My Motherland () Zhang Baotong 2017.9.30

Less than ten o'clock, the battery suddenly ran out, and the mobile phone had no signal. Outside, there was the terrible sound of glass and tiles being blown to the ground, and then the storm slammed into everything it encountered like a raging bull, and it was stronger than ever. After a while, the window of my room was blown to the ground by a strong wind, and I was so frightened that my soul was gone. The wind blew the rain in through the broken windows. I got up immediately, moved the quilt and mattress to a corner of the room, and wrapped myself in the quilt and hid in the corner. However, the rainwater coming in through the window seemed to be pouring into the house, and soon a lot of water accumulated in the house. This room really can't stay any longer.

I hurried down to the first floor and knocked on the door of my boss's house. He opened the door and let me in. However, his house was leaking everywhere, and the family was sitting on the sofa in the living room. Seeing that I came down with the quilt in my arms, the boss asked my wife to vacate the sofa for me to sit down. However, the glass of the window on the first floor was gone, and the wind and rain kept drilling into the window, and there was already some water on the ground.

Shortly after I sat down, I heard a loud bang on the roof, as if something had been swept up by the wind, and then thrown to the ground so hard that we both fainted. It turned out that the roof of the second floor was blown down by a hurricane and fell to the back of the house, and the bricks and tiles that had fallen in the rooms on the second floor smashed the ceiling of the first floor with a bang. In addition to the fright, I felt lucky, if I hadn't left the room in time, and when the roof slammed down, I was afraid that I would have really died.

We spent a terrible night in fear. At dawn, the wind slowly subsided, and the rain stopped, but the water in the house was already submerged. Everyone sat or lay down on the sofa and cupboard.

By the time we opened our eyes, it was already dark, and the bright sunlight was very dazzling. I walked out of the room, stood on a patch of grass in front of the door, and looked around. I saw trees falling, bricks, tiles, glass sticks and other debris in a mess, all the windows and panes of all the houses were damaged, some houses had no roofs, and there was deep water everywhere. I picked up my camera and kept taking pictures, trying to take pictures of the tragedy.

I took a big turn outside, and when I returned to the hotel, the boss was still cleaning up the water in the house, and the boss's wife had already cooked the meal. Since I was a guest, she beckoned me to eat first. The rice is still the kind of "Creole"-like seafood pan rice. I've seen them cook with olive oil, sauté onions, garlic and shredded red peppers, add various toppings, then pour the raw rice into the pot and stir-fry together, add some crab stock, add seafood, and finally bake it in the oven so that all the seafood broth in the rice goes into the rice.

To make this meal is to mix the delicacy of French cuisine with the rustic nature of Spanish cuisine with local tropical spices, giving it the characteristics of rich color and heavy flavor, because the French word "Creole" itself means mixed. Because the local prices are relatively expensive, a dozen eggs cost about 18 yuan, and an apple costs about 8 yuan, so a meal like this will cost at least twenty or thirty yuan.

After breakfast, the boss told me that they had to get out of here and take refuge somewhere else, so he told me to get out of here. After a night of fear, I was so frightened that I wanted to get out of here and go home early. So, I went upstairs, dried my rain-soaked laptop and camera with a dry rag, packed it in my travel bag, and headed to Russell Airport.

The whole island country is water, like a swamp, so you can't see which is the road and which is the grass. I walked all the way in the direction of the airport. The water on the road almost covered my feet, so I walked on the waterlogged road in my tourist shirt.

There are ruins, puddles, hurricane-blown houses, and endless sights, just like Hiroshima, which was bombed by the atomic bomb. After walking for about four or five hours, I arrived at the airport at noon. The airport was also a bleak scene. There is water everywhere, and there are many foreign tourists carrying large bags and small bags. However, there is not even a shadow of an airplane here. I heard that before the hurricane arrived, these planes had already flown to other places to take shelter.

I had no choice, so I came to Russell Town, looking for a hotel to stay in for a while. However, the town is also a mess and miserable. The rows of colorful, beautiful and delicate houses and western-style buildings that I had seen two days ago were either windowless or without roofs, broken glass and wind-blown window frames and canopies all over the streets, and some roadside trees were blown down and strewn across the streets. Not a single intact house or bungalow can be seen in the whole street.

I walked the streets for a long time, asking all the hotels and inns, but none of them could accommodate tourists. I had no choice but to go back to the hotel where I was staying, but fortunately the owner did not leave. He had heard what I had said, and there was really no other way for me to see that I was a girl, so he had to help me clean up a small room on the first floor and settle me down.

In the next few days, the owner's family has been busy cleaning up and repairing, and I can't do anything because there is no electricity, so I can only wander around the nearby seaside and mountains, even if I encounter a very good scenery, I can only watch, not shoot, because the camera has long run out of power.

But I still have to make a trip to Russell and the airport every morning to see if there are any planes out of here. So, I had to walk almost seven or eight hours a day. However, every time I went, I was disappointed. Not to mention airplanes, not even a single passenger ship can be seen on the entire seaside. Once, I met a mainlander who was serving Chinese food at a Chinese restaurant in Russell Town, and he was almost out of business, and I asked him how he could get out, and he said he didn't know either, because all the communication and transportation on the island were cut off.

After a few days, the power was restored. I seemed to feel confident and hopeful, but there were still no planes leaving the island, and when I asked the airport staff, they didn't know anything. I wanted to call my parents in Taipei, but there was still no signal on my phone. I don't know how long I'm going to stay here.

On September 18th, I went to Russell Town, and the owner of the Chinese restaurant told me that the government had issued a notice that the water, electricity, and communications would be cut off immediately, because Hurricane Maria would soon make landfall in Dominica. When I heard the news, I rushed back to the inn, and the innkeeper also heard the notice and was making preparations. At about 6 p.m., there was a sudden power outage, and by this time, the sea was already windy, and the waves were coming towards the shore wave after wave.

I hid in my cabin, and the windows were nailed with thin iron sheets, though they were glassless. About an hour after the blackout, the hurricane came, and it was noticeably more ferocious than the last one. The thin iron window was immediately torn off by the strong wind, along with the window frame, and fell hard outside the house. And my door was blown open by the wind. I was going to close the door, but the rain hit me in the face and body like a machine gun, and the door could not be closed at all, and before it could be closed, it was blown open with a thud, as if it had been broken into by a robber.