Bongil Bay 18:54.11S169:03.38E
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Fri 8 May 2015 19:08
|
We arrived at this settlement by lunch friday. As
soon as the anchors where down Jonathan and I went ashore with kava and met
the chief.
Everybody was very curious about why we had come.
All men gathered and they all spoke very good english. We learned
that Bongil Bay is just a small settlement where you can reach other
villages up in the mountains, the bigger one being "Happy land" where they have
an aid post with a local health care worker. They have all been badly hit and
Bongil for instance got totally wiped out except one building, their concrete
church where they did hide.
Their gardens where they grow food are all
destroyed. The chief who was very easy to communicate with has organised so they
all had shelters again with scrap material that was left over from the
hurricane. Their beach, that consists of big rocks and not sand has been in
the direction that debris during the storm came up here. This means that they
have a collection of trees that looks crazy. they are huge, bare scraped from
the sea and torn to massive pieces of junk. They also have a river, well it is
now a 5-7 knots river after the rains with following flooding.
We decided that they needed one day to get the word
to the villages that we had medical aid and we also decided to give out the rest
of the food we have on board. They are a total of 80 people here and what we
have is better than nothing, a couple of hundred kilos of rice, a couple of
hundred kilos of lentils etc. They also need nails, hammers and machetas. The
chief asked if we could organise seeds, that is something we wanted to bring but
it is illigal to import seeds without following a certain routin. That is
understandable, you can start a mess by introducing a new plant that does not
belong here.So I guess the best anybody can do is to buy seeds in Port Vila and
then bring out to the islands.
They need island cabbage, spinach, tomatoes
etc...
Their yam and kasava is rotten after the
storm.
While we were here LilExplorer went to South River
Bay, another settlement further east on the south coast. They experienced about
the same situation but were able to run a clinic immidietaly. We spoke on short
wave by 5pm and they had given out all their food.
They will show up here by ten to help with the
clinic that will be held in the church.
ChezNouis went to Dillons Bay with 3
passengers and Jonathan was going to "knock some doors". It seems the villages
have been promised aid help from Care but it has not happened after one initial
delivery of food after the disaster.As they are isolated by trees that have
fallen all over the roads and paths we can help to bring more food
here.
According to the people here we are the first
yachts to visit this bay ever. It is an easy one to get into but I guess fr most
of the time it is hellish to anchor here. It faces SSW but the swell from the
tradewinds can make its way into it, and it is very rolly. The bottom seems to
be mostly stones so the anchors have a problem to grip, even Rocnas, which both
ChezNouis and we have.
|