Cyclone Vania

My return to Tanna Island has been a momentous one. I was welcomed back to the school by a wonderful group of 4 girls who had adorned my house, from door to roof to clothesline, with pink flowers. I was presented with my “first nawanagen” of 2011, my favorite local dish of greens rolled around grated cassava. It was all quite adorable and a pleasant afternoon. And after quietly going to sleep my very first night back, I was woken by a 6.6 earthquake. Startling for sure, and being in a coastal village where a tsunami threat is a significant one, I immediately tried to figure out if we had a tsunami warning or not. It was my lucky night- I had phone service! So straight away I did two things: get in touch with volunteers in Port Vila (to hear about any immediate warning) and send a message to Emily’s phone (to hopefully get some actual info on the earthquake, all the way from New York). The night continued on with a series of 8 aftershocks all over 5.0 and I think a few smaller ones. It was a shaky night to say the least. I always find it entertaining to hear more information coming from the US than locally from here, in the form of text message from Emily, which is how I now know the magnitudes of all the Tanna quakes of January 9^th. Fortunately there was no tsunami warning that I heard about that night, which meant I didn’t have to take off up the hills my first restless night back.

The 9^th of January was followed by two peaceful days of intense humidity, nonstop sweating, delicious pineapple, and the smell of bleach and pine sol as I tried to rid my little house of its layers of dust and volcanic ash. And then on Tuesday the 11^th I was informed of a “tropical depression” between the main island of Efate and the island of Tanna. The locals assured me a cyclone couldn’t happen. There is a “cyclone stone” in the village, and as long as they keep it clean and respect it, we won’t have any cyclones. Indeed, last time a cyclone struck the island two local men were fined for having “dirtied” the stone and causing the cyclone. Well I guess someone toyed with the stone. Sure enough on Wednesday morning, the winds and rains picked up like I’ve never seen before. Local men came at my house with cement bricks to secure my roof, and boarded up all my windows with sheets of metal.

The tropical depression developed into a Category 2 Cyclone Vania and passed from the northeast to the northwest waters around Tanna over a period of about 48 hours. The first day and night I had 2 small friends over at my house to keep me company and keep me sane. We played a lot of Uno. When a chunk of the boarding of my house flew off, it was 11-year-old Nerry’s idea to secure it back on with some logs. The winds and rains were so intense. At one point I was using an outdoor toilet that literally almost fell down on top of me. (After that I stopped drinking water for the rest of the day.) But luckily my house survived Vania. My outdoor “small house” (bathroom) and “swim house” (bucket bath stall) blew down. But perhaps the worst damage done by Cyclone Vania was to the crops. All the ripe and unripe fruits fell from the trees (including hundreds of avocados from the tree outside my house), banana trees fell down everywhere, and worst of all I hear there was significant damage to the cassava and yam gardens, which will ultimately affect the daily food for families and the custom ceremonies of later this year. But now that Cyclone Vania has passed on, I am just glad that for all it did, it was a mere Category 2. If it had been stronger, especially a 4 or 5, the damage to this island would have been devastating, as there wouldn’t have been a single safe place to hide out, the homes all would have been destroyed and probably lots of people would have been killed. I hope that Cyclone Vania is the only cyclone we see on Tanna this year, as the cyclone season continues until March/April.

As Cyclone Vania came to a close Thursday night, we experienced yet another earthquake, this time a 7.3 located 87 miles southwest of Tanna, followed by a couple of small aftershocks. And with that, I am now hoping to go back to the pineapples, the strong heat, the rebuilding of my small house, and the things I considered normal for small island life on Tanna.

(This house was strong enough to support itself against the fallen tree, but not all houses were. And SO MANY trees hit the ground during the cyclone.)