March 1, 2004
Letter 19
Dear Friends,
Cyclone Ivy came down from the north last week and stomped ponderously
the whole length of the country. I’m ashamed to say that
our first reaction, on hearing of the approaching storm, was one
of excitement. Wow! An adventure! Kinsey and Emily do not remember
the cyclone that we lived through when they were small, so this
was like a gift to them, an experience to help them understand
the tropics better, a dramatic memory to keep.
On Wednesday, as the storm approached, I went down to the beach
with the girls and a couple of neighbor kids. The surf out on
the reef was amazing, with the tops of green waves being blown
off into nothingness. The girls had a hard time standing up in
the wind, and we knew it was time to take cover.
We spent Wednesday night, Thursday, and Thursday night mopping
water off the floor, peeking out the door during quieter periods,
and marveling at the strength and size of the storm. The house
was dark with the storm shutters closed and no electricity, so
we passed the time together. During noisy times, when it sounded
like a freight train was going through the yard, we played the
card game “Dutch Blitz.” During quieter times, we
listened to Lora read aloud. I played the recorder for a while,
and Emily drew some pictures. Kinsey journaled most of the day,
and did the knots/km/mph conversions from the radio broadcasts.
Emily was bored enough to practice sliding along the cement floor,
like a kid on a patch of ice. At one point, the cat’s water
dish was floating around on the kitchen floor. I guess that’s
why you call it a water dish, huh? We laughed a lot. Lora made
some peach cobbler and Kinsey did dishes. All of this occurred
by candlelight, a tiny island of light and peace in the middle
of the storm. We are grateful for our house, leaky as it is. It
kept us safe.
During lulls, we realized that we were not alone. We shared small
moments with each of the other three houses in our compound. Robea
ran out to our garden and whacked off the leaves of our banana
trees that had not yet fallen over. We didn’t know that
you should cut off the ‘sails’ so that they did not
blow over. It looks like he managed to save about four from having
to start over from the roots. He also brought over some steamed
bananas that his wife, Leiwia, had cooked for breakfast. Later
in the day, when the wind switched directions, I went out and
helped him nail down several of his shutters. Katrina walked across
the lawn to share the latest weather report from Radio New Zealand
and to ask for advice on what to feed a young myna bird that had
hopped through her open door. She also loaned us three rolls of
toilet paper. Marie and Lynette, young Ni-Vanuatu teachers, waved
at us through the downpour. We could see their smiles, but couldn’t
hear what they were calling. We learned later that this was the
first cyclone they had experienced as adults. They missed their
parents.
Ivy’s winds topped out at about 130 miles per hour, which
ranks it as a medium-sized Pacific hurricane. It was barely over
half as strong as Cyclone Zoe, the largest tropical storm on record,
which threatened Vanuatu last year.
On Friday, though the wind was still fairly strong, we could
walk outside between rain squalls and look around. There were
coconut fronds and coconuts scattered all around the grounds,
some up to fifty feet from the tree where they grew. There were
three coconut trees that snapped in half along “Coconut
Row,” the road to our house, but the tree by our house,
close enough to land on it, did not fall. There are many trees
down in the forest behind our house, including the girls’
“climbing tree,” where Emily used to like to study
in the breeze. Our lemon tree is uprooted, as well as both papaya
trees. Our garden is a disaster area, and our picnic site behind
it is a mass of downed trees. Amazingly, there are still a few
zinnias and one puzzled Mexican sunflower still standing in Lora’s
flower bed. Robea shared one secret benefit of a cyclone: you
can cut open the terminal bud hidden inside the bundle of leaves
of a fallen coconut tree, and eat the cool, papery new leaves.
They are white and faintly sweet. Friday evening was lavender,
with tall peach clouds blooming in the sunset. How quiet it was!
How incredibly peaceful after the noise of the preceding two days!
The students’ families were given the option of evacuating
to their homes, and about half of them left on Wednesday. The
ones who stayed behind moved into the newest, strongest classrooms,
and passed the time singing, playing, guitars, and braiding each
other’s hair. There were no injuries. The school suffered
very little damage. Several eaves and windows were broken, but
the dorms and classrooms were all OK. The old drying shed by the
girls’ dorms, where the girls hang their laundry, collapsed,
and a tree fell on one storage container full of cement, which,
of course, was ruined. Several small sheds lost their roofs. |
