Roger Family Sailing Adventures

I told you in a previous post that our friend Brianna went through Maria, the category five hurricane that devastated Dominica in September. She told us of the scream of the wind as it lifted off her roof and blew out her doors and windows. Four of them survived the experience huddled in her bathroom.

Raquel works the front desk in the office at North Sound Marine where we keep Blue Pearl in the summer and when she learned that we were heading south to Dominica, she lamented that she didn’t know in advance. She would have organized a “care package” for her friend Chanty and her family.

Since we had access to great grocery stores when we got to Guadeloupe we decided that we should take advantage of good prices and availability for Raquel’s buddy. She said, get dry goods like flour and sugar. Get canned meat… tuna and corned beef. So we supplemented that with UHF milk, cereal and some treats for Chanty’s little girl, six year old Shania.

We’ve also recently replaced a mattress on our boat. Nothing wrong with it except I found it too soft and therefore too hot when it wrapped around me.

So we met them today and passed it all off.

Pam with Jason, Chanty and Shania

They are a lovely family. They had a small house but it was completely torn apart by Maria. They lost everything. They survived under some boards from the walls. Chanty told us they laid on their backs underneath scant shelter for eight hours, waiting for the noise and fury to abate. Shania told us it wasn’t too wet but it was very, very noisy and scary.

Shania said there are lots of tarps to cover holes in the roof at her school, but they are back now.

Jason works at the local hardware store and they keep chickens to sell eggs. He said they didn’t lose all the chickens so he continues in the egg business. He said he has put together a “hut” to live in but when he rebuilds he wants to use concrete. Good idea!

They have a small fridge and they run a generator for a couple of hours every day to keep things somewhat cool.

So we are struggling right now. Keep trying to think of ways to help but not sure how. Do we just open our wallets? We know that Chanty, Jason and Shania are only one family of thousands who are struggling after Maria. What about them? What to do?

We are so lucky but we complain about taxes and lust after new cars and televisions. Chanty and her family have nothing… but consider themselves unbelievable lucky for having survived Maria.