For Maxine Campbell, a care package meant nothing. All she wanted was for someone to ask, “Are you okay?” But no one did.

As she sat on the verandah of a destroyed shop she recently completed in Retrieve, Hanover, on Wednesday, Campbell’s heart was heavy and her mental health in shambles. Scenes from Hurricane Melissa that ravaged a section of the island on October 28, 2025 haunted her memory.

In a cry for help, she stretched out her hand and called to the Jamaica Observer as the team traversed the area.

“I have a pressing matter to tell you about,” Campbell said, pleading with us to stop and hear what she had to say.

“I was here yesterday [Tuesday] and believe me, I went to my bed last night and I feel bad. Government agency come and nobody cared. They only care about giving us flour and sugar and rice to eat. Believe me, them come here and I stand up there so, and I was here and me nuh hear one of them come to me and say, ‘Mommy, are you okay?’ None of them,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

According to Campbell, while she did not want to sound ungrateful for the relief packages, she had hoped the first responders would have come with empathy and encouragement.

A little kindness, she said, would’ve gone a far way, instead of meals from seeming cold hearts.

“It’s not [just] about flour, sugar, and rice. We went through it,” she said, her voice breaking.

“A whole heap of people a go through it and just to ask me ‘Are you okay?’ None of them. They behave like they are better and top-class because they work for [a relief agency]. I want to tell them this is not about flour, sugar, and rice, and piece of tarpaulin. The people them a suffer mentally,” said Campbell as tears formed in her eyes.

“You think it easy to know say you develop your business and you a look for it to turn over and by the time you [blink] your eyes it disappear?” she questioned.

Campbell said she is particularly concerned about her elderly neighbour who has been working non-stop to get her house back in order.

“I watched her; Tuesday she hang out clothes, Wednesday she hang out clothes, every day she a hang out clothes and she is a senior citizen. She’s a returning resident and I sit down there and I say, ‘You know [she] strong.’ We have to [go] up there help her, hang up, take up, push out water. Every morning, the first thing me do, I pull the window and look up there to see if I see her because I know one morning she nah go get up because of stress,” Campbell told the Observer.

“Them nuh care. Them just… carry the food go put down to give the people them to rush the food. It’s not about the food. Just to ask, ‘How are you doing?’ that’s all we want. Me nuh want nuh rice or flour. I tell them, I will work for [what I want]. I will go down by the supermarket go buy it. Just say something to me that would give me hope. Just say something, man,” Campbell pleaded as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Campbell, a poultry farmer, said she lost more than 70 chickens when Hurricane Melissa’s strong winds destroyed her coop. Though it has been just over a week since the Category 5 hurricane rocked Jamaica, the Hanover native said she keeps reliving the events of October 28.

“I still a hear the breeze in my head. We still a hear it. Believe me,” she said, her voice heavy as she wiped her eyes in a way that would make one think she was trying to erase the memory of the zinc leaving her roof and her elderly mother screaming in pain.

Campbell said her mental health further deteriorated when she visited Cascade, a small community about two miles from her home. She said she took a few steps into the community before the sight of the destruction caused her feet to weaken, unwilling to carry her further.

“When I reach part of the road I had to stop and get a garlic and a bottle of water. I [felt] as if I was in Haiti with the earthquake. Me just see Haiti,” she said sobbing, as more tears rolled down her cheek.

Her reference was to the scenes of destruction in Haiti after it was struck by a magnitude 7 earthquake in January 2010.

Campbell pleaded for empathy and urged people delivering packages to show a little love to those who were affected.

She said a member of the Jamaica Defence Force was the first and only person to show her empathy.

According to Campbell, the soldier paid her a visit on Tuesday and again on Wednesday and she was grateful for his kindness.

“They need to do more of that. You could give these people flour, sugar, and corn, [but] they are damaged mentally, believe me. Them damage. Take it from me. You think it easy for me to sit down and hear my mother [scream]. She [hurt] her hip [in the storm] so she not able to walk. You think it easy to hear the breeze and we see the ceiling a dance, the house a shake, and hear her crying out? [As] she cry out a so the breeze a blow, a so the housetop a go. Sugar, flour, and rice can’t help that, it a go take time and encouragement to keep we through,” said an emotional Campbell.

She said, to make matters worse, many elderly residents in the surrounding communities were not able to receive care packages because they had to travel far distances, or battle crowds of people seeking to get aid.

Campbell shared that on Tuesday representatives of an organisation came into the area in search of the Cascade community. She said the relief group passed several elderly individuals along the way who pleaded with them for a care package, but were told the packages could only be distributed in Cascade, which, she said, is two miles from Retrieve, or Jericho, which is a mile and a half away.

She claimed that when the group with the relief supplies could not reach Cascade, because the road was impassable, they turned around and instructed several elderly people to journey to Jericho.

She told the Observer that her area was bypassed because a few of the homes were concrete structures that looked sturdy, but on the inside they were severely damaged.

Campbell pointed out that several of the concrete structures house elderly individuals who lost their roof, but with help from the community were able to clean up their space and return it to a state of normality.

“The people them who fi get the supplies not getting it,” Campbell charged as she pointed to the care packages at her feet. She said she has been working to get them to the elderly in Retrieve and anybody else who needs them.

“We collect zinc, we go all ’bout on the road and we chop and help we one another. We are not like other communities where everybody sit down and whatsoever happen. Come on, man, unuh stop from looking at the outside of things. The people them a suffer and nobody not coming,” Campbell claimed.

A few yards from Campbell’s house, an elderly man, who identified himself as Benton Richards, said he had not been able to secure a care package.

“Them say we should go Jericho, but me never get the time to go Jericho because [my] animals deh [far] around in one bush and I had to chop out my way to go around there. All today [Wednesday] it take me a time, so me nuh get nuh time yet, so me nuh know what next,” Richards told the Observer.

He said he will try to make it to the distribution centre, but could not understand why the relief group could not be more accommodating.

“Like how them pass here so them should have just issued what they could issue and then go around [Cascade],” the 70-year-old reasoned.

Another woman, who identified herself as Marlene Patterson, said she was also unable to secure a care package.

Patterson, who was seen in the area known as Retrieve, argued that, where possible, relief packages should have been dropped off along the way to the distribution centre, especially for the elderly.

“When you go to [Jericho] square everybody crowd up and then some persons get and some persons don’t get, so they should not have done it that way. I stopped them and I asked and they said no, it’s one place they are supposed to go and it’s Cascade square and Jericho square,” Patterson said.

“If they had announced that this is what was going to happen, ‘We are going to have food so people supposed to come out and go,’ that would be different; we would go up there, but it’s when they are passing they are telling you and by the time you reach there, everything gone,” charged Patterson.

Benton Richards, who lives in Retrieve, Hanover, explaining that he had not been able to secure a care package because the people handing out relief supplies, on passing through Retrieve, instructed residents to go to the distribution centre in the neighbouring district of Jericho about a mile and a half away.

This elderly resident of Retrieve in Hanover is seen walking back home after collecting a hurricane relief package in the neighbouing district of Jericho on Wednesday.

Maxine Campbell shows items included in care packages at her feet as she claimed that people in need of hurricane relief are not receiving aid. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)