Jamaican families in Houston anxiously track Hurricane Melissa’s impact on island loved ones
Oral Cockett, a manager at GoldenKrust Caribbean Restaurant near NRG Stadium in Houston, has been in the city for just five months on a work visa. He is glued to his phone, waiting for updates from his family back home.
Jamaican families in Houston are anxiously following a powerful storm as it moves through the island. Despite widespread damage and internet disruptions, they are doing their best to stay connected with loved ones.
Oral Cockett, a manager at GoldenKrust Caribbean Restaurant near NRG Stadium in Houston, has been in the city for just five months on a work visa. He is glued to his phone, waiting for updates from his family back home.
“This is video taken from the hospital and it was sent to you by your wife? How long ago? 30 minutes,” Cockett said.
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His wife, Krystal, is a nurse on the island and has been at the hospital for hours, unable to leave due to floodwaters.
“It has been a rollercoaster, because some of the times I check in, especially in the early part of the morning, the early hours of the morning, they had like current, they had signal and all of that, and they were saying, yeah, there was some rain, but it wasn’t too much,” Krystal said. “And since I’ve been here at work, I wasn’t using the phone that much. I took a break. That’s why I like a whole lot of... Messages coming in, updates, and the whole situation just got drastically worse within minutes.”
Cockett’s parents and sibling also live in Jamaica. He finds some strength by scrolling through memories saved on his phone as he waits to hear from them.
“We’re all within the same parish. That’s Manchester at Central Jamaica, but she is in Midland, like, in the center,” he said.
Jamaica is no stranger to hurricanes, but Cockett said this storm is different.
“Category five, the wind. I’ve never experienced that. They’ve been hit or hit from a category five. We’ve gotten a few three’s and stuff like that. Like last year, Beryl was category three. And it caused a lot of damage. There was a lot floating. There was lot of breeze. We took months to get back power and to get everything back the way it should be, months. And that was a category three, so I can just imagine what you’re going through with this category five,” Cockett said.
Though Cockett may not have family in Houston, he knows he is not alone. Stephan Anderson, founder of I Love Being Caribbean, which promotes the positive attributes of the Caribbean culture, is closely monitoring the situation and has begun mobilizing the Houston Caribbean community.
“The beauty about Houston is that it’s not just the Jamaican community that’s feeling it. It’s a Caribbean community. Whenever anything happens in the Caribbean, we respond as a collective because we’re stronger that way,” Anderson said.
He added, “We’re definitely going to respond. The only question now is how, because we have to know what the needs are. So if the needs food, medicine, then we’ll do that. The needs are housing, whatever it is, the needs, we have to first figure out what those are and then we respond accordingly.”
Cockett said he has lost contact with his parents, who live on the coast, but he remains hopeful they are safe. For now, he is thankful for the updates from his wife.
