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Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Be­fore dawn broke over Span­ish Town on Mon­day, the qui­et hum of en­gines and soft voic­es filled the court­yard of the lo­cal mosque. At 4.30 am, mem­bers of the Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CMTT) set out on their jour­ney across Ja­maica — a mis­sion of mer­cy to bring re­lief to fam­i­lies dev­as­tat­ed by the re­cent hur­ri­cane.

Lead­ing the team was CMTT’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, who de­scribed the day as “heart-wrench­ing but hum­bling.” By 6.15 am, the vol­un­teers were on the road for a three-hour dri­ve in­to the south­ern parish of St Eliz­a­beth, one of the is­land’s hard­est-hit re­gions.