How to Prepare for Natural Disasters Abroad

It's hard to tell if there are more natural disasters these days or if it's just that the information age has let the news of them run wild. From January's Haitian earthquake catastrophe to the floods at Machu Picchu and Southeast Asia's 2004 tsunami, we are constantly reminded that no matter how well humans appear to dominate the earth, it is undeniably the earth that dominates us. Last week I was caught in cyclone Oli here in Tahiti and I am awed and humbled by how helpless I felt during the storm. I also realize how completely unprepared I was for a cyclone even though I have lived in this country for fifteen years. So what to do when a natural catastrophe happens while you're traveling or are in a foreign country? To make myself feel better and to spread the word, I have compiled these tips:

1) Research. Read up on your destination and find out what risks are present. If you're going to a place that's in an earthquake zone, know what to do in case of an earthquake. Will you be in a tsunami zone, visiting during cyclone season or be near an active volcano? There are lots of great tips online and you can educate yourself with the basics of what to do in a worst-case-scenario in well under an hour. Knowledge is power but it can also save your ass.

2) Know where to get in-country information. During cyclone Oli we had no electricity and no cell phone reception. The only means of getting information was by radio. If you're going to a risk area, consider carrying a small battery powered radio (it's great to listen to local radio in foreign countries anyway!). During cyclone Oil I had to listen to my car radio. If you don't speak the local language then at least keep some phone numbers handy such as your embassy or crisis hotlines - if the phones go out these obviously won't help but it can't hurt to have them. The most up to date information on the Internet during a crisis is often on Twitter. If you're lucky to have Internet, figure out the trending topic abbreviation of whatever you're in for and follow it diligently.

3) Pay attention. Many countries now have much more advanced crisis systems than they used to. In Southern Thailand for example there are well-marked tsunami evacuation routes everywhere. Look at these and make a mental note where they are, kind of like checking out where the nearest emergency exit is on an airplane. In your hotel, does that sturdy table look like a good place to crawl under in case of an earthquake? Does the bathroom have the least windows and could you pull the bed's mattress over yourself if a cyclone blew the roof off? All this takes little energy but could potentially save your life at times when you might not be thinking straight.

4) Insurance. Having travel insurance that can help you be evacuated to receive proper medical care can be very reassuring. In most cases you will not be reimbursed for cancelled flights due to weather and even most cruises have a clause that they can change their itineraries die to unseen circumstances without offering a refund. Buying your travel with a credit card (especially American Express) or through a travel agent can also increase your chances of getting money back after a natural catastrophe. Always read the fine print.

It's not fun to be paranoid but it's even less fun to get the daylights scared out of you or worse, hurt or killed. A small amount of effort can really go a long way and is well-worth the time.

For more information on my experiences during Cyclone Oli see my posts on awaiting the storm and after the storm.

Cyclone Oli Hits Tahiti

Between 9pm Wednesday night and 10am Thursday morning Tahitian authorities banned driving on Tahiti and Moorea in anticipation of Cyclone Oli. Winds built up consistently throughout Wednesday but the storm hit us full force in the pitch black of night. It was terrifying. I had my kids in my bed with me in my room on the protected side of the house but none of us slept. Between the storm's noise, the stress and the heat, it was impossible. I found myself getting up several times to check on how the doors were holding and to check on my cats and dogs. The cats actually made a bigger mess and ruckus inside the house than the storm but the major damage to us was in the yard where several of my trees blew over.

The winds seemed just as strong by daylight but the news on RFO (Radio France Overseas)assured us the worse had passed. We went out and shot this video at around 8am.

Despite what a shambles French Polynesia's politics are in right now, the country was superbly organized when dealing with Cyclone Oli. RFO broadcasted 24 hours a day keeping everyone up to date, hotlines were installed and a few thousand people were evacuated from their homes. The worst news I heard was that some people on Tahiti's east coast were afraid to evacuate because a group of young people were going around and robbing people's vacated homes. How evil is that? But overall people helped each other out and there was an extremely strong sense of community during the crisis.

EDT (Electricite de Tahiti) were also heroes and spent over 10 hours into the middle of the night repairing the electric poles that had been taken down by trees in my small community of a few hundred people. There was still a lot of wind into the night last night (I had another tree get blown over - a 5m high soursop tree - after I shot this video) but now at 5am on Friday, it's dead calm. The storm hit the Austral Islands last night with estimated wind speeds of up to 250 km/hr and 9 meter ocean swell. My thoughts have been with them all night and I have not yet heard news of the dammage.



