Meet Cook, my very first Cyclone!

I recently got back to Port Vila after three weeks spent on Ambrym, another of Vanuatu's islands.  I was spending time with Kathleen, a volunteer there who is working on the same project as me.  I helped her lead part of the two-week training with youth that starts the project, and had plenty of time to enjoy her site - one of the most beautiful villages I've been to so far.  Ambrym is volcanic (it has two active volcanoes), so the beaches are all black volcanic sand and it has a beautiful, mountainous landscape.

At the end of my second week there, Cyclone Cook passed through Vanuatu.  This is the first time I've experienced a cyclone or hurricane firsthand.  A couple days before the cyclone passed through our area, the weather started to get windy and the waves were stronger than before.

Peace Corps does a great job at looking out for the safety of volunteers, and we began to get regular texts from our Safety and Security manager in the office about the storm's location.  Vanuatu has a cyclone tracking map - here's an image of it.  Along the side of the map is a description of storm categories; Cook started as a "Tropical Low", but was a category 1 cyclone by the time it reached us.  It ended up reaching category 2, but by that time it had moved further south than us.  Peace Corps used the coordinates on the map to tell us where the storm was located, and the national government was also sending out the same information by radio.

As the storm got closer, the wind and rain picked up.  Some members of Kathleen's community own fiberglass motorboats (used for fishing and transportation), and we went down to the beach with a group of men to help haul the boats out of the water.  They were pushed high up into the bush by rolling them on plastic pvc pipes, so they couldn't be swept away by the waves.  It was fun being out there in the rain with everyone, getting soaked and helping push the boats.  Everyone prepared their houses, as well.  Many of the houses have thatch roofs, which are great for keeping a house cool and allowing air circulation - but the thatch can be blown off in heavy wind.  To prevent this people cut coconut leaves, tie them together in sets of two, and lay them over the top of the roof to weigh the thatch down.  Here's a photo of Kathleen's house once we'd done this, with the help of her family in village:

Once the house was all set, nothing was left but to wait for the cyclone to blow over.  It never went right over where we were, but passed relatively close by - we had one very windy night where neither of us got much sleep, but the roof stayed on the house and only a little rain got in through the walls.  In the village as a whole, most of the houses got through the cyclone just fine, although lots of banana trees and manioc plants in the gardens were blown down and will take a long time to grow back.  But everyone was safe, and once the wind died down we all got to work cleaning up downed tree branches, drying out wet clothes and mattresses, and starting normal life again.