Two weeks on, the Caribbean is still counting its losses.

Hurricane Melissa tore across the islands with merciless precision, leaving behind a trail of flattened homes, broken roads, and drowned crops.

In Cuba, more than fifty thousand remain displaced.

Hospitals and clinics, numbering over six hundred, have been damaged or destroyed.

In Jamaica, roads are slowly reopening, but many rural communities remain stranded.

Relief convoys crawl through blocked mountain passes carrying food and tarpaulins that never seem to be enough.

Haiti, long battered by disaster, has again borne the brunt.

At least forty people are dead, and much of the south lies in ruins.

Aid teams are distributing hygiene kits and rations by helicopter; the UN’s air service is one of the few lifelines left.

Elsewhere, the Philippines faces its own pair of storms.

Yet there, better planning spared lives.

The contrast is stark.

For the Caribbean, recovery will demand more than aid; it will require faith that rebuilding is worth the risk, and that next time, when the sea rises again, the world will not be too slow to answer.