“It is not about me but the people of Anguilla,” she told The Anguillian. More than seven months have passed since Hurricane Irma devastated the island and it has now emerged that Ms. Jasmin Garraway has been of remarkable assistance to Anguilla in bringing outside attention to the island’s sad plight and amassing tons of relief supplies for its people.
The Trinidadian Tourism Development Consultant has been attached to Anguilla’s Ministry of Tourism for some ten years and has adopted the island as her new home. So appreciative is Chief Minister, Mr. Victor Banks, of her relief work in Canada and Trinidad for Anguillians that, on two official occasions, he thanked and described her as “an Ambassador for Anguilla.”
Ms. Garraway, a lady of a very pleasant and friendly disposition, living in Sea Feathers, on the south-east coast of Anguilla, was not on the island when the category 5 hurricane struck. She was in Canada where she previously spent a number of years.
“I always say that God puts you in places for times like this,” she told the newspaper. “When the hurricane actually struck I was in Canada where I reached out to sources of assistance for Anguilla. I felt moved to do that. I got in touch with Mr. Griffin Webster, a member of the former Anguilla Association, who lives in Edmonton, and through him we were able to reach out to other Anguillians in Toronto. We met with them because it had been proven to be very difficult to get assistance for Anguilla as there was no formal Association that had a bank account and so on. As a consequence of that meeting, I am happy to say that the Association, which had folded up, is now back in existence in Toronto and the executive was elected last week.”
Ms. Garraway got assistance from some of the persons, now in the Association, in mobilising relief supplies for Anguilla. “We were able to get about 30 fifty-gallon drums of food, clothing, cleaning supplies and so on which were consigned to St. Gerard’s Roman Catholic Church in Anguilla,” she disclosed. “On the recommendations of Mrs. Shelia Haskins in Anguilla and the Miami office, Tropical Shipping in Toronto shipped the supplies to the island. The supplies were distributed in the various villages through the Catholic Church and that was a fairly successful exercise. One of the largest congregation of West Indians in the Catholic Church in Toronto has continued to collect clothing and other supplies, and some of those items are yet to be shipped down.”
Ms. Garraway continued: “Anguilla became well known to places like the Cardinal’s Office of the Catholic Archdiocese in Toronto but before the Anguilla story was not known. The other hurricane-affected islands – Antigua, Barbuda and Dominica – were mounting a very aggressive fundraising and relief gathering effort in Canada. The normal routes through the diplomatic service, where I was attached years ago in Canada, was being mobilised on behalf of those islands – and not Anguilla being an Overseas Territory. But we were able to get what we could and that was a great blessing to those who received the assistance.”
From Canada, Ms. Garraway returned to Anguilla but only to be off again to seek further assistance for the island. “The Chief Minister approved a mission to Trinidad where, again, I was able to get some assistance for the island,” she explained. “There was again very little knowledge there about what had happened in Anguilla. I spoke to several Rotary Clubs of which I am a member, a number NGOs dealing with relief for the other islands – and individuals who were mobilising containers for those islands as well.
“As I indicated, it seemed very clearly that it was not known there what had happened in Anguilla. On the public agenda were only Antigua and Dominica. As a matter of fact Dominica received close to 100 containers from Trinidad alone. When I was attempting to find out what help could be given to Anguilla, the Prime Minister of Dominica was in Trinidad the same week thanking those who had assisted him and seeking more assistance. My approach was made in a very diplomatic manner because one would not want it to appear that you were competing with the Prime Minister of Dominica to get assistance.
“However, through a very strategic approach, I was able to get assistance from a group called ITNAC – Is There Not A Cause. It is a small NGO that had been raising funds and doing relief exercises in countries over the last ten years or so. I met a very vibrant young woman and we talked about what Anguilla can get and immediately the NGO began mobilising relief items for Anguilla.”
Ms. Garraway continued: “The Living Water Foundation helped me tremendously. They were very generous in mobilising all of their resources, colleagues and other agencies, not only to help me collect the items, but also to have them shipped to Anguilla. It was a very huge challenge getting the containers shipped. We had six 20-foot containers but eventually we had to condense them into two 40-foot and two 20-foot containers. In addition, ITNAC, the other group, brought in 27 pallets on another vessel. Two of the pallets were sent directly from the Fire Services Department in Trinidad to their colleagues at the Anguilla Fire Services.
“I think in all we had about 143 pallets of goods – food, clothing, baby items, sanitary supplies, non-perishable items, medical supplies, books and a very wide range of other items, a lot of which were produced in Trinidad. It was just massive.
“The challenge then was storing them, as storage was not immediately available in Anguilla but many people helped. Junie Fleming, the Hodge’s family in Island Harbour and Rayme Lake helped in a tremendous way to store these items. Once the containers arrived, they had to be unstuffed and put somewhere. I think that apart from the shipping, the next major challenge after the arrival was to offload and store the items. The Government approved a waiver of customs duty on some of the items which allowed us to receive them very easily.
“We had tremendous support from huge companies producing water in Trinidad. We had a large number of pallets of just water. The distribution was the next challenge. We mounted a small group of dedicated volunteers, resident on the island, some retired and so on – and we were able to use St. Gerard’s Roman Catholic Church, to which all of the goods were consigned, as the packing and distribution centre. For many weeks we had people coming in during the lunch hour and after work. Saturday was a full work day and we have a number of volunteers we wish to thank.
“We had a very strategic approach to our distribution work with community leaders across the island. We provided bulk items to the hospital which in turn distributed them to the clinics and the senior citizens homes. Church pastors came in and took pre-backed boxes containing food and other supplies. We went to the schools, both public and private, and distributed books, pencils and other supplies to very young children.
“We also had the Education Department collect sanitary bags and packets of toiletries to be distributed to Campuses A and B. We also distributed supplies of bulk items to all the community centres on the island. We did a massive distribution over the past several weeks and are now in the final stages of that.”
Told that her relief work must have brought her an inner feeling of much happiness and accomplishment, Ms. Garraway replied:
“As a Rotarian, our Motto is Service Above Self. I was influenced by that, as well as the fact that when there is a need I have always been motivated to help where I could. I certainly couldn’t afford to help so many people as were helped – but through the connections and so on, in Canada and Trinidad, I was able to gather the resources. I was really just a channel to provide help; and the volunteers came along with the same sense and feeling and put all they had into it.
“As I said, God puts you in places for times like this, and I was really moved by the positive response of all whom I approached. It was not about me, but the people of Anguilla.”
