DEAN is definitely set to strike Jamaica today, but it’s a visitor that fearful residents of the flood-prone Clarendon communities of Portland Cottage, Rocky Point and Mitchell Town could do without.

Yesterday, as they tried to help themselves and, hopefully, minimise the effects of Hurricane Dean, they made no secret about the hardships they have been facing since the ‘licks’ they took almost three years ago when Hurricane Ivan lashed the island on September 10, 2004.

To the residents of the three flood-prone Clarendon communities, Dean is disdainfully ‘di bwoy’, as if he were a man he would have understood their suffering as they struggle to recover from the ravages of Ivan in 2004.

“If him a did big man, him wouldn’t come here, cause him know how life rough,” one-time fisherman Oneil Halsell said, as he sat inside a boat gutting fish at the Portland Cottage fishing village. “Bwoy,” Halsell continued, “nuh know how life rough.”

Yesterday, some residents in Portland Cottage cleaned a drain where water from rains over the last few days was visible. It is the lowest point in the community, they said, and all the water settles there.

In Rocky Point, fishermen repeatedly counted ‘ONE-TWO-FOUR!’ as they pulled boats onto land.

“Di bwoy mek up een face,” one fisherman said, pointing to distant dark clouds. And in Mitchell Town, they, like their neighbours, were waiting.

“Mi panicky, because mi meet Ivan,” Portland Cottage resident Hyacinth Campbell said. She was sitting outside her house – one of the more than 200 built there as part of the Hurricane Ivan reconstruction project – with her palms against both sides of her face.

“A fret mi a fret bout di storm,” she said. During Hurricane Ivan, Campbell recalled, her father was trapped by barbed wire in flood waters. “And mi two brothers couldn’t swim.” Her father sustained injuries, but they managed to pull him out, she said.

On Rocky Point beach, one fisherman pointed to a wrecked boat, which he said served as a reminder of Ivan’s wrath as high waves battered the sea coast town.

Still, there were not many obvious signs of preparations in the areas. Some residents in Mitchell Town said they had sufficient time based on the forecast that the storm would hit later today to make preparations.

“A only one preparation me a mek and is to evacuate,” one fisherman in Rocky Point said. He said if the storm hit full force they probably couldn’t stay there.

At the Portland Cottage Fishing Village, Halsell said the fact that many fishermen had pulled their boats in, which had not been done before Hurricane Ivan, meant they took the threat of Hurricane Dean seriously.

Rocky Point fishermen also had another worry. They were concerned about six of their colleagues, who they said had indicated that they would not return home from Pedro Cays before the storm.

“Dem seh dem wan turn hero,” one man said. The Rocky Point fishermen, however, repeated appeals for their ‘brothers’ to return to land. But their safe return could be a rocky one as all fishermen were asked to return to land much earlier as the powerful Dean moved closer to the shores of Jamaica.

In the meantime, the fishermen said they were hoping that after the storm they would have a livelihood.

“We just haffi wait an si what di bwoy Dean going do,” Halsell said, as he scaled a fish, hopefully an activity he would be able to continue doing, if Portland Cottage and its neighbours are not on Dean’s list for destruction.