This sleepy Jamaican village of 3,000 people consists of little more than a few pot-holed lanes dotted with rum bars and goats, curling gently around several wild sweeps of palm-fringed sand. It has schools, churches and a few little grocery stores. Most homes are stone or wooden cottages that have been in the same families for generations, and a handful of surnames are shared by most of the village; Parchment, Ebanks, Gordon, Moxam, James. Everyone knows everyone. The hand-to-mouth economy survives on small-scale fishing and farming -- and, in recent decades, community tourism.
It isn't exactly a tourist resort, but since Henzell's mother built Jakes Hotel in the early Nineties, Treasure Beach has become a sort of secret international club for visitors from all over the world, who return time and again, beguiled by its charm. It's the people of Treasure Beach who make it magical, and for the past 30 years it has been the centre of my world. My eldest son is named after Jakes; Henzell and a former fisherman are my sons' godfathers; we've spent every Christmas with them since my partner drowned there in 2014.
Last July, Hurricane Beryl went unnoticed by most of the world. Freakishly early in the hurricane season, it passed the south coast of Jamaica just hours before the US celebrated Independence Day and the UK elected a new government. Beryl missed most of Jamaica but destroyed Treasure Beach. Power took 44 days to be restored, rebuilding took a Herculean effort, but by this summer the community thought they were finally getting back on their feet.
Beryl was the first hurricane to hit Treasure Beach since 2004. In New York last month, Henzell had joked: "We'd had a good 20 years before Beryl. If we can have ten more before the next one, I'll take that." As Melissa barrelled towards Jamaica last weekend, on course to make landfall directly over Treasure Beach, I watched the weather maps and wept.
Late last Sunday the government issued an evacuation order and commissioned school buses to take villagers to shelters, but almost everyone stayed put. A British guest at Jakes didn't want to leave, so Henzell took her to his own house on higher ground. Local WhatsApp groups pinged with dread and fear; the government posted advice to wear helmets and hide under mattresses. Friends sent me videos of them boarding up windows with plywood and hauling boats off the beach. "We can only hope and pray now," one messaged.
When Melissa hit on Tuesday, I spoke to a British woman who lives in the village; her neighbour's roof had just smashed into her home and she was barricaded behind a mattress in her bathroom, terrified. Another friend was frantically sweeping out water as the ply ripped off her windows. The sea swept clean through another's house. Horizontal rain and screaming wind punctuated by deafening bangs raged for five long hours. To everyone's disbelief, the mobile phone coverage survived. When the storm finally passed and people ventured out to film the aftermath, I sat glued to my phone as friends sent me footage. And then the lines went dead.
Five days later, the village has no power, mains water, phone or wifi signal, and no prospect of their return any time soon. Contact with the outside world can only be made via Starlink, which very few homes have, so dozens of villagers gather every day at the office of Henzell's community foundation, Breds, to get online.
The grocery stores have reopened but their shelves are already bare. There's no way to phone for supplies, and many of the surrounding roads are blocked anyway. The nearest functioning supermarket is nearly an hour's drive away; the nearest petrol station was damaged but reopened briefly and quickly ran out of fuel. People are surviving on rice and canned food, eaten by candlelight.
A friend's mother's house on the main beach, more than 100 years old and a hub for the fishermen for as long as anyone can remember, has vanished into the ocean. The gravestones in its garden are still standing, but the tombs are now empty. Two friends' beach bars have disappeared; another's fishing boat is embedded in the wall of someone's house. No trace remains of the beach shack where an old friend lived for more than 30 years.
Wading through flooded fields and roads is treacherous, because no one knows where all the crocodiles who live in a river 12 miles away have ended up. Jakes Hotel was hit hard, and other small hotels fared even worse. On Thursday, a fisherman went out to sea to check on his traps; he had 44 before Melissa and found only one. "Fishing done," he despaired. Pelican Bar, which used to stand on stilts a mile out in the ocean, and attract visitors from all over the world, has disappeared.
And yet, the overwhelming feeling in the village is relief. Nobody there died. Just hours before making landfall, the eye of Melissa had shifted westward; ground zero wasn't Treasure Beach, in the end, but a town 12 miles up the coast. Black River, once the epicentre of the slave trade, was until last week a bustling market town with a major hospital. It took days for news of its fate to reach Treasure Beach, and everyone is reeling -- because Black River now resembles Gaza.
The town's historic courthouse, church and library are all rubble, the market is in splinters, the hospital's roof is gone and its wards knee deep in water. Medical students have been evacuated to Treasure Beach by boat. All that's left of the main street's shops and restaurants is debris; it looks like a bombsite. The prime minister flew over the town's ruins on Wednesday and declared: "It has literally been totally destroyed."
The sentiment in Treasure Beach is "thank God that wasn't us" and, cruel as it feels, I can't help but share it. There have been at least 19 deaths on the island as a result of Melissa, and the UK government has announced £5 million in aid, including shelter kits.
The clean-up operation has already begun. Everyone is out all day clearing up debris, and Henzell will rebuild and reopen Jakes Hotel by Christmas. "We just pick ourselves up and start again," his sister told me on Friday. "We've done it before and we'll do it again, that's what Jamaicans do."
Rebecca Wiersma has run a small travel agency, Treasure Tours, in the village for 30 years, and is confident the village will be ready for tourists by Christmas. Guests from all over the world have been getting in touch to ask how they can help.
"I'm awestruck by how much people just love this place. And the resilience of this community is incredible," she said. "Where there is life, there is hope. We are a God-fearing community, and we have faith."