Jamaica didn't cause the climate crisis – yet it will be paying the highest price

The mighty Hurricane Melissa, as it made landfall on Jamaica, focused directly on the parish of St Elizabeth, described by officials as the "breadbasket of the country".

- Taíno Mendez

A mainly rural parish to the southwest of the island, St Elizabeth is dotted with small villages, a celebrated resort - Treasure Beach - and rises towards the mountainous interior. One such high-up village, Accompong, is a historical site near the border with Trelawny parish where Africans enslaved under Spanish rule, together with the remaining Indigenous Taíno people (in whose honour I chose my name), freed themselves and established an inaccessible fort during the 17th-century naval conflict in which the island was ceded to Britain. The Taíno had lived on the island for more than 800 years and knew its topography - and the necessity of seeking higher ground when storms approached.

St Elizabeth is where my maternal grandparents were raised before leaving for England during the 1950s Windrush migration wave. Back then, Jamaica was walking an uncertain path towards independence while suffering from the knock-on effects of Britain's role in the second world war. It remained a colonial possession, yet the funds it would normally have received from the "mother country" were diverted to the war effort. The island was still recovering from the 1944 hurricane that destroyed its banana and coconut crops, on which it was economically dependent.