Does the Calm Return After the Storm?

Rosa Martinez

HAVANA TIMES — Hurricane Matthew is finally long away from Cuba, but it destroyed the city of Baracoa beforehand, not only by destroying 90% of the municipality’s housing partially or completely, but also by leaving a deep mark on the hearts of those who live in Baracoa, seeing their city destroyed which took them over 500 years to build.

Cuba’s beautiful First Town is a heap of rubble, broken roofs, stones, fallen electricity cables and poles, cracked walls, missing doors and windows, trees strewn on the floor and buildings too…

My first love’s city makes me weep once again, and not because of the memory of a sensual past, but because of the destruction you can see with every step you take.

Mother Nature wanted the people in Baracoa to pay for the damage that all of us inhabitants on Earth have caused.

What will friends, relatives, neighbors there do now? People ask who don’t know what it feels like to lose everything and be helpless like those affected by Matthew.

However much it hurts, and it HURTS; however difficult it may be, and it is; however much it costs, and it will cost us; there’s no other option but to keep on going.

Our brothers and sisters in Santiago did it after Sandy (2012), people in Holguin did it too after Ike (2008), now we will also do it.

Of course it will cost us a great deal and it’s going to be a long and tough journey, but we have to keep on going, because no matter how much it seems like it won’t, the calm does come after the storm.