Once again iMovie is blocking me from adding subtitles so you'll have to make do with my translations below.

White pickup truck scene:
There are cops down there so you'll get a ticket if they catch you driving. [note: the fine was 16,100 CFP, about US$185]
And there's no store, it's closed so don't bother.

Interview with Lesta:
Lesta: No we didn't sleep, we stayed up. At about 3am I found my boat on top of my greenhouse, my vanilla greenhouse. It went up like that on to my greenhouse.

Cyclone Oli On It's Way to Teahupoo

At around 2pm today February 3rd, Tahiti was put on red alert for approaching Cyclone Oli. We've been on orange alert since yesterday and the weather has been degrading since early this morning so this is no surprise. The storm is supposed to pass about 200 to 250 km to the south of us and we are to expect winds around 110km or upward. I'm on the west side of Tahiti Iti where we are getting good gusts of west wind but are fortunately protected from the huge north swells that have flooded the Papeete waterfront and are causing damage on the east coast. Here is a video of the not-so-calm before the storm.



I can't figure out how to get subtitles on my movie program (sorry I'm in the middle of a cyclone!) so here is a short summary of what Finne (who I interview) says:
Finne:
Apparently the news says it's going to gain force later and tonight it'll be 150km/hr and at 150 km/hr everything is going to blow away.
Celeste: And here in Teahupoo do you think it will be bad?
Finne: Yeah. The wind is coming from the west so we're going to be right in the middle of it.

Wind blows.

Finne: It's the strongest when it comes from the valley.
Celeste: And is that gust coming from the valley?
Finne: Yes!

FIFO Pacific International Film Festival

Today I drove an hour and a half to Papeete for the final day of the FIFO Pacific International Documentary Film Festival; all I can say is WOW. The festival showcases films from around the Pacific from Australia and Papua New Guinea to Hawaii, French Polynesia and everywhere in between.

FIFO Films are chosen for the competition several months prior to the six-day festival and an international panel of judges vote for the winner. A 1000 CFP (about US$12) ticket gets you a day pass that allows you to watch as many films as you want in the handful of small theaters on the Papeete waterfront. Most of the documentaries run between half an hour and an hour an a half.

Here are trailers of a few 2010 selections:

This was the winner of the festival: Te Henua E Noho, There Once Was an Island, a sad story, brilliantly documented, about Takuu, a Polynesian atoll off of Papua New Guinea that is indisputably drowning in rising sea levels.

Te Henua e Noho Film Trailer from On The Level Productions on Vimeo.

Lost in Wonderland: I LOVED this film about the incredibly masculine and rich life of a cross dressing, justice-driven lawyer in New Zealand

Lost In Wonderland Trailer from Costa Botes on Vimeo.

From Australia, Bastardy was one of the festival highlights. The film tells the story of Jack, an Aboriginal heroin addict who lives on the streets and juggles a successful acting career with a life of crime.



Noho Hewa is a rare and militant look at the US "occupation" of the Hawaiian Islands



The Topp Twins, Untouchable Girls is another fantastic film about some very entertaining twin lesbian sisters in New Zealand




All the films are in English or subtitled in English. Unfortunately there aren't any trailers on the web for some of the French produced films and smaller productions. My favorite film was Les Possedes de Faaite, which brilliantly traced the history of the shocking witch burnings that took place on the remote atoll of Faaite in the Tuamotu Archipelgo in 1987. The film goes deep into the psyche of remote island living (that I am, for obvious reasons, fascinated by) and the effects Christianity has when mixed with Polynesian beliefs. I've been scouring the web to find a copy of this film on DVD but with no luck! If anyone knows where I can find a copy of it please send me a message.

For more info about the festival go to the FIFO website.

My Top 5 Favorite Melaka Restaurants

I might live in Tahiti but my part of my heart is always traipsing around Southeast Asia tracking down great places to eat. Food here at home is pretty bland in comparison to the continent, and there's limited ingredients, so I often drift off into craving dreams about one of my favorite food cities, Melaka Malaysia. I've covered this city for Lonely Planet's Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring and KL, Melaka & Penang guides. My husband hates it when I cover Malaysia because I always come back with a couple extra kilos stuck on my rear.

