Jamaica: Shaken, not broken

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1:07The strongest hurricane to hit the island in modern history. Hurricane Melissa slamming Jamaica. She is no joke. This one hits a category five. In the town, all the churches were damaged. You know, we are scattered. You're walking, but you're not sure if you are walking. You're talking, but you're not conscious of what you're saying because you're so horrified. And at this certain time, we're thinking about where are we going to get together again to worship and pray that your faith will bring you through this. From one-room chapels in sugar belt villages to churches that survived slavery and emancipation, Hurricane Melissa levelled Jamaica's religious legacy in hours.

1:50Nick Davis:It has to become your mantra, even if you doubt it sometimes and you're like, God, what did you do? Why are you doing this? Somehow you still find that little seed and say, you don't have to understand all of this. You just have to deal with what you have been dealt with. I'm Nick Davis and this is the documentary on BBC World Service. I was one of the first to report on the unfolding disaster. For heart and soul, we're back at Ground Zero, where Hurricane Melissa made landfall on Jamaica's southwest coast.

2:27So, we're just making our way into Black River. So much of this area is still very much a disaster zone. Oh, wow. It's the first time I've seen the parish church since the storm, and, I mean, this was iconic, and now the only thing which remains is the steeple from what we can see. People digging. The whole back section of the church has just been blown inwards. We're here to meet Alison Morris, organist and passionate parishioner at what's left of St John's and Wiccan Church.

3:16Alison's a music teacher.

3:18Nick Davis:I'm going to play something for you now. This organ has been here. And before the storm, she ran heritage tours around her hometown, where she played the 100-year-old church pipe organ that was inside St John's.

3:33Today, the sun shines as Alison leads a team of volunteers who sift ruins and neatly stack bricks to one side.

3:42Nick Davis:We had certain artifacts which we were definitely looking for and it was great when we found some of them and we found Jesus already and we found most of Mary. So we're missing John's, we have his right shoulder and leg, but we need the rest of him.

4:02Nick Davis:Having found most of them now, our focus is on getting whole bricks out, part bricks too, but whole bricks that we plan to use in whatever springs up from here. It will be including bricks from the old church. A lot of this brick ended up in Jamaica coming as ballast in ships that were coming for like sugar and other produce. When the sun would come up, there would be rays of sun just coming down and hitting just in front of the sanctuary. And me, I always felt like it was just the light of God shining through at that moment. Beautiful, beautiful. People would sometimes wander in on a Sunday just to sit and look and be amazed.

4:48Nick Davis:Different groups would come and worship with us just for the majesty of the church. It's so many things, you know, it's just the workmanship, it's the architecture. and when you combine that with your faith and all the symbols that are inside it, it was really an experience to be inside this church. The disaster hit the building at St John's the hardest and tested the strength of the faithful and it's a story that's repeated across countless congregations whose churches and chapels were also destroyed by the storm.

5:26We're sort of looking at what's remaining. I think it almost looks like a bombshell.

5:31Nick Davis:It does. It's shocking. I mean, it's been four months now and I still get a jolt when I come because there is so much brick that has fallen and basically, well, the whole roof has gone. How do you make sense of it when the prayers go up and there's still so much to do? When you pray, sometimes you'll get an answer. It won't be the answer that you like. sometimes you'll get an answer and the answer is not in your time and sometimes you really pray just to try and make that connection yourself I can't say that my faith is the strongest faith in the whole world and that I don't have a lot of doubts because I mean faith is not something that is logical and I tend to be a very logical person so it's hard for me to have faith and I don't always have it in the measure that other people do or maybe that I should.

6:29Nick Davis:You know the phrase, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me? To me, that is the core of what resilience is. People say, you're so resilient in all the while that we are feeling so vulnerable and terrible. But you do what you have to do in the circumstance that you have been dealt with because you have to do. And so you just do. So right now my task is picking up the little bricks, putting them in the wheelbarrow, depositing them somewhere else. That's Alison's daughter, Courtney. You feel the emotions of it, but then there's times where it's like you just have to do the task. Because everywhere was damaged, but when you see something that was so huge just diminished like this, I realized that you can really plan your whole life and you can have all the things planned and something can just happen in a day and get rid of all of it.

7:25We can lose everything, but we still have people. We still have our families. We still have our friends. But if you have community, then you'll be okay.

7:37Nick Davis:When we came out walking the day after the hurricane and I saw the place, I realized that there might be things in here that people would want to take as souvenirs that were precious to us. And at that point, we got out organ pipes, and we got out a couple of the steel pans, and I looked at the pan, and it was rusty. It was banged up. It was my daughter who came down with me that day, and we found a spot. She was the videographer, and I played. And when I started playing, and it played a tune, I just started to cry right there. In the video, Alison plays the battered and salvaged steel drum whilst Courtney films her in front of the tumble-down church walls.

