Fijian children will need to talk about their nightmares

Transcript

Aid agencies in Fiji say many children have had frightening experiences as a result of Cyclone Winston and will need to talk about them in order to recover properly.

Save the Children and UNICEF are distributing aid and visiting children in evacuation centres, schools and pre-schools.

Alex Perrottet is in Fiji and filed this report.

In Lavena village on Taveuni, there are children everywhere. One two-year-old in a nappy holding a large empty plastic water bottle waddles past the remains of a house and smiles. Others are in the church building overjoyed at the aid that's just arrived and rearranging the cooking oil bottles and buckets of rice countless times, like they're pieces of precious gold. They have been through a real nightmare.

JOELI VOLAU: When we tried to cross over to the school building, there were some flying iron sheets so we weren't able to cross over, so we stayed at home.

Joeli Volau says he then ran out to save some women and children and get them to the school. When he got back a tree landed on his roof, and then the verandah and half the roof were ripped off and thrown away by an invisible force.

JOELI VOLAU: That's when people started getting scared. Shouting, crying. The kids, they thought that with another blow, the wind might take the house and take them as well. So we have to try and comfort the kids, try and cool them down and try to get them to another safe place, so we managed to take them across to the school to one of the classrooms that still have one side of the roof.

Amid everything they have lost, Joeli says the village is blessed that all the children survived. But many are quiet. Iosefo Golenavanua has twin boys. The house was violently shaking and it was raining inside.

IOSEFO GOLENAVANUA: So we locked up our house, that was when the wind was very strong, and we jumped through this window and we locked from the outside and the wind came through the door, smashed the door, and through this room.

It was more than just an ordinary day for the twins as they cramped with five other families in the kindergarten classroom.

IOSEFO GOLENAVANUA: They celebrated their birthday on the hurricane day. It was not very good. With the rest of the people that we were living together so we had to kill a pig to celebrate that, even though we were downhearted.

Iosefo tried to get one of his sons Leone to speak, but he was not in the mood. Save the Children say kids will need to talk about their memories. Melanie Patterson, a child and family psychologist from New Zealand, says she spoke to two children who were thrown out the front windows of their house as it fell forward. She says in Raviravi village kids tore up floorboards in a classroom and sheltered underneath for hours.

MELANIE PATTERSON: It's going to be a major impact for them over several years and it's going to be really important that support is in their for them and for their parents, because if the parents are ok and able to talk through the situation with the children that's going to help the children to process what's happened as well.

Part of that support is to get them back to school straight away. Classes started on Monday in over 1000 schools and Alice Clements from UNICEF says that was a colossal effort.

ALICE CLEMENTS: The importance of this really can't be overstated. We have decades of experience now that proves that getting kids back into school as quickly as possible is the fastest way to help them recover emotionally, it's the fastest way to keep them safe and it's the best way to support recovery efforts overall.

Back in Lavena village Iosefo Golenavanua tries again to get Leone to tell me about the pig. In Fijian villages, killing a pig is a rare and costly affair. They are usually saved for weddings or important birthdays. I ask Leone what it was like.

Iosefo: "(Fijian)....Very good"
Leone: "Very good"
Iosefo: "(Fijian)... We eat..."
Leone: "We eat...um"
Iosefo: "Pork"
Leone: "Pig, pig"
Iosefo: "(Laughs)

With the pig eaten, and the house half gone, Iosefo Golenavanua can provide no material thing for his sons. With tears in his eyes he smiles at Leone and puts his arm around him as he walks him back to the kindergarten. At least they are talking.