Hurricane Melissa: Stories from the Diaspora and the Cultural Anchors That Hold Us

When Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, the impact rippled far beyond the island. This episode explores “the middle place” — that emotional space between home and abroad — through the voices of Caribbean people across the diaspora.

Through Lens 3 of the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM): Cultural Anchors, Kerry-Ann reflects on how faith, music, sayings, and pride keep us grounded in times of uncertainty and loss.

Episode Highlights:

• The emotional toll of watching home in crisis while abroad
• Finding strength through cultural anchors: music, prayer, proverbs, and national pride
• Diaspora coordination, empathy, and responsible giving during disaster recovery
• How resilience and cultural memory fuel the long work of rebuilding
• Re-examining “giving back” as a year-round cultural practice

Mentioned & Related Episodes:

• Rethinking Caribbean Disaster Relief: A Call to Action
• Support the Caribbean Year-Round: Giving Before, During & After Disaster Strikes
• From Carriacou to Brooklyn: Building Sustainable Futures & Cultural Legacy. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Shock, Waiting, And Helplessness
• 2:58 Introducing Voices From The Diaspora
• 4:31 Anxiety, Flights Cancelled, Prayers West
• 8:27 From Paralysis To Mobilizing With Purpose
• 11:23 Weeks Without Word: A BVI Parallel
• 16:43 Who To Help First And How
• 20:16 Smart Giving, Burnout, And Trusted Channels
• 22:46 Media Hype, Misinformation, And Clarity
• 24:26 Music, Proverbs, And Cultural Anchors
• 29:07 Climate Reality And Long Recovery

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Naturally. While in the waiting period, you just want to hear that everybody's okay. And once you hear that everyone is okay, you are ingesting information about what has happened to the house where they're living. And then the next wave comes. What feels like insurmountable? What it's gonna take to help recover. And I'm not talking the island. You're talking your family. And someone who's never been through this is going to say, Well, why are you thinking about money? Or why are you thinking about this? But that's what it takes. And then someone might say, Well, you didn't go through it, so why do you feel this way? And that's what is very hard to explain to people. The emotional connection to the place. Feeling sadness and helplessness. And sadness and helplessness, I don't know which is the chicken or the egg, but that's that. But also to be in a place where life is going on for everyone else, and you're in this other place, you're in between. So you're not back home experiencing this where everybody there is dealing with the same thing. You're at a place where everyone else is going about life as usual, and so you're in this middle place, and it's just this weird middle place. And I've experienced this before when I'm experiencing grief when you know I lost my grandmother, my grandfather, my father. You get condolences, but after time passes, everyone continues with their life. Well, you're you're in this place processing.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

My initial gut feeling was a severe helplessness and powerlessness, and almost like numbness too, and just feeling frozen in time. Like a shell shock.

SPEAKER_00: 2:58

Hello everyone, welcome to this very special edition of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean-American podcast. If you've always been rocking with Carry On Friends, you know me, you've heard me talk about my hometown, Montego Bay, which is in the parish of St. James, one of the parishes impacted by Hurricane Melissa. St. James is located in one of Jamaica's three counties. They are Carnwall, Middlesex, and Surrey. All the parishes in Carnwell County have been tremendously impacted. They are Trelawney, St. James, Hanover, Westmiland, and St. Elizabeth. Over the past week, I've asked members of my community to send me voice notes, not about what they saw on the news, but what it felt like to watch home in crisis while being thousands of miles away. What you're about to hear is the story of their experience, the waiting, the helplessness, the mobilization, the overwhelm, and the cultural anchors that keep us rooted even when everything else is shaking. Even when everything else, as we say, are pop dung. This is carry on friends. The hardest part about watching the storm while you're in the diaspora in New York. Berlin for Jamaica is knowing that you can't do anything. Watching it and just telling yourself that do not work yourself up into a frenzy. Do not let the reports, you know, make you worry or, you know, create this anxiety because there's nothing you could do. And so as I had written in the newsletter, I pray that our families did the best that they could to prepare and to be safe. And I am pushing my energies and my emotions for the recovery because that is something that I couldn't control. And as much as I can say it that easy, it was challenging because as humans, at least, I can't speak for anybody else, but you know, empathy is something that you experience. So if someone else is talking to you and they're worried about something, it's not something you dismiss, especially when you know that's real. And so trying to manage that was the hardest thing.

