Photo: Kirk Siegler/NPR. Retrieved from wutc.org
Retrieved from wutc.org
Every year the start of the Atlantic hurricane season is another reminder for Margarite August that she still doesn’t have a roof.
“Every year, every year, it’s fearful,” she says.
The 70-year-old retired teacher’s home on the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica was mostly wiped out by Hurricane Maria six years ago. On a recent morning she stood on her veranda perched high on a mountainside overlooking the island’s Atlantic coast.
The view was stunning, if a bit ominous.
“Nothing good is coming my way and we have been like this since Maria,” August says.
August is not alone. Since Maria, the government of Dominica (pronounced: daw-muh-KNEE-kuh) has built 7,000 new homes — about a quarter of its housing stock – with materials to withstand another Category 5 hurricane. They’ve also relocated two communities. But an untold number of the island’s 70,000 or so residents are like August, rebuilding their homes in any way or makeshift means they can afford.
August, along with her 75-year-old husband who suffered a stroke, is living for now in a converted hillside bar that her family used to run as a side business before the storm.
“I always pray that another one as hard as Maria does not come again,” she says.
