Garrett and I, both equipped with our arsenal of cameras, sat atop propane tanks and cracker bins documenting the horizontal palm fronds. While everyone else was enclosed in woven bamboo walls, we found relative shelter under the awning of the billiard area, with a concrete floor and an opening behind us facing the belly of the beast. And with every hearty gust, my pigtail braids split over my shoulders and flopped in front of me, flanking my face. My all black gear coated with a thick layer of mist, I avoided touching my clothes in order to keep the rain from penetrating to my goose-bumped skin.

The boys ran back and forth through the storm, making sure cows were secure and homes wouldn’t fly away in the night. Adorning little kid ponchos and hard hats, they laughed with every exclamation of further duties they had to complete before the dangerous eye drew closer.

Garrett and I packed our bags of must-save items and asked for emergency plans, but there really weren’t any. “Get under the house if the roof blows away,” they would say with a chortle before running back into the gales.

Nothing Stops Tea Time

The one thing I love most about former British colonies is tea time, undoubtedly. It happens whether you’re in the midst of a funeral, a natural disaster, a blizzard at 17,000 feet, you name it. Though rain came spewing through the cracks in the walls, Fane was still able to strike a fire. Though the pipes weren’t connected because of the overflowing river, she filled the kettle with monster drops collected off the roof. Though homes were in danger of being thrust to the next mountaintop, Paul found it essential to have some coffee with his hot sugar water before tending to the rest of the unanchored bures.

We had no idea what to do but go along with the light-hearted merriment, sipping java and cracking jokes like the sun was smiling.

And after the jokes cracked the necks of two chickens, two victims of the wind too weak to stand firm in an unfortunate gust. One hand reached around the blue curtain (shielding one side of the porch) and flopped a hen, barely moving but obviously still alive, which was soon followed by her husband, uncle or brother, a rooster with the same malady. Slicing the tracheas with a knife, Weiss (our host father) made our dinner menu official. Abel and one of his hundreds of cousins plucked, chopped and cleaned the pimply bodies in the runoff from the tin roof, not without pretending to play the beaks like kazoos.

The Fijian language radio station spilled into the village air, apparently telling everyone that the heart of the storm was approaching at 7pm. All day long we watched waves of water in the sky, counting down to the moment the entire village would be leveled. 5 hours. 3 hours. 1 hour to go! The boys made it sound like we’d never see another sunny day in the South Pacific.

No Way Out

7pm was chirping, calm, and partially cloudy with a chance of absolutely no eye-o-storm. Everyone wanted to run a kilometer down the road to see the land bridge we crossed nine hours earlier. I picked up fallen mandarin oranges along the way to find there was no such bridge. Entire bamboo plants shot down the river, colliding with volcanic walls like hopeless bones snapping in a box crusher.

Landslides dotted the landscape, and the river was now twice as wide. Eroded trees squished into the road like an untucked belly. I couldn’t believe the amount of water that powered through the cavern at Namando. Had I zorbed down the rapids, the inflated ball would have exploded dramatically into bits as small as the muddy mist, and I would have been a goner. The pure power of the water in front of me was too scary to fully comprehend.

We returned to Fane’s house for our Mick Chicken dinner and show. I uploaded every video from the day and replayed them over and over for every new male that entered the room. When my laptop nearly self-combusted, we turned on the TV, and I fell asleep in the middle of a crowded room of boys watching a bootleg ninja movie. I anticipated an after-shock storm, some rumbles in the distance or a light rain. Not a peep resonated from nature that night.

The next morning Namando was visible, and the water was thirty feet lower. It was simply a marvel.

I couldn’t believe the power I witnessed: the power of the river and rain, the strength of Namando’s rock to not budge from the opposition, the muscle of the winds that made the sky dance with water, the bodies of the men who ran through the gusts to save a somersaulting piece of tin, the smiling cheeks of the residents who watched their kitchens and bathrooms fall apart, sometimes leaving behind the lone standing toilet.

I should have been worried and frozen in awe, but the scene in our house the previous night resembled more the Chuckles Comedy Club rather than a storm shelter. It was the perfect way to throw our caution to Mick’s billowing breaths and let nature take its course across Viti Levu. Why worry when its inevitable and you’ll most likely be okay? Why not enjoy it until you have a reason to fret? Was that front all just for us to not worry? I just can’t believe I laughed through my first hurricane.

See the video of our hurricane experience, Surviving Cyclone Mick, and please comment below your opinion of the village’s approach to this natural disaster.

Subscribe to Nomadderwhere’s posts via RSS feed or e-mail

Oddly enough, the village of Nakavika seemed to find the Category 2 storm amusing.

It could have been their disinterest in the art of worrying, a display of strength or courage, or it could have been the normalcy of the event in the middle of the appropriate season. Whatever made the villagers jovial throughout Mick made my first hurricane a memorable adventure, rather than a lip-biting, pant-wetting mud fest.

