Cyclone Pam has left the entire population of one of Vanuatu’s biggest islands to starve within days after destroying 100 percent of their crops officials warned Monday at a highly emotional briefing in the capital, Port Vila. While a cargo cult there has waited decades for aid from the United Stated, the people urgently need international humanitarian aid now more than ever. A simple way to open heart and pocket book has been announced late Monday, thanks to modern wonders of social media and technology.
Tanna Island is the nation’s second most heavily populated island and the one renowned for its decorative cargo cult that awaits United States aid in the best of times. There, the Ni-Vans, as Vanuatu islanders are called, have only a few days of their fruit and root vegetables left. Their need for humanitarian aid has never been as great as right now. The Independent reported that senior government officials struggled to maintain their composure at the briefing in Port Vila. Approximately 90 percent of homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed by Cyclone Pam. Touted as those among Earth’s oldest living culture, Ni-Vans are survivalists by nature.
Ni-Vans manage on less than two dollars a day mainly due to the women’s producing an abundance of food in their gardens where they work daily. All those gardens, however, now totally destroyed and up to 80 percent of Tanna Island’s population of 29,000 has been displaced.
One official who had been there to assess Cyclone Pam’s damage described at the briefing the “devastation” he saw there, with trees stripped bare and looking like “skeletons.”
“We have about a week to get food to these people because after that, they have no food,” Clements said.
Reports this weekend about their growing concern about contaminated water supplies and no power or shelter in many areas. Tanna is around 200 km (125 miles) south of the capital, Port Vila on Efate Island.
Aid officials say the super storm was comparable to Typhoon Haiyan, that hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed over 6,000 people. They said Pam is likely to be one of the Pacific region’s worst natural disasters in recorded history.
“It looks like a bomb’s gone off,” Clements had told NZME News Service this weekend, according to the New Zealand Herald. “Tourists who have been to Port Vila wouldn’t recognize it.”
From cargo cult to poor children’s aid group, the same urgent call for humanitarian aid
The death toll stands at 24. At least 30 people are injured. Those number are expected to rise, especially with “serious concerns about food security,” according to Clements. Locals typically depend on “coconut radio,” physically crossing waterways between islands to transfer messages from one to the next since there are minimal to no telephone services in those outer islands. Cyclone Pam, however, has created a communications blackout throughout the entire country, even where there had been phones. Monday night, loved ones continue waiting in anguish for news from the storm survivors.
Formerly called the New Hebrides, Vanuatu is comprised of 64 islands, each one destroyed after Cyclone Pam’s winds of 185 miles (300 kilometers) an hour changed course Friday and pounded the small Least Developing Pacific Island Nation. This island nation’s population is mainly children. Over 64,000 children there are now severely at risk. The reader can help them right now.
Tanna Islander cargo cult followers hold grand ceremonies. Wearing whatever they can that resembles American servicemen, with an array of any type of US badge they can find proudly pinned to their jackets, they march and call on Americans for help. For generations, their lives have revolved around this prayerful awaiting US aid. They even built symbolic landing strips to encourage American airplanes to land and bring them “cargo.” Now, Americans and people of goodwill globally can help answer their call for help never needed as much as today.
