Epic Tropical Low!? Gnarly Depression!? Yeah those don’t sound nearly as cool as Epic Hurricane and Gnarly Cyclone, but who uses the word Gnarly anymore anyway??
On Monday, January 30th, after a nice rainstorm overnight and into the morning and after my second to last ‘Healthy Woman, Healthy Children, Health Family’ Talk, Nurse Nicholas informs me that the radio has reported a hurricane (‘cyclone’ in this part of the world) over Efate heading South. Over the next day and a half I hear the same thing as we get pounded mercilessly by winds and rain – I mean coconut trees were bending practically in half before snapping up straight when the winds died down a little bit. People were strapping down for a hurricane: preparing houses, repairing old and new damage – Hurricane Holy-SHIT-Fuck is on the way and we’re ready. Well, the Peace Corps Office finally gets back to me on that wonderful gadget they gave us: the Satellite Phone. I can’t begin to decry the SAT Phone now, it would take an entire blog, but I can at least say that, you would think – you would think – setting up a network of satellites for the use of advanced phone networks would mean that the same ingenuity would go into designing the actual phone and its functions, but, unfortunately, no. They could take some pointers from the Cell Phone companies. In an actual emergency, I think I would walk the hour up the hill to use my cell phone instead of waiting on the SAT Phone. Now, to get back to the point, the Peace Corps Office gets back to me and tells me that Hurricane Holy-SHIT-Fuck is actually a Tropical Low – Tropical Low Holy-SHIT-Fuck?? – and is, in fact, not over Efate, but next to us. The Epic Tropical Low was, at that time, hovering over Santo – much closer to Maewo, which would explain the shit storm that hit us. I have never seen this amount of rain or wind. People who had gone to the gardens came back to find the river a raging torrent and were unable to get across. The following day the river had torn apart the surrounding land and practically doubled in width. The ocean had destroyed the beach and scattered coral and coconut trees all over. Worst of all, I found that my toilet had flooded. This was discovered as I realized the toilet paper wasn’t going very far down. With a handy flashlight, I found that my toilet’s pit – not even half full the day before – was filled with water mixed with excrement and almost to the top – Holy-SHIT-Fuck! In my estimation, that qualifies as a natural disaster, but that’s just my observation.
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