Our First Coastal Venture

After one week of get-to-know-yous and what-the-heck-is-thats, Garrett and I needed to spend some time online in Suva, in order to contact our families and update Nomadderwhere. Our host mother, Fane, came along with us to turn our day-trip into a weekend, giving us some meals and a place to stay overnight in Pacific Harbour, an hours drive from Suva.

I’d never seen the capital city before, and though I wasn’t all too impressed, it offered an ample amount of amenities we took full advantage of after a week in Nakavika.

We took a mini-bus to Pacific Harbour, singing along to the Beyonce’s music videos being played, and planted our tired buns on floor mattresses at Fane’s other sisters, two flea-ridden kittens curling up tight to Garrett’s legs. In the morning, we took our time walking to the Arts Village, a collection of apartments, shops and old Fijian war bures where tourists flock for culture.

A long beach nearby had us entranced, running into the waves haphazardly, and Fane watched on, her clothes flapping in the steadily increasing winds. It was Saturday; should we go back to the village or spend two more days at the beach? Our project objectives made that decision for us, and we met the carrier a couple hours later. Had we fallen weak to the glory of the ocean, we would have missed that crucial opening in weather and road condition.

My First Landslide

Nothing amplifies the terror and drama of a massive rain storm better than a corrugated tin roof. I slept a total of 30 minutes the following night, dozing and jerking wide awake for the majority of those dark hours. If I were at home and 15 years younger (who am I kidding…I would do this now), I would have lurched out of bed, climbed the stairs on all fours, and cowered beside my parents’ squished against the dust ruffle.

There, on my half-inch foam mat on the floor of a wooden home in the middle of a caldera in the South Pacific, I had no plan of escape for comfort. I didn’t know the drill.

What if the house slides down into the ravine about 20 feet away? Is the wind strong enough to rip the roof from its anchoring nails?

I heard something thunderous outside but not thunder – a mini-avalanche. Was it right outside my window? Come to find out the next day…yes, it was. Though our house was comfortably far from the landslide zone, these crashes of dirt, water and trees were our neighbors, and I perked my ears toward the next rumbling echoes, hoping they wouldn’t surround me on all sides.

The Not So Impermeable

The ominous evening was evidence enough; there was a cyclone approaching. And while every man and son began tying their homes to the soppy ground, Abel came over to ask Garrett and me,

Want to go for a walk to find my cows?

A category 2 hurricane was klobbering the highlands. Sure, let’s go for a wee stroll.

By the time we reached the edge of the village, our rain shells had no purpose other than weighing us down. Sweat on the inside and rain on the outside, I acquired a very uncomfortable second skin. Had I taken my camera, even in a Ziploc bag, it would have been toast.

Walking along the road toward Suva, we approached the land bridge over a cavern that was quickly filling to the brim with water. Under normal weather circumstances, this cavern, known as Namando, allows the river to run through one opening not much wider than a person. Under these weather circumstances, the rocks couldn’t even begin to persuade a route for the water. The river pounded through. A couple boys, heads wrapped in t-shirts to keep the rain out of their eyes, stood transfixed, slowly watching the rain advance on their village’s main access to civilization. We crossed the bridge and followed an old road, in search of some mischievous brown cows.

Laughing all the way about whatever immature topic delighted us at the time, I stopped periodically to take a breather and gaze out from our route along a hillside. The interior stretched on; it was drenched. The kind of rain that could permeate skin and souls fell without fail from the gray and frothy skies. I stared on thinking, “There’s no way anyone could visually capture nature’s emotion the way I perceive it right now. She’s all wound up. Today, she is a beast, and she’s coming for us.”

We finally got to Abel’s cows and stood dripping as he untied all five of them from their trees. Throwing a rope to me, I assumed the position of “cowgirl,” not a role I’ve always dreamed of, but standing in the midst of a heaving storm made me feel displaced and giddy enough to be just about anybody. Each cow crossed the road slowly and carried on chewing new grass. Abel tied each one down again.

Is that it? You just had to move them to the other side of the road?

Yeah. Let’s go back.

Crossing the land bridge once more, the water was many feet higher than we last observed. Abel knew we were jazzed by the entire scene and led us down the hell-inspired rocks that edged the cavern. The turban boys at the top called down to us, suggesting we evacuate or die, but we were hypnotized. Standing beside the gushing river, we saw where the water pushed through without patience. And for the few minutes, we stood in the belly of a time bomb letting the water rise to lick our toes. I shivered at the magnitude of the future, and we crossed the bridge one last time before it was demolished.

Want to hear about the heart of the storm and the aftermath of this hurricane? Check back next week for the continuation of this story on Cyclone Mick.

Subscribe to Nomadderwhere’s posts via RSS feed or e-mail