Dominica is known as ‘the nature island of the Caribbean’. This is no mere Tourist Board slogan: the island’s beautiful volcanic mountainscape, replete with river valleys and tropical forest cover, plunges spectacularly into the ocean at innumerable points.
But in 2017 nature bit back, and bit back hard. The hurricane season in September of that year brought Maria, a Category Five storm with almost unheard-of wind velocity, which spent an entire terrifying night having its way with this small outpost of humanity on the edge of the Atlantic. In the morning, when Maria blew off to Puerto Rico, it left wrecked infrastructure, forests stripped of foliage, houses without roofs and children suffering from levels of PTSD usually associated with military conflict. That said, Dominica, which is more dependent than most on its immediate environment (for agriculture, fishing and low-intensity tourism), has shown resilience and fortitude in bouncing back.