So here are my top five favorite restaurants, places that make me desperately hungry to buy a plane ticket out of here - at least for a meal.

* Low Yong Mow (Jln Tokong) - It doesn't get much more ambient than this Chinese dim sum breakfast stop located directly across from one of the town's most important mosques. Little English is spoken but you can point to what looks good from the carts pushed around by old Chinese ladies. The pao (pork buns) are Malaysia famous and the best I've tasted.

* Pak Putra (Jln Kota Laksmana)- A humble Pakistani tandoori place with clay ovens and a bunch of plastic tables and chairs out on the sidewalk. It's super busy, and a wonderful place to socialize in the balmy night air with a kick-ass mango lassi and just about any meat or seafood you can imagine cooked to perfection.

* Selvam (Jln Temenggong) - My favorite Indian banana leaf place in the country with a to-die for Friday afternoon vegetarian 10-dish special.

* Nancy's Kitchen (Jln Hang Lekir) - The food here is about on par with the many other Nonya (Malaya and Chinese fusion) places in town, but this restaurant is one of the oldest, is family run and pays special attention to authenticity. The owners are also particularly friendly so you can always expect a nice chat alongside your meal.

* Capitol Satay (Lg Bukit Cina) - You gotta try satay celup, a Melaka specialty a bit like satay steamboat where you cook your own skewers of tofu, meat and veg in bubbling vats of soup. There are a bunch of flashier new places popping up around town but I love this unpretentious, very popular old stalwart.

For a feel for what Melaka city is like on the ground, check out my video on Lonely Planet Television.

South Pacific Secrets: So What if Grandpa was a Rockefeller?

Yesterday my dear friend Katupu, granddaughter of Tepuku, the Paumotu woman who welcomed my husband's family to Ahe Atoll in the Tuamotus in 1973, came by for lunch. One of the things I love most about talking with friends from the outer islands is how many amazing stories they have. People in cities have nothing on folks who live out in the middle of nowhere when it comes to crazy tales, believe me. So here is one of my favorites from yesterday:

The subject of Tepuku came up and soon we were laughing about the old story of her two-month fling with a Mr Rockefeller (I've decided to leave off his first name because of the nature of the Internet) when he came through on a boat back in the 50s or 60s; consequently she had his child. Soon after the baby was born, and once Rockefeller was long gone, Tepuku married a local man, Raumati and everyone pretty much forgot about the American who had sailed through. Tepuku never contacted the Rockefellers and as far as I know, the man was never aware that he fathered a daughter. This daughter was Katupu's mother, Taio. Taio is beautiful and obviously half Caucasian with fair skin and an elegant, very non-Polynesian, slightly hooked nose. Katupu, her daughter, has the same slim, aristocratic nose.

Katupu was raised mostly by her grandparents on Ahe and nowadays her main occupation is taking care of aging Tepuku. When asked about her family history, Katupu laughs ,"Who cares who he was? What did that guy ever do for us and why would we bother to contact him? Raumati was my grandfather, he was the one who raised us." While most people would be groveling at the Rockefeller door, Katupu and her family couldn't imagine wanting to change anything about their life, and besides Raumati was a local legend who any Polynesian would be proud to call family. Soon she was telling us stories about her grandfather's skills, how he could sense the weather coming hours before it arrived and how he predicted the massively destructive 1983 cyclone that flattened Ahe, several hours before the storm started - this is in the days before there was any warning system in the Tuamotus. Instead of getting nervous and anxious, Raumati slowly and steadily began to prepare for the big wind and by the time it came everyone was safely closed up in the town hall. No one died even though it was the biggest cyclone to hit in anyone's memory. Raumati with his sixth sense essentially saved his atoll. My husband who knew Raumati calls him "the God of fishing," stating that there was nothing the man didn't know about fish - and this is compared with all the other Paumotu people who came from generations of living with the sea. Raumati could hit a fish with a spear from so far away that you couldn't even remotely see the fish. Perhaps he could just tell where the fish were from surface agitation. How cool is that?

