30 April 2015
Just over a month has passed since Peace Corps Vanuatu made
its mass exodus from Sydney to return home after a two week emotional rollercoaster.
As is consistent with my ever exciting life living in the bush of Malekula,
much has happened throughout this last month. I’ll go into detail about these
things in another article but between new babies, ups and downs at school and
the arrival of new volunteers, it’s easy to let the experience of being
evacuated from Vanuatu slip into the darker corners of my memory where the
distinction between real life and torturous dream begin to blur. Maybe this is
due to subconscious coping methods but it is definitely enhanced by the fact
that when I returned to Matanvat, things looked pretty similar to when I
departed three weeks earlier. Houses stood, trees held their leaves and we had
a good amount of avocados. These facts accompanied by my family welcoming me
back just as they had after any trip out of the village made it easy to slip back
into the normalcy of abnormal everyday life and to avoid thinking about what
had happened any more than others forced me to. These things combined with the
fact that I haven’t had access to internet make up my excuse for not having
written or posted anything about the evacuation until now.
I also believe it’s not the best idea to write and post
things for others to see while emotionally charged. While I can’t be certain of
the demographic of people reading my blog, I can’t help but assume that others
out there have posted something to the internet while upset, tired, excited,
lonely or confused and either instantly, or at least shortly thereafter,
realized that maybe they should have calmed down before sharing their feelings
with the world. Not only is it not the
best idea to share under the strain of extreme emotions, we write more clearly
after a period of detatchment from the situation because we have taken time to
sort out everything and can identify only the most descriptive and important
parts of our story to share. This is why it took me awhile to post about the
passing of my host Mami. A few times I sat down to try to write but found
nonsense on the page and tears in my eyes. I found that when I was finally able
to sit down and write without crying (too much), I was finally writing
something that other people could read and make sense of. Likewise, I’ll now
try to let you in on what this evacuation was like, timeline included.
6 March—I return
from vila excited and ready to get going with work at school. It was time to
review applications for the librarian position at the school, start building
shelves for the new books coming through Dane’s book project and finally finish
painting the world map. I left vila on the morning flight to Malekula and arrived
in Norsup around 11am. I wasn’t alone though, I had half-stolen/asked kind of
some of the women who work at the Pacific Paradise Motel if I could adopt a
small orange puskat living on the grounds. His mama wasn’t very good to him and
was always fighting him for food so I figured at least I could take care of him
a little more than that. They agreed and we put him in a box before going to
the airport. Alison, Dave and I had named him Ginger(beer) while at Pac Par but
once I got to my house the kids started calling him Cheetah which I changed to
Cheeto and now I just think he’s confused about his name. Either way, Cheeto
and I returned to Matanvat early with enough time for me to clean my house
before the sun went down. Man it felt good to be home.
7 March—This next
morning I woke up ready for a relaxing Sabbath with the fam. I woke to find a
text from Kelsey saying that we had been informed about a possible cyclone
heading towards Vanuatu. The text came from the office in vila and asked us to
prepare our houses and be ready for a possible evacuation to vila if the storm
stayed on track to be the category 5 that was predicted. I read the text,
laughed a little and went on with my morning. Maybe two hours later I got a
call from Kelsey saying that we were being evacuated to vila. I laughed,
because this just felt so absurd seeing as id only returned from vila the day
before, and she told me I had to find my way to Lakatoro that day. I called my
brother who lives in Lakatoro and he came for me and we got Kelsey on the way
as well. Throughout this whole process I still couldn’t shake the feeling that
this was all going to be for nothing and that I’d be back in Matanvat within
the week. While we humans generally thing and imagine the worst in every
situation, rarely does the worst come to fruition. We also have the tendency to
believe that the worst can’t happen to us. I’ve stopped letting these thoughts
into my brain since this experience.
8 March-10 March—Kelsey,
Amanda, Mike and I stayed at Amanda’s that night and Jon came to meet us for
our flight the next day. Sunday we flew to Santo and then Vila. The whole time,
pretty much from the start of the evacuation on Saturday, I had been sick. My
stomach was sore (which was leading to its own troubles), I couldn’t eat and I
was really tired. During our layover in Santo we went to Attar for lunch and
internet but I was on the floor sleeping or in the toilet puking for pretty
much the whole time. At least I could call my family and let them know what was
going on.
Later that day we arrived in vila and I was able to relax in
Pac Par and sleep. I was sick, confused and unsure of what was coming but glad
to be in a comfortable bed, a shower and some good friends.
10 March-12 March—We
stayed at Pac Par for two nights but when we heard that the cyclone was
developing into at least a category 4 we were moved into the Holiday Inn. When
we think about Holiday Inn in the states we often think of less than luxurious
yet clean and comfortable accommodations. However, Holiday Inn in Vila is a top
resort located inland on a large lagoon with an incredible buffet and very soft
pillows. It’s huge and supposed to be one of the strongest structures in the
country. We moved to there to ride out the storm. The days at Holiday Inn we filled
with daily updates about the storm, our plans for riding it out and volunteers
constantly on the phone with host families—urging them to prepare their homes,
gardens and animals for the storm to come—and with families and friends in the
states letting them know the latest news and trying to help them not freak out
too much.
On 11 March we were brought into the lobby and told we were
being evacuated by the US Military on a plane that had already been in Vila. The
storm was on a path right through Vanuatu and it was now wavering between
category 4 and 5. While PC staff felt like we could ride it out in Vanuatu, we
were evacuating because our military was, just to be safe. Half of our group
was shuttled to the airport first and as the second group was on its way we
were told that there wasn’t enough room on the plane for all of us, we were
staying. There weren’t any more commercial flights allowed out of Vanuatu so it
looked like we were riding out the storm at the Holiday Inn. We all took the
final hours of cell network that we thought we had to call our host families.