SPEAKER_03: 5:50

Um, it hurts. It hurts for the first 24 hours not being able to hear from my fiance or my daughter and my family, and knowing that like they're down there, and there's nothing, literally nothing that I can do. I just literally have to watch what's going on on TV. I tried to buy a flight to get into Jamaica before, because I said, better I'm down there and can help than not be down there and the the heartbreak of the flight being cancelled and the heartbreak of not being able to rebook a flight because they closed the airports. And I just remember and I just remember praying. I just remember, God please, the it it it it was supposed to touch and clearing then, and it's gone west. Maybe it'll keep going west. And I just kept praying that it would keep going west. And the heartbreak of the heartbreak of watching it turn like they said it would turn. And you know, it it touched down New Hope on probably about half an hour slow drive from New Hope. 15 minute taxi drive from New Hope. And just to know that it touched down and to lose contact with my family and to not hear from anybody and just have to watch and see. Still very sporadic abilities to communicate with family and friends, and that hurts. That really does hurt a lot, and I just don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 7:50

As you heard in that clip, he prayed it would keep going west. On the morning, on that Tuesday morning before Hurricane Melissa hit, I was talking to a friend of mine in Jamaica, and he did what we commonly do when we said tech bad things make joke. He said, it keeps doing this to the left, to the left movement, and I wish it would continue. And that's just an example of everyone wishing that it would continue, move west, or to the left to the left. Here's what happened when it didn't.

SPEAKER_01: 8:27

The first 28 to 48 hours according street. It was it was very paralyzed, it was a very paralyzing feeling and experience mentally and physically. Um now we're into I don't even know how much days, day five or so. I am more clear. Um I you know eventually got to talk with some like-minded people and people who know how to execute people who are strategic. And when you surround yourself with those people and have those kinds of conversations, you get you know, you're you're elevated to a better space, just overall. And that's been helpful for me. Um, and I had prayed very hard for guidance and like direct, direct steps. And I those prayers have been answered to some extent, and I'm looking forward to the future answers, but that that is really important.

SPEAKER_00: 9:28

I think the next hardest thing for me was after the storm, waiting more than 24 hours to hear anything, that waiting to hear from someone, looking at your WhatsApp messages and just seeing the one check mark to at least five different people. And knowing that the message has left your phone, but it's still not reached theirs, and it's 24 hours and you don't know anything. And in your mind, you you know, you know, because I've lived through a hurricane, I lived through Gilbert. So in your mind, you know that, okay, electricity, you know, internet might be down, but still it doesn't help. Like logically, you know, you know that that's the case. Emotionally, it's still difficult to wait and not hear anything. And then what you begin to do is call other people within the district, the community, or other places to see if they heard from other people in their family. Because in in a roundabout way, you're thinking, if well, if they hear something and they have signal and electricity or whatever it is to get a call out or to be on the internet somehow, somehow, the same soon will happen for your family. And so I remember being on the train going to work the next day and just holding in the tears because you don't want people on the train looking at you like you're crazy. Um, but just holding in the tears because you have not heard. So I heard from one cousin and I said, okay, I want to wait and hear from the other cousins, their sisters. And so when she finally sends a message, I immediately FaceTime her, knowing that the internet might be shaky, but I also want to see their face. And I'm talking to them. And just to see their face, I just became so emotional, so overwhelmed. And my cousin. I I have to say it because other Jamaicans would get it. She said, I wanted a girl, man. You're gonna start ball, I'll go then make me start ball. So um and then she passes the phone to her other sister, which again, again, it's just how we cope. So because I'm crying, she's like, I'm gonna make her cry, and she don't want to cry. So she passed the phone to her other sister, and then you know, so it was that feeling of like getting out what has been built up because of just holding it in and together until you hear something from people. The person you're about to hear from isn't Jamaican. He's from the British Virgin Islands. As most of you have experienced, he, along with many other Caribbean friends, reached out to find out if my family was okay. But what he's about to share proves something important. This experience of watching home suffer from afar, from the diaspora, it is a Caribbean experience. It transcends any one Caribbean country.

