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8 Keeping the Link
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136 8 Keeping the Link ICTs and Jamaican Migration heather a. horst In the summer of 2007 news and weather agencies began tracking the progress of Tropical Storm Dean in the mid-Atlantic. A week later, the storm moved into the Caribbean, steadily growing in intensity. By August 17,Dean was reclassified as a Category 4 hurricane, and the island nation of Jamaica was placed on a hurricane watch. The same day, Jamaican prime minister Portia Simpson-Miller called together the National Disaster Preparedness Council to discuss evacuations and the transformation of the national arena in Kingston into a shelter. Jamaicans as a general rule believe that God can and does counteract the vagaries of Mother Nature in Jamaica, a country that is known in the Guinness Book of World Records for possessing the most churches per square mile.1 Indeed, Jamaicans routinely attribute the historical tendency of hurricanes to veer south and thus spare the island to the collective power of prayer and faith. Yet even with God on their side, the prospect of Hurricane Dean incited worry and concern among Jamaicans dispersed across the globe. Those who remembered the devastation of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988and Hurricane Ivan in 2004 were all too aware of the difficulties of coping with the aftermath of the storms in a cash-strapped country. i c t s a n d j a m a i c a n m i g r a t i o n 137 To compound matters, the national election between (then) Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller of the People’s National Party and (now) Prime Minister Bruce Golding of the Jamaican Labour Party was slated for August 27, 2007, seven days following the hurricane’s anticipated arrival. Already quite a violent and virulent race, the potential for looting and other posthurricane violence weighed heavily on people’s minds. Finally, and especially for Jamaicans living in the United States, the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2006 stood as a poignant reminder of the ways in which racially inflected discrimination continues to shape relief efforts, the slow response to the needs of African Americans in New Orleans often viewed as a microcosm of the ambivalence of the world to the ails of black people in the Caribbean and other parts of the African diaspora. Jamaicans readily acknowledged that their friends and family would probably be the most viable form of state or foreign aid in the storm’s wake, and a small number of Jamaican migrants even flew home to wait out the storm with their families in an effort to avoid the feeling of helplessness. On the night of August 19, 2007, Hurricane Dean finally reached the island of Jamaica. Leading up to the storm, the Jamaican diaspora monitored the progress of the storm on cnn, the Weather Channel, and other news agencies. As the storm gained momentum, the nation’s telecommunications system suffered. Cell phone tower masts went down, as did landlines throughout the island. Even in areas with continued service, the frequency of calls made tied up the phone lines, and it became particularly difficult to get through to the island’s rural towns and remote districts. In place of the telephone, Jamaicans began tuning into Power 106 fm, a local talk radio program airing 24/7 coverage of Hurricane Dean before, during, and after the storm. Jamaicans off the island also started logging onto Power 106fm over the Internet through Go-Jamaica (http://www.go-jamaica.com), a Web portal that hosts the online editions of the Jamaica Gleaner, The Star, as well as The Voice out of the United Kingdom. Moreover, and with the collaboration of the Jamaica National Building Society and People’s Telecom that provided local and toll-free numbers to Power 106 callers, Jamaicans living in the UK, United States, Canada, and elsewhere could not only listen to the live streaming of the Hurricane Dean coverage but also call in to send messages to their loved ones in Jamaica. Alongside official reports from the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, throughout the night messages of love and concern went out to people by Jamaicans calling from the United States, [3.90.187.11] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:14 GMT) 138 d i a s p o r a s i n t h e n e w m e d i a a g e Canada, and the United Kingdom to check in on their families. At 2:40...