Cyclone Harold Interviews: Namaram Village, North Pentecost, Vanuatu

The video begins with scenes of some of the damage to the coastal village of Namaram. We can hear people trying to nail down pieces of roofing.

Chief Pierre Sali explains that the sand from the beach was swept into the village and the vegetation has turned brown.

Pierre starts by stating how the cyclone has devastated the community. There is not a single Nakamal that has survived. The men have to drink Kava down on the beach. The main Nakamal was used frequently as a rest house for ship crew as the village is often used as a loading bay. This shows that it was important to the village and it is well known amongst all ship crews and to the people on Pentecost.

The community is facing a hard time because in this area they don’t have strong houses. However, they are lucky because everyone survived. Neverthless, all the crops are devastated. There are no banana or manioc plants left as all of them have fallen down (this is their main food source). They did not receive any warnings about the cyclone and there is no mobile phone reception in this village which means that they couldn’t have been warned by phone either. The cyclone therefore came as a huge surprise. This meant that they couldn’t prepare for the Cyclone so they couldn’t do things like try and protect some of their food in the gardens. If they had known they could have stored some food or put in some measures, which was not done as a result of the lack of warning, they have lost it all.

Fortunately, there has been a recent delivery of food aid from the NDMO yesterday. However, the aid hasn’t fully arrived yet and they have been told not to distribute the aid until it has all arrived.


Pierre thanks us for visiting their village and re-emphasises that the most important aspect is being able to receive warnings to help pre-empt disaster. They also need to think of ways in order to make their crops more resilient or protect them from future disasters. The principal especially thanks the government for the aid and to all donors and is pleased that you can see the situation.

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