8:21It's a powerful testimony.

8:24Nick Davis:Having that pan being able to play despite all, it captured so much of how I think a lot of us were feeling. We were just like, how will we ever get over this?

8:38Nick Davis:For me, the loss of some of these buildings is almost like somebody has died. A lot of these places have got very traumatic histories, but they're important to keep. You know, people sometimes ask me, you know, how can you be an Anglican given that past? But I say, you know, if you are a faith-based person, you believe in the transformative power of Christ. I'm always in favour of knowledge. I mean, Jamaica was a British colony for 300 years, from 1655 until 1962, when we got our independence. the Anglican church used to be the state church. Originally this was not the church of the black man or the small man or the disenfranchised man.

9:19Nick Davis:So I think it's very important to keep markers of what was before. And then of course I have the family history here. So my family has been here forever. So I grew up here, I was baptized here, I was married here, I was confirmed here, I played the organ here. So I'm here, it's just part of me. The church is a community and the people are part of the church. Apart from two people who are here today, everybody else here is a parishioner. My two children are here. Dee is a parishioner. Fiona is inside digging up. Guy who just walked past Junar. He's one of the salvage team. Junar! Junar stands up to take a break from scavenging.

9:59He's tall and slim and in his late 50s and wears a wide-brimmed hat to shield the midday sun. I was confirmed here, and it has been a part of my life ever since growing up. Our faith has really impacted. It started off acceptance of Christ. You cannot lean on your own understanding, but lean on His understanding, and that's what gives you the strength. That's where you get the strength. That's where you get the power. That's where you get the vision. So given that, we try to get together and to see how much we can salvage salvage and put back as quickly as possible.

10:36Nick Davis:The value of our town will be diminished and I have no qualms about saying that it will be diminished if we take down everything historical that's there just because some of it has been damaged. The hurricane has already totally erased at least five of our iconic buildings and so if we have a few that are still left, I think they are worth the effort. let us make the effort. If it turns out that for some reason something can be saved, then we said, we tried. We didn't just give up. We wouldn't give up on our own house. You find the cross!

11:17I need help now. Oh, my God! Sorry. This is such an important moment. We need help inside. We find the cross. Fiona found the cross. All of the weeks of trying to recover items, finding the cross is the moment.

11:34Nick Davis:Oh, my God, I can't believe this. Well, I can't believe it, but... If you could see Alison's face, everybody, like, there is such a smile, it's just beaming. Alley, alley, alley. There it is. Isn't that the cross, my girl? Oh, my God. Isn't that the cross? The cross is an eight-foot-tall processional artefact cast in solid brass, it's been carried through the generations by successive priests, and now it's buried beneath four feet of rubble. She's good at digging, you know, and when she decides, she's going to find something that's under somewhere. No, just to move some of this that keep dropping back down on it.

12:13Nick Davis:All right. You're listening to the documentary on the BBC World Service.

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12:54I'm Nick Davis and for Heart and Soul we're in Jamaica as faith communities continue to rebuild after Hurricane Melissa.

13:04We leave Alison and the community salvage crew behind as together they tease the last of St John's sacred artefacts from beneath the debris and follow the course of the Black River along flood ravaged roads to Lachovia and a rendezvous with Father Tony. Morning. His Lachovia parish covers four rural ministries, St Thomas, Holy Trinity, St Jude's and St Margaret's. Kimberly, oh. And it's a busy patch. Hello, Kimberly. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. All right, take care now. Good. OK. Yeah. Small as we are, we have about 14 different churches in Lachovia. For me, the church's responsibility, and I put it as a responsibility and a duty, is also to the school and the wider community.

13:57In the aftermath of Melissa, his priority was to get essential workers back on their feet. It didn't matter to Father Tony whether or not they came to his churches or not, if they were believers or non-believers. It's difficult. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking because really and truly to build back this church is going to take a lot of money. A lot of money. So we're going to start by going down to La Covea Primary and Infant School. I want to introduce you to two staff members who we helped to build a one-room space for them. The road is lined with remains of people's homes. House after house has been wiped clean away, leaving nothing but a slab of concrete foundation.

14:45So you see that blue and yellow wall there? Yes. We're going to turn into the entrance, which is coming up on the left. And from this side, it doesn't look as if there's any damage to the church because the east wall stood up fine. But the rest of the church is rubble. And some of the children say to me, and they have said to me, Father Tony, I'm not going to get to graduate because he's associating leaving primary school and going to high school with having a big function in the church. And some children, they come up to me and say, when are we going to build back the church? When are we going to build back the church?

