Peter Espeut
THERE IS no competition on, for which community was most badly hit by Hurricane Ivan, but in my humble opinion, Portland Cottage would win hands down. After church on Sunday my wife and I went to check on our friends in southern Clarendon, and all of them were roofless and had suffered much water damage. On Monday I went to check on friends in southern St. Elizabeth, and things were bad, but not so bad. The grief-laden situation in Portland Cottage is the most severe I have so far seen in my short life and I went to Poor Man's Corner in the aftermath of Hurricane Gilbert!
Damage in Rocky Point (where the sea came in and flooded that coastal town) was extensive; boats were dragged well inland as a precaution so few were lost, but water and wind damage to homes was extensive. I could not get to Miss Girlie because of the high mud, but I was able to shout to her across the gulf. In Mitchell Town well-known for its spirit of self-help (e.g. they built their own postal agency when the old one was slated to be closed) people moved from yard to yard assisting each other to replace roofs. I saw their brand new basic school built by Food for the Poor or rather I saw the concrete floor and the cute little furniture; the walls and roof were some distance away in all directions. My friend Eulalee advised me that more than 75 per cent of the Food for the Poor structures there were profoundly destroyed.
MASTERY OR DOMINION
I have never been able to understand the housing situation in Portland Cottage. The main road in the community provides access to the Portland Point lighthouse through the West Harbour mangroves Jamaica's largest. Humanity has not yet established mastery or dominion over the area. Each year when the spring tide is at its highest, seawater floods right up to the marl road and often goes right over it to reclaim its original territory before the intrusive road. Pass by in the evenings and you will see hundreds of wetland birds wading in the shallows, feeding. West Harbour is known for its healthy crocodile population, and I have wonderful photos of crocodile tracks preserved in the dried mud of the mangrove flats. Yet hundreds of homes have been built in the back of the West Harbour wetland during the neap tides when the sea is out of sight behind the mangrove tree line.
It is true that they have been built a few feet off the ground so that at highest high tide they become islands, and adults and children wade to and from their home, or hop, skip and jump on the strategically placed stepping stones (rocks really). Few of these homes can have pit toilets since the water table is so close to the surface. I assume that these structures some quite substantial homes and business places all have building approval from the Clarendon Parish Council; none were built in secret, and all are in plain view. If they were constructed illegally, then I am sure that the diligent officers from the Clarendon Parish Council would have issued stop orders, and had the buildings demolished. One of the purposes of Parish Councils is to develop building codes for safe construction, and to prevent persons building unsafe structures which will put themselves and their neighbours in jeopardy. Could it be that the Clarendon Parish Council has turned a blind eye to these hundreds of homes built in this crocodile-infested wetland which annually floods? No, this is unthinkable! I have to conclude that these homes have Parish Council approval. And so I have to question the building standards of the Clarendon Parish Council.
The vast majority of structures in Portland Cottage make environmental nonsense. What toilet facilities do they have? There is a rumour that most of these structures are built on captured lands, and therefore the Parish Council ignores them. I find these rumours hard to believe. Surely the Parish Council is interested in protecting the poor who are least in a position to help themselves!
HUMANITARIAN ORGANISATION
Over the last few years, that great humanitarian organisation Food for the Poor has constructed several hundred of their cute little homes in southern Clarendon, and many of them are built in the back of the West Harbour mangrove by Portland Cottage. Again it is unthinkable that such a reputable organisation would build so many structures on captured land without Parish Council approval, so again I have to assume the rumours are untrue and that all the paperwork is in order; and again I have to question the building standards of the Clarendon Parish Council. How could they have given permission for all this?
Just under half of the reported deaths directly due to Hurricane Ivan took place in Portland Cottage. The Caribbean Sea again reclaimed its own space the West Harbour wetlands and flooded Portland Cottage. Most of the victims drowned as they fled their now non-existent homes. My wife tells me she will never forget the images of the old men and women holding their heads in their hands last Sunday morning, as they sat on the bases the well-polished floors of those cute little houses in Portland Cottage. No roofs, no walls, no furniture, no clothes. Where to start? Young people walking about with a few sheets of zinc, or buckets of dirty water they used to wash the mud off their few remaining possessions. Some disasters are said to be acts of God, but some definitely are man-made.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.