Stripped

‘The mountain knows it has stripped us
pushed us into frothy oceans
kept us walking on rough lands
and into new dreams’

– 'Stripped', poem by Yvonne Weekes in Weeks, Yvonne. Nomad. House of Nehesi, 2019.

Montserrat with active Soufrière Hills as seen from the International Space Station (ISS) on 11 October 2010. Much of the eastern part of the island is covered in volcanic debris. Credit: NASA.

“

Some of the old people they took it in stride, and they were always happy when folks helped, but most of them, they just lost their mind. I swear it hastened their death. Almost every few weeks we would lose one of them. It was very sad, because they were very nice old people. But on the flip side of that, we had some fantastic time talking with them, getting all the old stories, hearing where they all grew up and, we learned a lot from them, in those last days, so it was beneficial for us, the younger people, because if it wasn’t for the volcano, I would not have been talking to elderly people from St Johns and Harris’ and Long Ground, I would have been speaking to older people from St Patricks, like my grandparents, but we got a chance to mingle with all of the old people from across the island.

– Montserrat Resident, 2019