SURVIVIN’ IVAN: A September 2004 gift out of Africa
Born Christence Dinesen in Denmark, When married she moved to Africa and was known to all as Karen Blixen. Later after leaving Africa for the last time, as author Isak Dinesen she penned stories about her African adventures in a book that became 1938’s best seller and later 1985’s Oscar-winning movie Out of Africa. Other more lethal visitors also out of Africa arrive on foreign shores each year and they too require identity changes as they move across the landscape. Starting as dust devils on the plains of Africa, they move over the warm Atlantic waters off the coast of West Africa. Their intensity increases as they form thunderstorms, tropical depressions, tropical storms and then hurricanes with names such as Ivan. Surviving Ivan, a gift this fall from the continent of Africa to the mid-Atlantic, became the unsolicited goal of many in the Caribbean, parts of the Florida panhandle including Bay Point and the Alabama coast. The storm was devastating. Watching Bay Point residents who before Ivan was out of sight were working in their yards cleaning up the tangled mess that Ivan had left behind, gave you a sense of the mettle of those living around you. Neighbors with chainsaws helped neighbors with fallen trees while other neighbors who had not seen their friends made sure they were safe before they too went outside to work. Many residents in their 60’s, some in their 70’s and a few in their 80’s who perhaps had lost some of the spring in their step, labored tirelessly because it was their neighborhood, their friends and their way of life that had been threatened by Ivan. Bay Point and the rest of Bay County represent a microcosm of America, a nation that takes care of itself, while offering help to others and expects nothing in return.