Tsunami!

To preface: yes, I am fine!

The clerk (basically the one-man provincial judicial system [and also a neighbor]) came to my house at 8pm Friday (March 11) to tell me he’d just turned on his radio and heard news about an earthquake in Japan and a tsunami warning for basically the entire Pacific. Honestly, I was almost glad to hear that, because when you’re a white girl in Vanuatu and you hear a mid-20’s male voice calling your name outside your bedroom window after dark, it’s usually a creeper. (They try to act like Romeo here, always after dark because they’re so shy. It’s the highest reported safety & security incident for PCVanuatu, and sometimes escalates into an actual safety concern. It’s literally called creeping).

Anyway, once I got over the initial relief that I was not being creeped, I realized that the situation at hand was not exactly a good one. Since Digicel had only worked on 3 days out of the previous 2 weeks, I turned on my satellite phone and sure enough, there was a message from Peace Corps telling me to prepare to move to high ground, tsunami expected between midnight and 2am. I grabbed a bag of flashlights, biscuits, water, and a sweatshirt (we’d just had another depression and it was still rather chilly – like below 80) and headed to my host family’s house.

Georgie had just gone out to dive (fish) so Jephline and Dorina ran out to get him while my host mama started getting mats and pillows ready. I went to the guesthouse to attempt to explain the situation to the new Japanese volunteer who doesn’t quite grasp Bislama yet, but whose English is even shakier. The kids came back within ten minutes – Georgie was a little shaken up. We were all ready to go by 8:45 and headed up the side of the hill to Betsy’s house. I believe Betsy is one of my tawis, or sisters-in-law. I think she’s the wife of one of my papa’s brother’s sons. Or something to that effect.

Nobody was in the mood for sleep, so we sat around outside for a while, looking at the stars and watching the bustle of flashlights in the village down below. A group had gone to weekend on the small island Kwakea, which has no hill, so soon a little bobbing flashlight could be seen out on the water bringing them back in. We went to bed eventually, which is not to say that we slept, being crowded into a very small room on a concrete floor with rats excited about all the company. Also it started to rain and the roof was not exactly watertight.

I heard a lot of shouting sometime between 12 and 1. Most of the men had stayed down near the shore, and I think this is the point at which the water got sucked out of the bay. From what I understand, the wave came down from the North/Northwest (because the earthquake was in Japan) and our bay is cut out of the Eastern side of the island. Had the wave come from the East, it could have filled the bay and potentially done a number on the village, but geography was on our side, so the reef just dried out, then filled back up. I’m not sure if the water level came back up any higher than normal at any point, but the lack of damage makes me think it didn’t.

My papa came up at 3 to report that the danger had passed, and the Japanese volunteer and I headed back down. I walked all the way home, which upset my mama when she found out later because “what if something had happened, you’d be dead and we’d be alive!” (There are no hills on my side of the village). But I wanted my own bed.

Saturday we sat on the beach and watched the tide go all the way out (still further than usual) and then come back in. The cycle that usually takes 10-12 hours was taking about ten minutes. Every time it went out, people ran out on the exposed reef and hunted for stranded fish.

Sunday we went swimming in the Silva (/Silver/Sulfur) River, which comes down from the volcano. The good swimming is at the mouth of the river where it mixes with the saltwater tide. The tide cycle had stretched out to about 20-30 minutes.

So there’s my tsunami story. The whole experience of Friday night sort of felt like gathering camp into the basement of Acorn (or Stoney Lodge, or Hunter, pick your camp!) for a tornado, except with a 4 hour warning instead of 20 minutes.