15:24And I say, well, we may not be able to build it back. We might have to do something else. And then some of them will say, no, we want it back the same way it was. We want it back the same way it was. and I've heard that from children and from adults who are not members of the church and they have their houses to rebuild as well and their furniture to try and purchase over again. A lot of stress. There's one young man that comes to mind immediately. He lives in a family yard or was living in a family yard but he had built a little one-room place and he had furnished it. He lost everything. He lost fridge, stove, the building, everything.

16:08And so he just had to start over from scratch. And that's the case for many, many, many, many people.

16:22When I saw you, I said, boy, but I have to introduce you to Cherie. She laughs. She knows why she's laughing. So my name is Cherie McLeod. So Cherie is our clerk here at the school. but she was also our, not our, but the government shelter manager and the government, you know, appoints different schools to be shelters in these situations. The first thing I saw was my church and, you know, I was so disheartened I was broken. I glanced at it and then I could not look at it for much longer. It's one of the oldest churches, if not the oldest church in this community. Almost everybody who would have been born and raised in this community would have had some connection with the church.

17:06Either they would have been christened there or baptized as a baby, they would have come there as a child, maybe as an adult they would have gone elsewhere, but some form of connection, if not themselves, some form of family members would have had some connection in the church. And even for us at school, that's where we use for every function at school. So without it, we are suffering. You know when you have times of trouble, because clearly that's your church, did you pray? Did you reach out to God? Yes, we were praying, and I remember one of the times when I started hearing our roof like it was going, and my daughter said to me, come on, Mummy, it's time to pray.

17:51And, you know, all three of us, my husband and my daughter, and we got there right in the living room. And I've never heard my daughter pray like that before. We prayed and prayed and prayed. We had to, you know. That was our only hope, our only source of hope, you know, reaching out because based on how things were happening, what we were hearing and seeing on the outside, oh God, we had to be praying. Tears welled in my eyes immediately. But then I said, no, I need to be strong. Though persons would have said it's just maybe stone and, you know, bored, whatever. It's more than that to us. Hello, how are you?

18:29Hi. How are you? So many hugs, Father. As we head to the kitchen, Father Tony's met with high fives from the children and an enormous hug from Monique, the janitor. Thanks to him today, I'm living in my own home, feeling very much more comfortable and more safe. If it wasn't for the help of the church, how do you think you would have been able to get back? I don't know. I feel more protected. I feel like I wasn't a burden to anyone anymore, getting back in my own space. Even though she isn't a churchgoer, Father Tony built Monique a new one-roomed house because her need was greatest and because schools need great janitors.

19:11So I said, OK, let us put it out to all the staff. who needs help with their homes and who wants help with their homes. And it was basically Monique and Jackie who hopefully we'll find now. Oh, yes. Thank you. It was terrible, terrible. I have my house, my feet blow off, my furniture wet up, everything destroyed. It was terrible. The church, Father Tony, the community is really... So how did they help you then? Some came over and they helped me, like packing away some of the stuff that got wet up. Some helped me to try to rebuild back the place, also with Father Tony. So this is... It don't finish us yet.

20:02We have more things. There's more work which needs to be done. Yes. I would say thank God for sparing our life that we can help each other to build back ourselves. Yes. So your faith hasn't been shaken at all? No, no, no, because it's an experience for everyone. It's an experience for everyone. So we experience it and then from there we can move on. Has church become more important for people? Everybody started praying. I've never seen persons so supportive of each other until after Hurricane Melissa. After the hurricane and I went outside, everybody you know um losing everything we one would believe that everybody would be all distraught and you know crying on all of that but they were so happy knowing that they you know were alive they demonstrated so much love to each other so um i think there is something good that came out of Melissa because I've never seen so many persons supporting each other before.

21:10So Father, I remember seeing pictures of this church. I remember driving past this church. It's almost unrecognisable. This lawn was like a bomb disaster. They had to be, you see those long planks that were up on the roof? Some of them were like spears down in the And the guys had to literally break them and then dig them out. You know, that's what it was like. So I was here one night with them. And this youngster, a young guy, is walking by. He sees me. I'm outside. And he says to me, I don't know him any at all, but he's obviously part of the community. He says to me, look how much history gone.

21:56and he's one of these young men who you don't expect to hear that kind of thing from you can't judge a book by his cover but looking at him you wouldn't expect him to say something but that's what he said look how much history gone all right so this little porch has a concrete ceiling this is where we had our church committee meeting and as you can hear we're just going to shelter inside for a moment because the rain is coming down. You can probably hear the thunder in the background, but this is part of the problem.