Five Months After – hurricane Maria notes part 5

Many things have changed since the hurricane, both on the island of Dominica and in our lives.

This is the same tree shown in part one of our hurricane notes  – remember it? if not – compare. https://ozonezonebooks.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/in-the-eye-of-cyclone-our-encounter-with-hurricane-maria/ it was bare – now starts to shoot new leaves but is almost completely covered in vines

 

Pumpkin grows now everywhere! Even on this shattered by hurricane van.

Nature tries to bounce back, but visibly things got a bit out of natural balance. We had a wave of mosquito infestation – which thankfully seems to be ending. Then we had a plague of butterflies – so many of them – white, brown, orange. Looks lovely but their eggs hatching means lots of fragile flora struggling to get back is being eaten on the spot. That should stabilize too. As for plants – bushes and smaller plants are bouncing back nicely, but many bigger and older trees are still in shock, with broken limbs and leafless. The clear winner of this post-hurricane period are vines. They spread everywhere, strangling smaller trees. When you look around you see the rich greenery and thing all is back to normal. But most green you see are bindweed- “morning glory” plants, various wild peas and wild cucumbers – and also – in some unimaginable way – pumpkins! They took over, growing everywhere, in most unlikely places. Practically everyone has now several healthy pumpkins around the house. At least this – with shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables – is welcome bonus.

I bet when bigger trees restore their branches and put more leaves, the resulting shade will give many vines checkmate, but it may still be some time away. Parrots – homeless and hungry – migrated from devastated old forest to more populated areas. They add lots of chatter to the sounds of nature, but surely they would be more happy back in primary forest. One day soon, perhaps.

A parrot near our home

Many things change around us, a visible progress is being made. Roads get cleaned, debris removed, Roseau city getting a face lift here and there. Plenty still to be done – an overwhelming task. Our favourite Fort Young Hotel perhaps leads the progress, already partially open for guests while working on impressive upgrades. This is the resilience in making – taking advantage of destruction not to just rebuild, but to make things better. Much better. It is uplifting to watch these fast-paced works. We just finished a sent of new promotional photos for them, proud to be part of this rebuilding effort. Feels good to see our photos in Washington Post and in other media.

Fort Young Hotel – looks better than ever. It is nice to see our photos help promote this place and Dominica.

So things are changing for us. We’ve got used to lack of electricity and using our Coleman gasoline lamp in evenings. It is actually quite nice, like old times. A small generator sent to us by our old, reliable friend Les takes care of charging batteries, laptop, or running our bread mixer – talk about power lines being fixed in our area sounds almost unreal. Hard to imagine having power constantly on – an excess luxury!

We started (in part thanks to help received from many of you!) to rebuild our home, and we know it will be a challenging task – building materials are hard to get, the port – still shattered after hurricane seems not capable to process promptly all incoming shipments – resulting in weeks if not months long – delays in supply stream. But life goes on. We published more articles including another one for MACO magazine – this time about progress of cleanup works in Dominica and new opportunities created by hurricane, and we now work on another story.

Barbados Atlantic shore – from the latest shooting trip.

Another photography job for Barbados tourism allowed us a glimpse at the “normal” world. What a weird place – all roofs are intact, trees green and happy, no mess to clean-up. We almost forgot how it can be.

Another scene from Barbados

We keep documenting all changes, photographing and filming with drone the progress around us. As more creative work is on the horizon we will keep you posted with new developments soon. Stay tuned!

Derek and Margaret

PS. Thank you to all friends who helped us financially in this critical time. If you still want to add your brick to rebuilding our lives, here is our paypal link  www.paypal.me/DerekGalon
Thank you!

African Tulip tree starts to bloom, bringing colour to forests first time after hurricane

Please respect our copyright. if you want to re-use photos, ask for authorization.

This part of forest washed by flood waters will take longer to recover. Near hot sulphur springs in Soufrier.

Still Stranded – Hurricane Maria notes – part 3

Dutch Marines coming

In roofless kitchen every cupboard, every mug and plate is covered with dirt and shredded leaves. I am surprised to find that our tightly closed spice jars are half-full of water pumped in under enormous pressure.

It is hard to believe two weeks already passed since the hurricane Maria. We are still spending lots of time sorting our things drenched in muddy water. It takes hours to pull them out, dry them in the sun, clothing spread on branches of our broken mango tree. In the roofless kitchen every cupboard, every mug and plate is covered with dirt and shredded leaves. I am surprised to find that our tightly closed spice jars are half-full of water pumped in under enormous pressure. Nothing stayed dry.

Soaked, messed boxes of stuff ready for our moving – now ready for garbage bin.

destroyed chapel at Retreat House

I am opening soaked boxes only recently packed to move to our new home – now totally destroyed by hurricane. In a dry weather we burn wet packaging, discoloured moldy clothes, destroyed furniture. Our neighbours, the Retreat House, kindly offered us a dry room to store the few things we managed to salvage. We are at the retreat house unloading boxes when we hear loud engines of approaching helicopter – a large Dutch military craft. Two uniformed figures descend on a steel line. They came from St Maarten hit by hurricane Irma and can compare. Dominica was hit much stronger, they say. They are looking for a Dutch couple living nearby to check if they are OK. They left only to come back soon with food for all of us – cans of beans, juice and rice. We laugh saying it will make the most expensive dinner in our lives.

How this tiny stream could turn to the nasty river? All these rocks were brought by water, damaging all homes around…

We are tired of experiencing a waterfall in our living room with every rain, so we decide to call village rastas for help making a temporary roof cover. We hear there is one store in town selling metal galvanized sheets for roofing. We can’t possible go there – our road is still blocked. We decide to find all our old pieces of galvanage and patch them together.

Typical scene of destruction

Finding them is not easy – some are blown away as far as the bottom of the ravine. Dragging them through bushes is a daunting task. We gather wooden rafters and metal sheets scattered around the house and go searching. I found a good sheet of galvanage, but it is stuck on a tree. We are out of luck for this one. After two days of hard work the job is done. To celebrate it, we spend the first night since the hurricane in our own bed. What a luxury, comparing to three weeks spent in our car!

Margaret walks on main street of Soufriere…

Step by step with much effort, our lives slowly improve. We made our pizza oven work again and bake our European bread. We can’t deliver it yet to shops, but we simply share it with neighbours and people in our village. An old friend of ours shipped a new generator as a gift – this will surely make big difference. Another friend invited us to see page www.gofundme.com and do search for Derek Galon. She organized a donation fund to help us, with friends and total strangers chipping in! Some other friends sent us their individual donations. Each such thing feels like a miracle. Gestures like that not only help rebuild our lives, but also show us much needed support. We are full of gratitude and appreciation. And we feel even more motivated not to fail.

While path to Emerald Pool is now cleared, the waterfall looks like set in middle of forest clear-cut

Soon we will be able to drive again – a hired excavator is clearing the road. We are invited to a bbq chicken party at village’s roofless bar. Everybody share their hurricane stories. There is a strong sense of togetherness which makes it easier to face days ahead.

 

 Please subscribe to see more photos and read next part soon.
Thank you!
Margaret Gajek
www.ozonezonebooks.com
Derek Galon
www.ArtPhotographyServices.com

If you wish to help us in this difficult situation, you can do so by using link
www.paypal.me/DerekGalon
Thank you.

Please respect copyright of this story and photos. Contact us if you need to reuse this material.

Tags:  #hurricanemaria  #hurricane #maria #tropicalstorms #dominicastrong #dominica

 

Center of Roseau

what remained of our bedroom and new home. most belongings were later stolen