As we seal ourselves into our home, in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, I thought I would post this story, written after our last direct hit. Read it and think of The Bahamas as we face another raging natural disaster. Although this time we are expecting a category four.
I awake to yet another day in Paradise. I can see the shocking pink of the bougainvillea that creeps across our terrace, the softly swaying palm fronds and the turquoise waters of the bay beyond. But something then reminds me this isn’t going to be paradise any more. Hurricane Frances is on her way.
At breakfast my three boys eat Coco Pops noisily. “Why are Manon and Alfie coming to stay?” Amory, who is five, wants to know. “Because” I explain carefully “it will be more fun to be with Manon and Alfie and their parents during the storm” “That’s not why” says Felix, two years older “They are coming to stay because their house is made of wood, and it is going to blow away because it is not glued to the ground” Amory’s eyes widen in horror “Is our house glued to the ground?” he whispers.
The town is virtually deserted, all the tourists have been evacuated, all the shops are closing down and all the houses are being boarded up. Most of the golf carts have been tied down, all of their roofs having been removed in case the wind catches hold and flies them like a kite, they are looking rather embarrassed topless.
Preparing as anyone who has ever lived through a hurricane before tells you to prepare, we filled all the baths full of water, changed all the batteries in the torches, bought long life milk and stocked up on spaghetti. David had secured most of the property into a hurricane tight haven. Every window, door, nook and cranny had been tightly sealed except for one side of the glass French doors in our bedroom and one in the sitting room which were both sheltered under terraced roof’s and in the most distant corner’s from where the hurricane was predicted to come. Later on during our thirty two hours of being boarded in these two slithers of light became our little life rafts.
After lunch our hurricane guests arrived. A young English family who moved to the island a year ago. They live in the house that isn’t glued down. With them came two cats and a dog. Claire, the children’s nanny, also moved up, she also came with a dog. Two visiting cats, two visiting dogs, one resident cat, one resident dog and of course the bird. Where to put them all? All cats together? All dogs together? New cats with old cat? Old dog and old cat? Bird with dogs but no cats? Hmmmmm. I asked David what he thought. He thought no cats, no dogs, no bird.
We all took one last walk through our pretty garden, past our beautifully manicured fichus hedges and down our exotic junglely beach path shaded by handsome mature palm trees. The sea was raging. It was a nasty clammy gray color. The sky was a nasty clammy gray color. Everything was sweltering. Frances was sucking up every bit of moisture from around us. We limped back to the house.
Studying the hurricane from the weather channel and plotting her course by computer it was evident that she would strike at around three am. But by late afternoon the power had started to surge and the airconditiong broke down just as the temperatures began to soar, the fridge and freezer were spluttering and the remaining water in the pipes was coughing.
The children, all five of them that is, were thrilled and terrified all at once. It is an interesting combination, especially at bedtime the night of a hurricane, hermetically sealed into a house in the tropics that no longer has light or air-conditioning. Somehow, and I am not even sure now how, we got them to sleep. Amory’s final words were “will you be with me Mummy, when the tidal wave comes?”
If you stuffed your fingers deep down into your ear drums and couldn’t hear the petrifying sound of the wind hurling itself against the shutters trying with all its might to break in then the evening really was quite pleasant, despite washing up the dishes in old bath water, watching the fridge weep all over the kitchen floor, and sweating from the scorching heat, the light from the candles burning over the house was rather romantic. Sadly though you also needed to stuff your fingers up your nose as the stable smell that was emanating from the trapped and alarmed animals was overpowering even the Gardenia candles.
