Grenadians Piece Together Life After Ivan

Mass is still held in the cathedral, as long as it isn’t raining.

School has resumed for many of Grenada’s children, although most classrooms lack real roofs and some remain shelters for the homeless.

The wheels of government are turning again, but Parliament meets in a university auditorium because its ravaged century-old building will need repairs costing millions of dollars.

More than two months after Hurricane Ivan tore through this lush Caribbean island nation, ripping off roofs and toppling walls from nearly every building, much of life is still being lived alfresco.

“They say God can see them better since the hurricane,” Jacqueline Antoine, a Grenada native and pastoral counselor with the Los Angeles-based Foursquare Missions, said of worshipers at the Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral.

Little progress had been made in restoring even a veneer of normality to Grenadians’ days until teachers, schoolmasters and officials began a push in the last two weeks to relocate those sheltering in the schools so students could return.

Resuming education after a two-month lapse is essential, educators say, to prevent idle youths from drifting into trouble, get families back in the groove of pressing uniforms and packing lunches, and get teachers, librarians and administrators back to work and a paycheck.

“Once you organize schools, a lot of other things get sorted out by necessity,” Victor Ashby, the principal of the Grenada Boys Secondary School, said outside a school covered with taut tarpaulins. “The parents have to organize food and clothes, which gives the shops a boost. The kids have their homework to occupy them. Some semblance of a daily rhythm returns to the household.”

At St. Domenic’s School a few miles north of the capital, classes resumed this month after the last woman taking shelter there was moved to a relative’s home, kindergarten teacher Frances Vernice said. “The last one, she gave us trouble. But we’re back now,” she said. “We can make up some of the time at Christmas. The holidays are shot, anyway, so let them go to school.”

Schools that have reopened are holding double sessions to take in students from schools that didn’t survive Ivan. Classes are also being held Saturdays to make up for lost time. Some facilities still sheltering the homeless are attempting dual use.

“We only go to class two hours a day. A lot of people don’t have elsewhere to go and don’t want to leave the shelter,” said Melissa Ross, a 17-year-old freshman studying law and literature at the T.A. Marryshow Community College, which resumed a part-time schedule this month. “There’s no room, so a lot of courses have been canceled.”

She and classmate Carlene Perryman said they should be preparing for examinations in December, but with neither electricity at home nor Internet access at the college, they feared that they were at risk of losing their entire first semester.

The priority being given to education risks doubly displacing the poorest of the poor, and the race is on to put up temporary housing fast enough to take in those whose wooden shanties were carried off by Ivan’s 150-mph winds, leaving them without even debris to piece back together. Volunteers from organizations such as Operation Mobilization work from dawn to dusk to erect wood frames and sheath them in waterproof tarpaulins.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go. My house done blowed down, and I don’t got nothing to build with,” said Lily Rosslyn, a 24-year-old single mother whose extended family occupies the former lunchroom of Grand Anse Roman Catholic School.

Grenadians such as Rosslyn lost more than their homes. Their livelihoods blew away with the roofs of hotels, corrugated metal walls of factories, and nutmeg and banana trees of ravaged plantations.

Sunken yachts and freighters stud the once-scenic harbor and pose a hazard to seaworthy crafts.

Most homes remain without electricity and phone service as snarls of downed lines still dangle across the roadways. Ground-floor shops in St. George’s two-story strip malls have begun reopening, despite the roofless, uninhabitable upper floors.

Government employees go to work each day, although many have had to crowd into buildings that weathered the hurricane better than the main glass-and-steel complex still in need of extensive repairs.

The devastating wallop that Ivan dealt Grenada caught islanders off guard; the last serious tropical blast hit the island 49 years ago. Grenada lies hundreds of miles south of the more frequently traveled Caribbean storm corridor east and northeast of Cuba.

Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, whose official residence stands roofless atop Mt. Royal, last week praised neighboring nations that have sent rebuilding teams, security forces and offers to take in displaced students.

Venezuelan soldiers have repaired 23 schools, and Cuban electricians inch along the roads, stripping damaged utility lines from their tethers and stringing up new ones. Last month, Trinidad and Tobago leaders invited Grenadian students to live and study at their schools until facilities could be restored.

Although the education sector is beginning to recover, other facets of daily life aren’t making swift progress.

Antoine, the pastoral counselor, fears that a type of delayed stress syndrome could grip the country as time and international attention move on.

“The desire to cope is stalemating the real depression that could come in December or January or whenever we will really be digging into the emotional state of the country,” said the volunteer, who has been training community leaders in grief counseling.

Most troubling for islanders who had been expecting a record year in tourist income has been the near wipeout of hotels and the thousands of jobs they sustained.

Along the Grand Anse waterfront just south of the capital sprawls a scene of structural carnage. Blown-off roofs, collapsed walls, mangled window frames and flattened cabanas make clear that it will be years and millions of dollars before the hospitality industry recovers.

Tracy Hagley, formerly a full-time reception worker, was called back to the Flamboyant Hotel over the weekend but for only five days a month until at least late December, when half of the rooms are set to reopen. The single mother is the sole breadwinner in her three-member household, now living in a tool shed. “At least we have a roof over our heads,” she said with mustered optimism.

At the Grenada Grand Beach Hotel, one of the few able to take in even a handful of guests, the red-tile roof survived on only two of half a dozen buildings. In the dining room, a 6-foot-square swath of ceiling is missing and the mangled rattan blades of an overhead fan conjure up the image of a swatted insect.

At the nearly empty resort and in demolished areas nearby, the most visible signs of life are lizards skittering in the sand and clouds of mosquitoes rising from pools of standing water.

Still, the achingly slow recovery progresses daily. Grand View Inn owner Len Griffith expects to have half of his 69-room hotel open by month’s end.

Charter fisherman Dexter Mitchell, gesturing to the turquoise waters and golden beaches, says he is ready to take out paying customers as soon as tourists return.

“The leaves are starting to come back on the trees, and there’s grass growing again,” airport employee Ashford Hall said. “It gives us hope. Things are getting better. It was so depressing when everything around us was bare and brown.”