SPEAKER_02: 13:09

Yeah, man, thank God for life indeed. Uh, when I saw the storm, it reminded me a lot of our situation back in 2017 in BPI when Hurricane Urma hit us, category five the same way, and also Hurricane Maria, Category 5, one week later, kind of back-to-back hit Puerto Rico at us nearby. Um, it was actually one month almost to the day after I had just relocated to Panama. And, you know, that just flattened the whole place. I mean, we're not trying to compare. Obviously, Jamaica is a bigger island, more people, different kinds of scale. But it was the same kind of scene, man. Everything flattened out, mud everywhere, houses, people dead. You know, uh, I didn't hear from my family for weeks. You know what I mean? We didn't have electricity and water for like three, four weeks out there. Um, yeah, it's I know what I mean. It's a it's a very emotionally taxing kind of situation. I tried to explain that to somebody one day who tried to come at me with the, oh, well, you know, you didn't feel uh the brunt of the hurricane because you weren't really home and you had to escape it and this and that. And I was trying to explain to them, like, it's a, I don't know if you want to compare like which one is worse, but it's a different kind of uh agony and suffering being on the outside, watching the people that you love suffer, um, not knowing how to help, not being able to help, like you're saying. So I definitely understand again if I know what you're talking about. It's a really hard thing to explain to people. Because people immediately go, Oh, you weren't in the danger zone, therefore you're good. Or you can't be feeling any kind of pain or sadness or agony. You can't be feeling the same amount to the same degree. And I'm trying to tell people, nah, you know, that's not how it works. It's a d uh, I don't know if it's more or less, but it's a different kind of agony. You know what I mean? I mean, the first time, the first time I remember hearing my dad's voice have fear. I mean, in 30 plus years, my dad is like invincible. I seen this guy go out to help other people in the middle of storms and crisis situations. He's the one directing traffic, and you know, always Superman. And when that storm hit, after a week or whatever it is, when I finally got a phone call from some random number, I don't know whose phone he got a hold of, some random phone number in the middle of the night and a weak signal. That was the first time I heard him talk in in the week after the storms. And I'm telling you, this is the first time I've ever in my life I could hear the fear and trauma in my dad's voice. I never heard this man scared before of anything or anybody. But I could hear the traumatized voice of we need help. Tell the people we need help. He just kept on repeating that. And then he just like gave me a because at that time he was like a minister in government and that kind of stuff. And he just gave me a list of things. He said, like, I don't know how long the signal is gonna last. And he just rattled off. He said, get a pen and sat writing. And he gave me a list of things uh to tell the people, tell the news or whoever international organizations that I could get in contact with in Panama or CNN or wherever. He said, Tell them these are the things that we need. And then he gave me a couple of facts uh on the actual situation on the ground to tell people to stop the misinformation because people were spreading all kinds of crazy rumors about, you know, you know, you know, usual madness that people say aspirate. Oh, everybody dead and everybody. No, it's not that it's bad, but it's not that serious. People eating each other, people, you know, all kind of ridiculousness. Um, and I could hear the trembling in his voice, and then the phone cut off. And I didn't hear from him again for for uh several other days. So yeah, man, I know what you mean.

SPEAKER_00: 16:43

With survival confirmed, now what?

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

Who do you help first? So, in terms of who to help first, family for me is first because in the first couple of hours, I wasn't sure how badly my family was impacted. So I was only seeing what was happening like on a wider scale, a community level. And therefore, that's where my heart was being tugged towards and wanting to find a way to help on a larger scale. But once I found out that my family was directly impacted and with significant devastation and not just my immediate family, we're talking now, aunts and uncles and you know, cousins and so forth, that's when it changed for me. Like, no, it's like I still want to help the country on our whole, but I need to help my family first. And how do I go about doing that?

SPEAKER_00: 17:38

I've told people that my first priority, yes, Jamaica, you want to donate. Here's the link. I've always been a proponent of supporting only official links, but my first priority is to support my family before I can fund or donate to anyone else. My resources are to the people that I have first responsibility to. And those are the people who I am connected to as families and friends. That's the first point of contact. And what's crazy is that you're trying to think about like how do you just live? And so there's a lot of unknowns that you're still processing. And yeah, it's just a few days later, but it's not because we know how long this recovery is going to be. But as we say, for surety for surety, we know say we're the go build back. But this in-between time, this in the meantime, it's uh it's a challenge.

SPEAKER_03: 18:48

Actions that I want to take, I really just think about I see a lot of people doing great work and a lot of people doing collections. But I'm thinking and I'm trying to go over a plan to after just the disaster relief, you know, because everybody's not gonna get everything and the big ones that get sent down. So I want to be able to get into Jamaica as soon as possible. And I want to do like a video campaign and help out the primary schools that are in my area, the basic schools, the schools that, you know, need that help and try to do a very um specific and directed collection and be able to oversee and send to everybody all the work that is getting done.

