Dear Friends,
I've now been home for 24 hours following my 3 and a half weeks in
Fiji and have to admit to being somewhat jet-lagged and at the same
time relieved.
You see, on Monday December 17th the Eye of category 4 Cyclone Evan
passed over the village of Nawaicoba where I was staying on the farm
of my friends Praveen and Roshlyn. We knew it was coming and did some
tidying up the day before. At 0730 hours I managed to get my last SMS
out to let family know exactly where I was. 5 minutes later the
government had cut all power (thank goodness) and mobile phone
coverage ceased. I was able to stay out on the verandah until about
0800 by which time the winds were well over 100 kph and it became
impossible to stay upright.
Within the next hour those winds increased to over 200 kph with gusts
up to 250. I watched helplessly as one chicken coop headed skywards,
its occupants flying out on all sides. Thank goodness I had my
knitting as that horrendous incessant howl of the wind made speech
impossible. Although the light was dim I was able to see sheets of
corrugated iron; 44 gallon drums; coconut palm fronds; whole trees
hurtling past my window. I knitted on....
Some time that morning our outside kitchen also flew past my window
and a teenage son had to be forcibly restrained from running outside
to save it. It was 1700 hrs when the Eye gave us some respite. This,
however, only lasted for about 30 minutes before the winds returned
from the opposite direction as expected. That was when my louver
windows began to bulge ominously inwards!! I discovered that where
the central pole went into the concrete wall at the top the hole was
widening. I quickly found a mere pencil to shove in there and prevent
the window from exploding inwards. By this time I was knitting by
the light of one candle....
By about 2300 hrs we were all almost insane with the noise of that
wind. If you can imagine the loudest surf you've ever heard, then
multiply that by about 10, and tolerate it for about 20 hours, then
that is what the news reels can never portray. Eventually at about
2330 hrs I took a Temazepam and went to sleep.
Next morning there was a mad scramble through the shattered sugar
cane fields by all the village folk in order to find their own
particular pieces of rusty corrugated iron before anyone else "stole"
them. These were then promptly nailed back from whence they had
flown. The 2nd most important thing of peoples' minds seem to be
where and how could they get their mobile phones re-charged!! In our
case we were fortunate that a neighbour's mother had died a few days
before the cyclone and, being a Hindu family, they are required to
have nightly prayers for 13 days. Thus they had hired a generator. Of
course they got a good turn-up for the their prayers and people were
actually paying money to charge their phones - never mind that there
was no coverage at all for about 3 days.
Alas some 2 weeks later the power lines still lie on the roads where
they fell and the people are resigned to not having any power until
February at least!! No water pumps can work and so they have reverted
to using a pair of bullocks and 44 gallon drums to haul water from
the nearby wells and bores.
I did finish the front of my jumper that night....
enough for now
David in Ballarat, AUS
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