DREDGING through the streets with machetes and sticks in hand, all were equipped for an expedition. They refused to be outdone by the downed trees and landslides that littered the roadway, as nothing would stop them from seeing first-hand who no longer had rooftops over their heads.
The torrential rains and winds of Hurricane Gilbert had subsided somewhat, having done all its damage on Monday, September 12, 1988. But at the first sign of daybreak on Tuesday, members of the Mannings Hill community in Stony Hill, were out in droves, feverishly documenting everything their eyes beheld.Fifty-two-year-old Hannah Barnett, refusing to be left behind, was among them. So too was her unborn child, Kitanya.Barnett was nine months pregnant; in fact, the due date she had been given was September 12.“Everything did pack and ready”, Barnett told the Jamaica Observer. “And when I saw the day came, I said to myself, ‘how dem give me the 12th and I don’t have her yet’.”She further added that she felt absolutely no pain the night of the storm, so off she went the following morning.However, her expedition came to a premature end as Barnett was hit with the first pangs of contraction about 7:00 am, while out exploring with community members. Though baby Kitanya had missed her “due date”, at that point, Barnett found out that she was definitely making her way into the world.Like her expedition plans, all plans associated with giving birth to her second child in the comfort of a hospital room were also shelved. Barnett made her way to a relative’s house and a midwife from a neighbouring community was called.“It was frightening because the road did block, we couldn’t move,” said 54-year-old Michael Walker, Kitanya’s father. “The midwife was not really a back-up plan because we were planning to go to the hospital, but because of the roadblocks we had to call the midwife.”Both Walker and Barnett said they were not worried because the midwife was known and lived within walking distance from them.Amidst the chaos that was left in the trail of Hurricane Gilbert, Kitanya’s parents said that at midday their daughter was born with no hiccups.For Kitanya, a day shy of 25 years old, she is accustomed to her personality being likened to the climate at the time of Gilbert.“People always associate the storm with my personality, saying, ‘yuh miserable, yeh man, a Gilbert yuh born inna’,” said Kitanya, which she said are accompanied by stories about how destructive Hurricane Gilbert was and how her mother almost died because she had started feeling pain while on the road.She added too that she is still affectionately called “Gilbert baby” by many of her community members who remember the fateful day that her mother gave birth to her in subdued winds and rains.Some would also describe Gilbert as persistent and determined, because of the path of destruction it left behind, many having no option but to pick up the pieces. Today, though still temperamental, it would appear that Kitanya may have got this side of her demeanour from being born on September 13, 1988.A past student of Immaculate Conception High School and the University of the West Indies, where she majored in accounting, she graduated in 2010 with first class honours. In January 2011 she started working at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and is now two papers shy of being accepted to the professional body of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).But what happened immediately after she was born?Just a few days old, baby Kitanya had her first motorbike ride as her mother needed to get her to the hospital for her check-up. Kitanya has no memory of this.Hannah Barnett and her baby Kitanya, who came a day late.View the original article here
A day late, but still a "GILBERT BABY"