SPEAKER_00: 19:33

When I'm thinking of ways to support, I just have to let my family dictate. And, you know, for those who may not have immediate family in Jamaica but know they want to do, it's more of don't get swept up in what social media is doing and feel like you have to do a lot and you want to take on a lot because that's burnout and that's not going to help in the long run for the recovery. And so it's like taking a step back. And what does giving back look like? Okay, there's monetary, but what's your budget? Right. Because we have to, we have to use wisdom. Because at the same time, we cannot ignore what is happening in America at this time. The economy isn't that great as immigrants, there's a lot happening. And so we have to make sure that we're we're being smart about what we can do to give back. What does that look like from a budget standpoint? Okay, I want to give back. Um, and and note that going back to the episode that I did with Anthea, giving back is not just in this moment, in this moment needs it, but remember, giving back should always be a year-long process. And so maybe you're not in a position to do certain things now, but there's ongoing opportunities to give. Can you give up your time? Can you give of your resource, you know, a skill to help someone? Like, these are all the ways that I'm personally thinking, and I try to advise people to think about it because it gets overwhelming. But the first priority most people have is to tend to their immediate families because that is where you know what the needs are and where you can jump in and do what needs to happen.

SPEAKER_02: 21:23

Um, from Orside, you know, we have a whole heap of Jamaic and friends and family. Yeah, I have aunts from Jamaica and all that kind of stuff, even from St. Thomas and all that kind of stuff in Jamaica. So I got family and friends down there trying to communicate as much as possible. So we're gonna do what we can. Um, but I know you mean I told the group, all group the same thing. Like, hey, you know, I I appreciate that we're eager to help and we want to help and do things. But as you just mentioned, you know, helping in the wrong way is not really a help at all. So just sending a bunch of stuff to the middle of nowhere, we don't know who could receive it and that kind of thing. I told them, let's slow down and really try to identify which groups on the ground can get stuff to people uh efficiently and try to walk through them. You know, maybe it's faster. I told my group last night, like maybe it's faster. Instead of us trying to ship stuff from all the way in the BVA, maybe we need to be talking with our suppliers in Miami for them to just ship stuff directly down to Jamaica when the time is right through the different channels. So we're working directly as well with the Jamaica, what would they call it? Like the Jamaican Alliance, Jamaican, the Association of Jamaicans in the BVA. So we're in direct contact with them as well to try to let them guide us on the best way to help, you know, if it's better to send some money, like you said, to a church and let them do what they got to do, or you know, trying to figure out all that kind of stuff to help fast, but help in a real way that would actually um actually make a difference.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

I also had reactions to what American media was saying on their one outlet particularly said unsurvivable conditions, and I rebuked it in the name of Jesus because I was just like catastrophic, yes, but this is not something that an entire island nation can is going to be wiped off the face of the earth. And I know it wasn't me because my other friends kept saying this news outlet kept saying this, and it was just the sensationalizing of it, which didn't help the anxiety for those of us here in the diaspora. And I think this other idea of using this as a way for other people to get likes, to get engagement. You know, I saw a lot of fake AI videos. And, you know, I'm looking at this video and I'm like, this is not Jamaica. You could look at the structure of the houses, different things in the video, and just know it's not Jamaica. Also, the giveaway on it was October 26th. So this can't be Jamaica, right? And just feeling really angry for the country I was born in, for the land we love, um, for brand Jamaica to be used in an opportunist way when it needs humanitarian aid.

SPEAKER_01: 24:15

Resilience is in our DNA, and that's also at a very heightened level right now. I think everybody's doubling down on their resilience. That is just innate. And um there's also just wanting to prove to the naysayers and the doom and groom say, don't want to put them negative talk on us, nobody, you know, fireburr all the negative talk that you that's being spewed about the devastation. I mean, yeah, it's devastating, but we're we're not down and out. You know, we we we plan to come back and we plan to come back with our vengeance and show the world. So we have, I feel like everybody, every Jamaican feels like they have a lot to prove in this moment. And the ones that are inspired to move and take action, more power to them. And it at the end of the day, it's gonna all go well for the country.

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

Before the storm hit, all I thought about was our national anthem, which is a prayer. Saying the national anthem and also singing that school song. I pledge my heart forever to serve with humble pride. Between those two songs and prayer, the day after the storm, I shifted to just streaming music on Pandora. I was streaming my Freddie McGregor channel, which is a really great mix of my favorite Freddy songs, you know, the Frankie Paul's, you have some Boju, you have some Berris, a really great mix, you know, and then switching to my Berris um Pandora channel, it was stream reggae music all day. That was how I was coping. Thinking how with Lickle But with Talawa comes into play.

