You thought North Carolina saw a strong hurricane? Around the same time in September, the Philippines and the city of Hong Kong were hit by Typhoon Mangkhut, the strongest typhoon in 35 years. Kelly Mullally ’20 is a native to Hong Kong. While she left at the age of 16 for the international boarding school, United World College in Singapore, she returns to her hometown regularly. Mullally’s parents as well as her 16-year-old brother live in Hong Kong.

Typhoon Mangkhut formed on Sept. 7, 2018, in the Pacific Ocean. Within 10 days, it hit the Philippines, Hong Kong and southern China. In contrast to Hurricane Florence which reached 140 miles per hour, Typhoon Mangkhut hit 180 miles per hour. This typhoon, which surprisingly received much less media attention than Florence, was the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide in 2018.

Naturally, Mullally felt worried about her family and friends. While she had experienced typhoons during the summer breaks she spent at home, she had never seen anything like this. Her parents forwarded her videos of apartment buildings swinging. Her friends sent her pictures of the ocean water coming over the sea barriers and of shattered windows. In her parents’ apartment, the windows only started leaking.

Even more surprising than the damage created by this so-called super typhoon was the short time Hong Kong took to get back up on their feet: two days. Mullally is proud to be a Hong Konger. Despite the high amount of discrimination and racism in her hometown, Hong Kongers worked together to clean up the city.

Mullally is especially proud of the way ethnic minorities, refugees and locals did everything in their power to get the city back to running. Even though her light skin tone exempted her from severe discrimination, she feels closely connected to the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong.

From grade two to grade 10, Mullally attended public schools in Hong Kong, where she shared her classroom with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. She saw the disparity in the quality of education between different ethnic groups. According to Mullally, the structure of the education system in Hong Kong withholds minority groups who often struggle financially from a high-quality education.

All the more powerful was their dedication to Hong Kong and their commitment to reviving the city after Typhoon Mangkhut. Mullally, who is a government major at St. Lawrence University, sees the act by ethnic minorities, refugees and locals as their way “to show people that they are not bad people. They are normal like you and me. We’re the same, we’re just different colors, we are from different countries.” The communal efforts in combination with the strong infrastructure of the city led to a two-day recovery.

Mullally regrets the lack of media attention for the strength and vigor of her home community. “For just a dot on the map to be able to have the best infrastructure possible and to work together to get things back to normal,” should be a lesson to almost all Western societies, according to her.