Hurricanes

A little background on cyclones and Vanuatu. Cyclones are what the locals here call hurricanes. They start off as tropical lows which cause mild winds and LOTS of rain and then slowly build up into cyclones which range in power from 1-5, 5 being the worst hurricanes. In the past 5 years Vanuatu has experienced 13 tropical lows and 1 cyclone in their cyclone season, as best as I could find out from asking the locals. This cyclone season we’ve had 5 tropical lows and 3 of them have already become cyclones. The first one was only a category 1, the second one was a category 3 and the one that just came through was a category 3. The first one came through and spoiled Tanna a little and dumped a bunch of rain but overall left Vanuatu in good shape. The second one came through the northern islands and did little damage, but quickly went to destroy Queensland, Australia. The most recent one though is the first one I got to experience first hand. Friday morning a teacher told me there was a cyclone north east of Maewo, I hadn’t heard anything yet from the peace corps but I figured I’d check in on my way up to my house at lunch time. Sure enough there was a tropical low reported north east of Maewo. I went up and ate lunch, read a little and listened to the wind pick up intensity. Later on at about 4pm, it was starting to break some of the smaller tree branches so I went down the hill to call peace corps and find out what the deal was now. I was informed that the tropical low had now developed into a category 2 cyclone and that all of penema province was on yellow alert, the cyclone was in H-5 on the tracking map and  expect winds of up to 70 kph. Upon getting to the top of the hill I told my family the news and my dad camly let me know that H-5 was Maewo on the tracking map. Surprise! Haha. I ran into my house, put a dry change of clothes in my bag, made sure all my electronics were well put away safe and then grabbed my knife and raced out the door, expecting to run down the hill to avoid the storm. The rain was starting to torrent down, but my dad told me we’d go buy a kilo of flour from one of my aunties so we would have some dinner to eat down at the school while we waited out the storm. We hiked up through the wind and the rain to my aunties house and purchased a kilo of flour, patiently waiting for her to weigh out exactly 1 kilo and go to her house to get change because I’d over paid her by 10 cents. Afterwards we went down the hill and got to the school, looking back up from the calmness of one of the classrooms I could see all of the palm trees bending and one fell over in the wind. “Good thing you and I got down the hill quick,” my dad replied. Yeah! Luckily we stopped to get flour and then ran afterwards, I cant imagine what would have happened if we had decided to cook the flour into bread before coming down…. Being morbidly curious I asked my dad why it was good that we came quickly and he let me know that when the wind got that strong it could blow you off the trail that lead down to the school. Luckily we were down at the school with our kilo of flour and no way of cooking it haha. The storm continued dropping trees and the sun set leaving us to just wonder about the damage it was causing. After a few hours I got tired and not having anywhere else to sleep I rolled up my backpack for a pillow and crashed on one of the tables in the classroom. One of the windows wasn’t bolted well and would occasionally slam waking me up, but otherwise I slept pretty well, it was the first time since coming to Vanuatu that it had been below 70º farenheit so I was pretty happy about that. The next morning my dad and I went outside, it was still very windy but it had settled down a lot. We made our way up the hill working our way around downed trees blocking the trail and got back to the houses. Branches and trees were down all round us but nothing had broken my house luckily. My family lost a section of their roof though. On going inside I found that everything was soaking wet because the wind blew the rain through the bamboo walls of my house. I came outside to see my dad with a big smile letting me know how lucky we got off. At first I was grumpy, not having slept well and having everything in my house soaked, but after a moments pause, I too was smiling. I’d just been through a category 3 cyclone and my biggest problem was a wet mattress.