Mele Village in Vanuatu comes to terms with cyclone rebuild

Transcript

Residents of Mele Village on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila are coming together to get their school ready after Cyclone Pam.

The largest village on Efate was focussing on repairing the school grounds and recovering crops after the storm.

Koroi Hawkins spoke to Chief Kalokai Masai next to what was once a classroom

KALOKAI MASAI: This was the year seven and year eight and also the principal's office where all the teachers meet when. It's been blown out. We're trying to pick it up... for any assistance from the government as we heard from the national radio that the schools will be back on Monday next week, so we try our best to clean up and see if we can get temporary tents or shelter in order to get the kids back in school next week.

KOROI HAWKINS: There's nothing but a concrete slab left, so if school's starting next week the kids don't have a school...

KM: Yeah as you see from here, we're just trying our best to get things ready in case of some assistance, tents or whatever, and we can cater for the teachers and the kids.

KH: What about the situation with food?

KM: In Mele, we're also affected by the flood. Very muddy, for the middle of the village. You can see from each household, they start to remove out the soft mud inside our houses. we're trying to clean up the mess all around the place, as you see from here. And most of the houses in this community of four thousand plus people - all the kitchens were blown down. Also in here, one of the evacuation centres where all families who couldn't live in their houses, they've been evacuated from when the cyclone started.

KH: Are people alright with food at the moment? They have enough food?

KM: At the moment... we had food after the cyclone. But now we are... you see we have two rivers and the village is in the middle. hen we talk about the flood, it covered up our gardens and we could not see any of our crops from the ground so we dig where we know there used to be something there... so it's pretty hard.

KH: So you were digging under water for your root crops?

KM: Yeah, we were digging under water for our root crops.

KH: I'm not a gardener or farmer but once the crops have been flooded like this, now it's drying out, will they survive? Will you have food in the weeks to come?

KM: That's a good question. We'll try our best. We have a meeting this morning. We can clear up schools and homes and then to our gardens, we can replant them... some will take time and there will be no food at the moment. We'll try our best anyway.    

KH: Has the government said anything about supporting you if the gardens do go bad and you do run out of food.

KM: We have support from the government as you see from the back of this church, where everything was going on two days ago. Assessment of the mess and everything. We submit our assessment forms to the province, so we're looking forward to hearing from the government. At the moment, some of the families who are still under the... with the church, have been given some food for the time being, they have some support. So at the moment, we're looking to the government to somehow, some way help us. But all the Vanuatu is (indecipherable) so we're not relying on the government. The community is trying to do something.

KH: Such a big disaster. As the chief of the village, how do you even start to think about rebuilding as you're doing now?

KM: My experience, going back to 1987 (when Cyclone Uma struck) what we need is we need to cooperate and rebuild in such a way that whatever we find we rebuild in terms of looking into restructuring back our buildings and things.  Of course this needs money and things but as a community it will take time. Most of the people now working... the financial situation is now a problem too in our village. Whatever we could find around, we will help each other. Everyone has their heads down because of the cyclone but it's a natural thing that we experience a lot of in Vanuatu. But we're looking forward...

KH: And if you could ask the world, the country, the government for something, what would it be that you would ask for?

KM: The main thing is that people could go back to their houses. And the other thing is that education is most important and health. We believe that we are not alone. We depend on other countries and other agencies to come in one way or another to help us survive after this cyclone. But thank god that we are lucky here - nobody is dead or whatever, people are safe so far.