Tower Of Babel

I was just speaking to one of my favourite cousins, Miss P, and we were having a few laughs as usual. She says that the fact that this storm Lili, is female, means that it should not be too bad based on history. Maybe she is right.

Indeed, hurricane Charlie which was way before my time, (I do not quite remember the year), was a bad one. Then there was hurricane Allen In 1980. I was actually not here during that one. I was on a holiday in New Jersey with my sister Rufie and Mummy. Daddy was gone on a training course in England. I remember, we thought we would never be able to come back home. The U.S. news had a huge arrow pointing directly at the island of Jamaica on the map. The damn arrow was red and far bigger than the island, indicating that we were in for a direct hit. Anyhow, we did make it home eventually, and the damage that was done was not that bad.

The hurricane that stands out most in my memory was Gilbert! That was one serious beast! Gilbert hit us on September 12th, 1988. I remeber it distinctly as it was two days after my birthday. I was given a large Black Forest cake from Simply Delicious for my birthday. Only about one half of it was eaten, so the remainder was in the fridge. Well, when the damn hurricane came, we had to eat it quickly as it would have spoiled because of the power cuts. That was one scary hurricane, I tell you. I was frightened shitless! As they made jokes about it after it had passed, T shirts were printed that said, “Gilbert bad nuh rass!” And, you better believe that one.

I remember, the ‘eye’ or centre of the hurricane passed directly over Kingston. Now, the eye is actually very calm. So after having a night and morning of breeze and rain, we had a period of calm that lasted maybe about 30 minutes as the eye passed over. People were outside viewing the damage to their properties, others were heard hammering as they tried to batten down more. I am not a particularly adventurous type, as we say here in Jamaica, “Coward man keep sound bone”. (Harm does not come to those of us who are coward.) So, I stayed inside as I knew that worse would be coming after the eye passed over us.

Well, when it did pass, the wind started to blow again. And what a hell of a blow it was (and I am not referring to that type of pleasant BLOW at all.) The wind started from the opposite direction and I distinctly remember crouching down in the passage of our home and thinking, we may well die! It sounded like a jet engine. I tell no lies. Luckily for us, there was only minor damage to our home. NOTHING compared to the loss that many others suffered. My neighbours, had a fully intact patio roof blown from some house far away, right onto their driveway. The owners of this patio roof came to claim it a few days later. I really have no pleasant memories of Gilbert, it was indeed harsh.

Andrew devastated South Florida some ten years ago. But that was a ‘foreign’ hurricane, but still a male nevertheless. I guess sometimes the women are correct, we men really know how to mash things up!! This one headed our way is called Lili. Let us hope she will be very feminine, and if she blows at all, lets hope it the pleasant kind of ‘blow’ I aluded to earlier. Keep safe and dry all.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 27th, 2002 at 9:49 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.