Cyclone

As I look around all I see is tragedy and loss. I stand in my destroyed house with my younger brother wondering what is going to happen next. The cyclone hit Antalaha, northeastern Madagascar hard that Thursday and took my family with it. We were a poor family and I tried to work as hard as I could to provide for my family, but times were tough. Some days we wouldn't eat, just work as hard as we could to make sure we had food for tomorrow. I see destroyed lives everywhere I look, people crying, screaming loved ones names, only to come to the realization that they were lost forever.

Once the cyclone hit, all I could smell was waste, dirt, and torn up wet shacks. It was so hot and dry out, no water in sight. None of us had any energy to go get it like usual, all we wanted to do was lay down and cry. I missed my parents so much already, and I can see the hurt on my brother, Raphael’s face. I knew he would have to start work as I did since it was just us now. I see dust, I taste dust, and I can even hear the wind pushing the dust up against broken homes, my broken home.

Seeing so many young people and helpless animals walking around without a home, without a family made me feel so lonely and miserable. So many lives lost to this natural disaster. All you can see is heartbreak and wreck everywhere you look. Starting this challenge to survive all over again without my parents made me fearful, I was now a guardian to my brother, Raphael would now look up to me more now than he ever did. As I tried to comfort my younger brother, assure him that everything would be alright, all I found myself hearing was the distant cries of the young, wondering if they were cries of hunger of cries of mourn. Looking at my home now made me upset, we had took so much time to build this to our environment. Now it was all ruined and we had nothing left.