat Dutty Gyal!” for the terrible things she had done. Men cutting away the branches hanging in the road with their cutlasses, preparing the road for travel.
Vehicles skipping piles of debris, slowly bumping over chunks of fallen trees or heaps of mud. A poor homeless man stretching his hands and tongue at the vehicles cruising by. Some pressed their money in his hands, others passed him by.
By evening, the gas station’s service station was open and the pumps were filled with vehicles and “hangry” people who finished their meals before Melissa had completely passed. Their attitudes and gestures were clouded with “mad scarcity.” I was frightened, jarred for the pump attendants, Melissa had left with the people’s manners and patience too.
Others forcing their way or their voices before others ahead in the line, to get their phones charged. Customer service shouting over the noise and confusion in utter frustration, sometimes praying “My God man!”
Speaking of the people’s behavior, that day was “the water by the tip of the drum’s mouth.” It felt near to the end of the world but further from God.
Back to Work After Hurricane Melissa Passed
I went to work on the following Thursday, both phones almost dead, no signal and I was met with terrible surprises. The roads were blocked so the taxi had to take us the longer way around which led us off the normal road through a construction site. The hotels along the way were partly broken.
Light posts bending over the road as if it were whispering and the posts needed to hear. And as I approached my place of work. It worsened.
There was a light post broken in half and part of the fallen half stretched across the road, that only small vehicles could play limbo with.
On the way I noticed the roofing of our neighboring school was missing a good fraction. Then I arrived at work. But my place of work? Partly shut in for the old, sick and the disaster prone, an entire block was a shelter. And on the lower school block substances seemingly like cotton from the classroom ceilings, covered the desks and chairs, other clumps mounted all over the floor.
The trees had fallen, our shade was gone like the use of the school stage that the winds had lifted up and placed neatly aside. And guess who was at school? Our faithful secretary, the grounds man and of course the math teachers. It’s like the students often say, “The maths teacha dem ago always deh a school.”
We talked and marveled at the destruction for a while til we concluded not to return to school until the day we decided was best. I can’t remember when.
My Initial Reaction to Melissa
But I can remember on that afternoon when I arrived back at home my heart was heavy in my hands. My dreams felt battered and my hope almost all gone. And the day after that for me it was terrible. My heart crouched and I remember the sting, sitting below my veranda by the plants, hands clad around my knees tucked to my chest.
Tears falling from my eyes. Tears for those who passed, tears for thinking the world is coming to an end on the beginning of my dreams, tears for the homeless, especially the children, the pregnant mothers and tears for the people’s hunger. Oh I was mighty frightened.
Upon Returning to Work Again
Upon returning to work on the decided date, there was our school principal, bright like the sun from the Wednesday Melissa had gone. He was glad to have helped to clean up the roads after the hurricane. And it seems even more excited to have been back at school to start the venture to rebuilding and fixing.
There he was standing a few steps up on the staircase, facing his staff sitting attentively by the heritage haven. I was awakened by his zest, his drive and unshaken spirit. He was ready to cook for the persons in our school’s community, he was excited about cleaning the school with our help to prepare it for reopening in December.
We discussed deploying worksheets at drop boxes for students who weren’t able to get to school. And he was even more excited about the sponsors who were prepared to help assist the school, the staff and the Martha Brae community.
Seeing our leader that way made me think beautifully about the future. Perhaps maybe everything wasn’t coming to an end. Perhaps my dreams do stand a chance. And that maybe there is help. There is hope. There is a way. It made me smile. I felt comforted and encouraged.
Furthermore, I was moved by the efforts of my colleagues. How they combined all their efforts to put the broken pieces of our livelihood back together. Some feeding the old and sick, some cooking, some cleaning, some laughing, some talking, some sharing care packages, compound acts of care.
Those inspired acts, to me, were a beauty that shone upon our fraction of Melissa’s destruction in a space that connected us all, our workplace.
Altogether, their actions planted a seed inside my heart and from that sprouted a renewal of hope and drive to become unstuck from the weight of the impact on our country.
Why I Initiated the Post Melissa Project?
I felt so inspired, I was motivated to use Melissa like a Microphone and point it at the voices of our children. I started to imagine that like myself perhaps they too have spiraled emotionally.
So, why not write a book that combines their personal literary and artistic expressions? It will be about what we as a Jamaican people have been through. To commemorate our resilience, that even after Melissa we remain an undefeated people.
Months later, that idea became the Post-Melissa Youth Resilience Project. I designed a poster and placed it at the Discovery Bus Park in February 2026. I am now looking forward to working with our nation’s children.
We measure resilience not by the numbers of storms we survived but by the way we choose to live after they’ve passed. We do not hide. We may feel fear. But we do not cower like rat bats fear the sun.
We persist against the odds. We reach for our dreams until our goals we’ve become, and we’ve outdone ourselves.
