Django and Sharma knew the storm was coming. The warnings were on the radio, on the telly and all over social media. First it was a tropical storm, then a hurricane and then the categories escalated from 1 to 4 and it was tracking right on target to their little windward island. No escaping it at that point. Everybody who had the means and the foresight had already left for Trinidad or Barbados.

            ‘What should we do, where do we go? The church or your uncle’s house? He has a concrete basement and it will be safe,’ Django said.

            ‘The church will be safe because it’s the house of God,’ Sharma insisted. Suddenly her faltering belief in the almighty was restored in the face of the fury and anger of the oncoming storm.

            ‘It has only a tin roof but your uncle Polo’s house is concrete and has a utility basement. Let’s go there.  It will be safe. There will also be fewer people there and he did invite us,’ Django insisted. He was the older one and being the man, he pulled rank and made the practical choice for them. They gathered up some personal stuff like their phones and some clothes, a machete and whatever dry foods they had. Some rice and pasta, cans of tomatoes, sardines and a couple of papayas. A last look around their small wooden house, with the hammock out front between two palm trees. The ocean was stirred up with whitecaps and had taken on a greyish hue. The air was hot and still, humid and quiet. The palm leaves waved leisurely in the slight wind that seemed to come from all directions. An ominous and eerie feeling hung in the air with high, fast-moving cirrus clouds the colour of wheat. 

            Dolores and Jami were already sheltering at Polo’s house. Both of them were from the main island but had been living here for a few years now. They were a musical duo, him on guitar and her on saxophone. Dolores also had a sweet, clean voice. They made a meagre living playing some local gigs in the winter when the tourists and yachties crowded the beach bars and the rest of the time they took whatever local jobs they could snag. Jami even tried his hand at fishing but had to give it up because he was prone to sea sickness. ‘I can’t fish when I’m constantly throwing up,’ he said to Dolores who had taken on some cleaning work for a couple of the rich white folks on Resurrection Hill. 

They lived in a wooden house near the small airport which was basically a big one room shack with a kitchen in one corner and a table with four chairs in the adjacent one. A couple of old assorted chairs with an antique steamer trunk for a coffee table functioned as the living room. A folding partition separated their bed from the rest of the house. There was an outhouse at the back and a shipping container full of instruments they had collected over the years. Acoustic guitars and hand drums, typical of the island; a couple of old electric pianos, a Roland and a Yamaha, some percussion instruments and even a simple drum kit a rock band had left behind. They were hoping to turn their small house into a music school for the kids on the island. Something they had planned to do for a long time. The stashed whatever valuables they had into the container, their PA and amps, their laptop and tablet, a couple of carved African masks, Dolores’ party dress and some pots and dishes they had bought over the years, hoping they would be safe. 

            Uncle Polo’s house had been in his family for eons. It was a sturdy, two story brick and concrete structure. The ground floor was used for utilities, workshop and storage but had four solid concrete walls. The top floor contained the kitchen, living room, bathroom and two bedrooms. He lived there with his new wife, Connie, his third or fourth one, nobody was sure, cradling a newborn. Polo was old, at least sixty and she was young but he had a house, drove a taxi and had several other sons and daughters spread from Brooklin to Trinidad. He was a jovial fellow, always nodding and laughing but hard to understand, even for the locals. He was missing part of his tongue, a result of a boating accident when he was a kid. As the story goes. 

            The six of them made themselves comfortable, sitting on mattresses and pillows hastily gathered from the upstairs bedroom and strewn about the large, open ground floor room. Connie was cradling the baby. Cans of paint and various solvents, garden implements and tools were shoved under the stairs so the rest of the room could be turned into a temporary shelter. There were no windows and just a couple of bare light bulbs which were still working. They had a few candles because everybody expected the power to fail. They kept the wooden door to the outside open, listening to the approaching storm but it was still eerily quiet. What they call the quiet before the storm, Jami thought. They had the radio on which was still broadcasting, urging people to find shelter in solid, concrete buildings. ‘God will not protect you in your wooden house,’ one broadcaster said and had hit a nerve, almost bordering on blasphemy. In these islands, reliance on God and his omnipresent benevolence was a big virtual shoulder that many islanders leaned on but the message by that broadcaster was clear ‘Get out, stay with your neighbour or members of your family.’ 

