18:24.7S169:26.6 On our way to northern Tanna / Vulcano burps
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Wed 29 Apr 2015 02:12
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As planned we are now 2 boats heading for the
northern shores of Tanna, we are to visit 2 villages and one of the anchorages
can only be seen on satellite pictures but not on chart, so we ahve to go
careful.
On ChezNouis there is Mikael from Samarithan Purse
who is responsible for headcounts etc.
Lil Explorer is on their way to Lenaka to load food
according to whatever we find out.
Yesterday the docotors went away to run a clinic in
the "bush". I was not there but according to Ellinor they had to treat wuiate a
lot of wounds and infections. They had to use the pickup truck as clinic,
Ellinor had the front seat, Shannon the back seat and Kim had the cargo area of
the truck. It all went well and after treating 20 patients they took off to a
small village that had not been attended to, there they used a school building
that had half the roof left. They treated the patients on schoolbenches that
were pulled together.
With them was Cassidy the 16 year old girl from
LilExplorer and Jonathan, alocal guy who translated for them when necessary.
They also had a driver.
Doing good is god but we all had one demand, we
would not leave Tanna untill we saw the vulcano. So it was fitted in by 4 in the
afternoon.
The doctors came directly to the vulcano and the
rest of us had arranged a truck to take us there. During the day we unloaded
food to the village where we were anchored as their promised supplies were not
coming and people were hungry.
We unloaded half of our cargo and the action was
imidiate. I do not know if I told you before, but they had some rice in the
village but it was not enough to be sufficient for all families, so it stayed
unpacked. They are extremely hard on justice and equality (something to learn
there?).
Now when our food came ashore they could suddenly
distribute and oh boy what an activity! They made piles and also made sure that
the neighbouring villages would get their share.
Our truck we were told would not make it. Well
Courages answer was that it has to happen. And somehow a truck showed up and the
driver accidently locked in his keys in the truck. So teher we stood, with 7
kids and 5 adults and no truck. Does stop a yachtee?
Nope, we got our tools out and a coathanger made of
wire. And within minutes the truck was open, the driver was astonished and it
lookek like disappointed that lock were not better... Anyway then cam the next
news, he was not going to take us, his truck was not good enough but they had
aranged anothe better truck that would be by us at 1600.
Was it ther 1600?
YES!
On time, like swiss train. All kids in, all food,
long pants, real shoes etc, went in the back of the truck and then we started
bumping around in the forest like ping pong balls in a food
mixer....
The kids loved it, all the way.
I wont bore you with any detalis on the trip, but
once there we climbed the steep hillside and once on top there was a sight we
will nevere ever forget, not to talk about the forces, the sound of grumbling
lava, the spouts of melted lava in the air. Een the kids got huge
eyes.
Somebody even said, how can they let people up
here? The vulcano would grumble and rumble for 5 minutes and then suddenly a lot
of force seem to be built up and it gave off a deep loud vulcano burp and lava
would fly up in the air, the whole ground shaking with an earth
quake.
It is funny, if you try to talk to someone on top
of a vulcano, well an active one, it is hard to concentrate.
No pictures can show the grandness of it, and as it
became dark the glowing became more and more dense.
Erika said that this must be the highlight of the
entire trip.
Then we all bumped back in the dark and took the
dinghies back to our wet life. The anchorage was terrible last night but we
survive.
Now we have a great trip up the coast and tomorrow
the wind is starting to pipe up, we better make sure we are done on the east
side of the coast.
Right now we made to a village and here we have no
charts that are reliable. Ellinor is ashore checking medical
status.
We are apparently the first ones that got here. So
now we are checking the food situation and make a headcount.
We have the weather stress, if it gets worse nobody
can get here. And they need food!
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