The storm was supposed to start hitting ground that night and the next morning.
On Thursday, 12 March, we woke again at the Holiday Inn.
After breakfast we were back in our rooms to wait. Not long after we got a call
that we were being evacuated, for real this time, and going to Sydney. The
office had requested a flight to be chartered out of Brisbane to come for us
within the next few hours and take us to Sydney. Due to the evacuation fake out
we had experienced the day before some of us were skeptical still but when we
arrived at the airport and began checking in, we realized it was for real. At
around 5pm we were boarded, strapped in and off to Sydney.
As I write this I’m referencing my calendar to find the
exact dates of everything and can’t believe that we only spent two nights at
the Holiday Inn. Thinking back it just seems like we were there for longer,
constantly being tugged between conspiracy theories, emotional highs and
extreme lows.
12 March-26 March—It had been over a year since I arrived in Vanuatu and unlike some others, I hadn’t left since arriving in January 2014. As we prepared to make our descent in Sydney I was shocked by all of the lights. The city was completely illuminated and it was 10pm. We got off the plane and zombie walked through customs and out into the lobby to wait for our transport to the hotel. For
two weeks, 65 Peace Corps Volunteers (some on their 3rd or 4th
year, many just beginning our 2nd year and others, trainees, who had
only been in Vanuatu two months) and one brave staff member and his wife,
invaded Sydney armed with a spectrum of emotions, very little money and all
packed into the same small airport hotel. The network was down all over Vanuatu
so we weren’t able to contact anyone and as each day passed we found more
heartbreaking photos and stories on the internet. It was a weird two weeks to
say the least and everyone was dealing with it differently.
Although my family, my island and the entire country were constantly on my mind, I forced myself into realizing that there
was very little I could do to change or impact what was going on Vanuatu. If I couldn't contact anyone in Vanuatu to settle my worries I figured the best thing I could do was keep myself occupied and my mind and body healthy so that I could return as the best me I could be. Instead of sitting miserable in the hotel, I tried to get
out and take care of what I actually had control over, my own mental and
physical health. I met up with good friends from the U.S. (shout out Arielle, Ming and Zan!!! thanks for the best times) now living in
Sydney and took opportunities to get to know the city. I explored Bondi Beach,
the CBD and the Blue Mountains, went to a gallery walk with Arielle and enjoyed
good food all around. While detaching from reality a bit was good for me, I
know that not all people cope this way.
In addition to clearing my mind I also took advantage of the
opportunities I had to impact relief efforts in Vanuatu by reaching out to
friends and family. Some other volunteers also set up meetings with various
individuals and groups involved in the relief effort so we were also able to
learn about how we would be able to help once we got back. The ability to use
being in Sydney to our advantage in terms of social networking and
communication with relief agencies all around the world, as well as the ability
to communicate with our friends and families in the States, made being in
Sydney the best possible place for us to be during this time. In terms of
donations, thank you so much to everyone who donated to any one of the various
agencies operating in Vanuatu, as well as more private donation baskets. Upon
our return to Vila on 26 March it was clear that there was a lot of work to do
but it was also clear that there was already a lot happening.
26 March-28 March—Exactly
two weeks after arriving in Sydney, and exactly one year since my group was
sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers, we left Sydney on a commercial flight to
Vila. Although we were the same group the photo we took in the Sydney airport
was a much happier one that we had taken upon our departure. Some people had
new haircuts, piercings and tattoos, others had a few new kilos thanks to all
the greasy hotel food but everyone seemed to have happiness clearly visible.
As we neared vila to make our descent this excitement began
to turn in me as I realized again that the country we were flying into was
going to be very different than the one we had left. As we got closer I began
to notice the barren trees that lined the landscape and how distinctly opposite
this was to the landscape I had touched down in the year before. We got off the
plane and I was reminded of the first thought I had when I arrived the year
before, that this was the greenest place I’d ever seen. This time all I could
really see were leafless trees . The zombie walk commenced once again through
customs but once we turned the corner into the lobby and were greeted by a
cheery PC Vanuatu staff holding a big welcome home banner, I felt at ease
again.
We made our way to Pac Par and to our great relief found
that it had not suffered too much damage during the cyclone. Some of the rooms
lacked power but that wasn’t an unfamiliar thing. It was almost a relief
returning to a life without electricity after being in Sydney for two weeks.
The next day I did some quick shopping for food to bring
back to Malekula. I went to Au Bon Marche for breakfast crackers and peanut
butter for my family and olive oil for myself. It was crowded but I slowly
maneuvered the rows and got what I needed. As I was about to leave a man
approached me who I’ll admit I didn’t recognize. We shook hands and he told me
that he had been part of my extended host family in Epau during training. I had
heard news of Epau and it wasn’t good, people said that nearly every house had
fallen down. I asked him how the family was and shared my sori about the
community. He thanked me but assured me that everyone was in good spirits.
Wondering silently how this was possible he told me that it wasn’t something to
worry about. Pam had destroyed their homes but really, everyone was alright.
They were looking at this as an opportunity to start again and build better
houses. I was shocked but smiling and thankful that I had run into this man who
had suddenly put a new positive energy in my heart.
Saturday morning (exactly three weeks after departing for
the evacuation), Kelsey and I returned to Malekula. I was greeted by my family,
Spike and (to my surprise) Cheeto, as well as a big plate of laplap. It was the
best return home I could have hoped for. The next day I cleaned my house and
did laundry for the full day. Again, I was refreshed and ready to start the
school year and only hoped that this time it would last.
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