            Suddenly an apparition materialized in the doorway but it was only Bernadette, the old market girl who could usually be seen behind her plywood table by the bus stop, selling a few papayas and some vegetables, eggs if she could get them. Polo waved her in. She carried a blue IKEA bag which was filled with her stuff. God knows where she found that bag. Probably left behind by one of the tourists. She reached into the bag and with a toothless cackle pulled out nothing less than a bottle of rum. ‘Treasure,’ cried Django and Polo shook his dreadlocks in disapproval. Being a Rastafarian, he didn’t drink the devil’s juice but instead indulged in Jah’s herb. He always carried a ready supply in a leather pouch which hung from a beaded string and dangled on his chest.

            Everybody settled in waiting for Beryl. She was not an aunty or a friend, she was the most menacing and lethal storm about to directly smash into this small windward island in the Grenadines ever since recording began back in 1851. Night was falling and still no sign of Beryl, just some rain and gusts of wind. The small group passed a restless night and Django even thought that the storm had bypassed them. ‘I think Beryl took a turn and missed us,’ he said. It was 9am in the morning and he went outside to check on the weather. The sky was full of swirling clouds, the air was hot and seemed to vibrate. The radio warned people to stay inside because Beryl was definitely on track for the island. And then it suddenly hit with a fury and vengeance that made people drop to their knees, praying for forgiveness and redemption. 

Beryl made landfall shortly after 11am on July 1^st with winds up to 240km an hour, shredding and ripping apart everything in its malevolent, destructive path. Like a vacuum the storm sucked up trees and structures and even cars and tossed them about like a giant toddler with a bad temper throwing his toys around. 

            Uncle Polo had closed and fastened the door and all they could hear was the infernal noise of the hurricane. It sounded like an aeroplane about to take off and a freight-train ripping through the island. Whistling and thumping from flying debris while the howling winds and driving rain smashed sheets of tin and plywood against the walls. The noise was overwhelming and it kept on for an eternity which in reality was about an hour. Beryl also dumped a sky full of saltwater on the island, drenching and flooding everything. By one o’clock the noise had abated and Polo cautiously opened the door. What he saw outside looked like a bombed-out war zone. Just the day before the palms swayed gently in the breeze, today only the naked trunks remained. All the wooden buildings in their neighbourhood had vanished, only the concrete slabs and a couple of bathroom walls survived. Debris was everywhere, from broken and smashed wood to sheets of metal roofing, bathroom fixtures and even kitchen implements and pieces of furniture decorated the barren landscape. The mangroves nearby were gone and he could see a dozen or more sailboats piled up on the beach, mangled together like some giant had tossed them there in a fit of fury. Even the large car ferry sat on the beach, having been tossed there by the 6 feet high storm surge. There was no power, no radio, no connectivity, no infrastructure. The 21^stcentury had instantly vanished. Luckily, they still had a cistern full of water but now it was probably contaminated with the saltwater. They were alone in the world with only each other to hold onto.

            The island had gone from paradise to hell in the time it took to play a game of dominos or cook a simple meal. Django and Jami staggered outside, not knowing where to go first or if to go anywhere at all. The whole world was destroyed and here and there, people emerged furtively from their shelters, shocked to the core.  Some fell to their knees in prayer, others were looking forlorn around at the destruction of their world, not knowing what to do or say. 

            ‘We’re alive, Dolores said behind the two men, praise the Lord for that.’

            ‘Praise for what?’ Jami said, not understanding what kind of God would wreck such destruction and devastation on a people that had not much to begin with and now had nothing; less than nothing. No water, no food, no shelter, no electricity, no future. 

            They needed help of every kind and did not know where to start. The rest of the world watched in horror and awe at the emerging videos and listened to accounts of some of the residents, thanks to some crazy storm watchers who had filmed and recorded not only the actual raging storm itself but then had walked through the debris strewn streets with their cameras. Some outside help arrived within a day in the form of bottled water and staple foods. 

While Beryl destroyed the island, it could not destroy the spirit of the people who were glad to have survived and with fortitude and faith and even humour they banded together and started to clean up the streets and cover their roofless houses with tarps. In time the island will recover and most of the houses will be rebuilt and repaired.

The container with Jami and Dolores’ instruments had survived and now was as good a time as any to start their music school for children. With the help of the parents who were happy for the distraction the instruments provided their traumatized kids, they were able to move into a room at the grade-school that had miraculously survived Beryl. 

Django and Sharma joined the volunteer brigade cleaning up the beaches and sorting the metal from the wood. They were supported by a charity from the US.

Bernadette worked in the temporary soup kitchen set up by the government and World Kitchens to cook meals for the many homeless and especially the elderly.

Once the roads were cleared, Unclo Polo offered himself and his taxi to shuttle people, who had no more means of transport, wherever they needed to go. And the islands started to green up within a week and the people did the best they could with whatever help they could get and started to clean up and rebuild their maligned paradise and their bruised lives.