SPEAKER_03: 26:15

If I think about any type of thing, it's obviously the Bob Marley, don't worry about the thing. Cause every little thing is gonna be alright. And you know it's it hurts. It hurts to be so far away and have to get up every day and have to go to work and have to live life because if I don't, you know, not living life isn't going to help anything. And isn't going to help my family. And it's not an emergency here. You know, there's no there's no PTO to take here. It's just it's really hard.

SPEAKER_01: 27:08

What's comforting and keeping me grounded right now from the culture itself is number one, I would say, the national anthem. Tied very close with a very close second of the national pledge. And then uh busy signals Jamaica Love is also up there. Um when I think about how many years ago the anthem and the pledge were written, and the forethought, incredible forethought, and and how applicable it is today, the words and everything still connect and have such a deeper meaning. It's just it was it's just the number one thing that's keeping me sane. Um also keep me very emotional, too, because like once I listen to the anthem or listening to the play or saying the pledge in my head, or hearing Jamaica love, like I get goosebumps, I want to cry. You know, it's just riveting on a soul-stirring kind of level. Saying and proverb for me right now, one-one cocoa full basket. Even more, even though it means it's very close in meaning to um every micomeka muckle, but for some reason I'm just like leaning more on the one-one cocoa full basket. Um, and yeah, that's what I'm holding on to. I think, I think because it kind of, the phrase kind of, when I say it, it has movement to it and just feels like you're doing something, you know, versus the every mickle mecha muckle. You know, it feels like it's an action-oriented statement. It has, for me, it has some power there for me. Um, some inspiration, some alacrity, some get up and go, you know, type of vibe that I'm getting from the phrase. And I think that's why I'm leaning more on that one. In a crisis of this significant magnitude, being Jamaican takes on a whole different meaning. It's just like it's on a different level for me. And I feel for a lot of people. Um, like if you think we were proud before, and now we're proud. Like it's like your blood boiling, kind of proud. Anybody say nothing, touch a button, that is like how hot we are right now for Jamaica. We're on fire for Jamaica right now. And that's how I feel. And um, and and and and I think that's a good thing because if used properly, if that kind of energy is used and channeled properly, it will move the country forward. It would, it will speed up the recovery efforts, it will give us the momentum that we need to get where we're eventually trying. To get to. And I think I think that that's incredible. I think that you know, for some people, that might dwindle and the energy might get low at some point. But right now, everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 30:16

One-one corker, full basket, every Mikko Mekamokle, the Jamaica national anthem, the Jamaican Pledge, the Jamaican school song, Freddie McGregor, Barris Hammond, Bob Marley, Busy Signals, Jamaica Love. These aren't just songs. These aren't just sayings. It's not just the national anthem or the pledge or the school song. They're what the Caribbean diaspora experience model calls cultural anchors. The things that keep us rooted to who we are, especially when the physical place that grounds our identity is threatened. Food, music, language, proverbs, pride, family, these are anchors that hold us when everything else is unstable. The damage Hurricane Melissa unleashed on Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Bahamas is widely reported. Images, videos, stories, we're all hearing them. It's heartbreaking. It's disastrous. Damage roads, homes, infrastructure. But listen to what it couldn't damage. The immense sense of pride bubbling, boiling, bursting, the resilience that is in the DNA, our DNA, that determination to prove that we are not down and out. But here's what I want us to sit with. This isn't the first hurricane. It won't be the last. Climate change means Caribbean countries faced increasing vulnerability. And every time this happens, the diaspora communities go through the same cycle: the waiting, the helplessness, the mobilization, the long recovery. So the questions become what is our responsibility as the diaspora? Not just in this moment of crisis, but in the long work of rebuilding. I've covered this in two episodes prior. And if you haven't listened, I'll include them in the show notes. Hurricane Melissa, there's a relief effort that is happening, but there's also a recovery effort. And then there's an ongoing effort. How do we support not just when the cameras are watching, but six months from now, a year from now, two, three, four, five years from now? And what do we owe the next generation? What stories do we tell them about this moment? About resilience, about building back better, about better preparation, about how we address and prepare for climate change impact in the Caribbean. What do we tell the next generation about what it means to be Caribbean, even when you're far from home? I don't have all the answers, but I know this. Recovery is long, the work is collective, and the cultural anchors will keep us rooted while we do it. There are many relief efforts that are happening. Giving back isn't just a moment in time, it's a practice. To everyone who sent voice notes for this episode, thank you for your vulnerability, for letting us witness your grief and your strength. To my family in Mobay, the broader St. James and the broader Cornwall County parishes, and to, of course, Jamaica. We love you. We see you. Thank you for listening.