I passed out fully dressed on my own bed for a few hours before the noise of the hurricane became too violent. Both the older boys were now asleep beside me. Had David moved them? Or had they crept in alone, frightened? I got up and looked at the clock it was 2:20am. Frances had defiantly arrived and she was very angry. The windows, walls and doors despite their protective plywood embrace seemed to be screaming back at her. Alarmed, I ran into the baby’s room, his nanny and he were sleeping peacefully together, even a dog was snoring beside them, adding to Frances’ rage. I ran back to the boy’s, they were still sleeping. I peeped into their own room. I now saw the reason why they were in mine, a flood of water was being forced under a door and into the room, towels had been hopelessly scattered about. I raced downstairs, David sat in flickering candle light hunched over a radio.
David had been deciphering the news over the crackling reception for the last few hours. It appeared that Frances had reduced to a category three but that she had slowed down. She was no longer traveling at 16 mph but now at 4, and was such a monstrous size that the eye alone was twenty two miles wide. This meant we would be trapped for many more hours.
By seven the eye arrived. The winds dropped and an eerie calm spread across the island. We began to slink out side, tentatively crossing the terrace. Our garden was lost. The ancient bougainvillea that had lovingly encircled our home had been brutally whipped to the ground, garden gates had been torn from their posts, and palm trees ripped from their roots. Tears began to slide down my face. I couldn’t bear to look at David who had spent so much time caring for all these friends for so many years.
The dogs were in desperate need of stretching their legs. We all walked down to the sea, our beach path was impassable, we found another way on the back road. Something very large and very heavy had been lifted up over the roof of our guest house and had smashed all over the property. The beach was a mess too, all the steps had been shredded, every cabaña was missing and the surging sea was clawing away at the dunes, but it could have been worse, all of the beach front homes seemed to be standing strong.
The sky’s darkened once again and we started back towards the house. We had seen armfuls of crabs emerging from beneath the sand on the beach also in need of stretching their legs and now hundreds of dragon flies were dancing all about, drying their wings. We passed broken branches hosting dazed and bedraggled pigeons who were so shocked and sodden that when the children ran up to touch them they never moved a feather. The pool had turned a dangerous green color. A family of frogs were swimming around on each other’s backs looking proprietorial.
A drizzle started to fall and we knew that Frances was on her way back to slap the other cheek.
Re-entering the house the smell of damp and mould was overpowering. Sand and salt blasted up from the sea covered the house. Everything was soggy, we all felt soggy. Gathered together in the sitting room trying to remain composed we once again became sealed in.
Frances in the semi day light was even more tiring than Frances at night because we had five very awake little children to entertain. Something interesting was also happening in the kitchen, all of the food in the fridge and freezer was beginning to rot. We realized this too late, the hurricane had taken her grip once more and we were unable to hurl the offending offerings out.
Lighting more candles, I saw water had stealthily seeped into the prints on the dinning room walls. Felix gave a shout from a near by room. My heart lurched and I ran to him. “Barrel, its Barrel” I looked to where Felix was pointing and I saw that my dog’s ear had blown up. I knelt down beside him and gently fingered the ear. Liquid of some kind was swelling the ear to extreme proportions. Perhaps the drop in pressure had made a capillary explode? I remember hearing that animals suffer much more in hurricanes than humans. They are much more sensitive than us. I thought of the horses on the island that had been turned loose for the storm, imagining their panic as they were left to fend for themselves.
After the fifteenth game of hide and seek I took a candle and went upstairs to my bathroom. The wind was beating against the loosening shutters, the house stank, sodden towels were piling up. I could hear the desperate children beginning to loose control downstairs and parent’s tempers rubbing raw. I could see dog and cat hair all over house, there was little to eat and nothing to cook on and I felt like crying for the second time that day. I thought of Barrel and his ear, he would need it cut open and drained, there was no vet on our island, I would have to fly him somewhere, I then thought of all the airplanes that had been sent down to Jamaica, when would any of us next be able to get off the island? I tried to flush the loo but nothing happened, of course it didn’t we had no blinking power. I picked up a tooth mug and pathetically began to fill the tank with cold dirty bath water. I glanced down and saw on the side table a book I was reading ‘An Atlas To Depression’ My God, it needed a chapter on hurricanes.