Atavtabanga

Atavtabanga

Interview with Teacher from Atavtabanga Primary School

Here we interview a teacher from the primary school, Nock Shelden.

Nock begins by describing how they heard a warning about the cyclone on the radio. At that point the village evacuated to the school, where many remained for up to five days, as their houses had fallen down, and some still remain 3 weeks later. The teacher describes how it is very hard to be prepared for a cyclone of this strength. When they heard the warnings, they didn’t expect the category to rise to 5 as, initially, it was only described as a category 2 cyclone. This meant people were quite blasé about it and didn’t take it seriously. This in turn meant that when the cyclone did come they were shocked at the strength and intensity of it. There has not been a cyclone like this in living memory.

There are around 200 people in the village. All of them evacuated to the school. There wasn’t too much damage to the school. Some classrooms lost the roofing but this has already been nailed back down. There were fortunately no injuries. The teacher was deployed by the NDMO to assess the damage to crops so he visited a lot of the gardens and found that everything was damaged and there was nothing that had escaped the power of the cyclone. All the manioc and taro has been spoiled. There is no food. The only thing they have to eat currently is the remaining rice that can be bought from the shops. However, this is a dwindling supply. The plants that are used for rebuilding houses has been blown away or damaged but the village are scavenging for bits that they can use. It will take up to 3 years for these materials to grow back and be used again.