So I agree with Katupu: what good is some foreign guy no matter who he was compared to a man who could catch fish using the force? To me, listening to these stories from my island friends who are invariably straight-forward, very sharp, yet refreshingly uncomplicated, makes me feel grounded. I think we all share these same, pure values somewhere - perhaps some people keeping them deeper than others - and we just need to scrape off society's garbage to remember what is important to our everyday existence. At least in the Tuamotus, fish and intuition are much more important than being rich and famous.

A Paumotu Christmas

Every year my family and I head out to our old home in the remote Tuamotu Atolls for Christmas and New Years. I guess you could call this a 'blue Christmas' since in this land of flat coral spits and coconut palms, we are surrounded by electric turquoise sea and lagoon for the whole holiday season. There is no Internet, no plumbing, no cars and very little to do beyond swimming, reading, fishing, cooking and surfing. It's a little like camping and I love it.

Over the years we've developed our own holiday traditions. We now always pack a collection of indelible markers and nail polish and the kids begin our stay by collecting all the hermit crabs they can find. Then all of us spend hours decorating their shells with rainbows, stars, racing stripes and anything else that comes to mind. Over the next weeks the beaches look like a moving psychedelic army and soon we all know the crabs by name. "Hey I saw Triceratops all the way over by the boat hanger today! . . . Speed Larry 2 got in a fight and had his shell stolen! . . . Did you see Stars and Stripes eating that dead fish's eyeball?" This is all big news in the Tuamotus.

Time doesn't really matter in the atolls so for the last two years we have celebrated Christmas whenever we've felt like it. Last year it came late because the cargo ship with all our presents forgot to unload our boxes so we had to wait till nearly New Years to get all our food and gifts. This year Santa came and we celebrated a few days early simply because we wanted more time to enjoy our presents to each other. There are ironwood trees on the atoll that resemble real Christmas trees, but none near our place so we traditionally get a miki miki, a low lying hardy shrub with pretty small round green leaves. We stuff it in an old cabin biscuit tin filled with coral gravel then decorate it with coral pieces, old crab shells and homemade paper chains. Invariably the cats play with it and it looks pretty scraggly by its second day up but it does the holiday-cheer job for us.

Our Christmas feast depends on what we have. This year I baked a bunch of whole grain bread like I always do plus brownies (click here for my recipe), then we ate fried fish and spaghetti carbonara since we had to use up the bacon and cream before it went bad. My kids insisted we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus - we aren't Catholic but they both go to Catholic middle school and think this is really funny. Sometimes we have a bunch of people over but this year it was just my family, Laurent the pearl farm manager and Fletcher, a friend from the US.

Christmas is mellow but the real party is on New Years Eve when we have had up to 40 people come out and celebrate with us. But that's another story and another blog entry - coming soon!

Nothing Says 'Vacation' Like a Holiday Away From the Internet

So that's what I'm doing. I will be on a remote atoll far from the reaches of the cyber world and thus, will not be blogging, checking email or communicating in any way with the outside world for the next three weeks. To me this is bliss. I love writing and my job but replacing these things with fishing, baking bread and swimming half the day with my kids for a few weeks works like a giant cup coffee to kick-start my year.

All the best to you, all my wonderful readers and I hope you too are having a rejuvinating holiday season.

First Footfall on Pitcairn Island

Shortly after sunrise the rest of the passengers and crew came up on deck and we started to pack and bring our bags up from our bunks. Captain Matt radioed the island and within half an hour we got our first glimpse of Pitcairn culture: the longboat, filled with about a quarter of the island's population coming out to fetch us. We could see them from quite far away so it was suspenseful seeing the boat arrive, wondering how they'd accept me as the journalist and pondering what these infamous people of piracy, isolation and sex scandals would be like. My guess was they'd be pretty nice.

The boat arrived and pulled up alongside the Braveheart. Brenda Christian, a bronzed vivacious woman with broad bare feet was the first to hop on board the Braveheart and start to throw our bags and supplies into the longboat. Her 20-something son Andrew, with long hair and multiple hoop earrings, sat at the bow of the longboat and was in charge of hitching the two boats together through the light waves then untying when it was time to go.
Two older men, with obvious Pitcairn-browned skin and broad faces manned the motor and a few kids and random adults gazed happily at all of us new visitors while some helped pack up our luggage. I'd heard stories about how in high seas you have to literally leap off the side of your ship over big waves into the arms of some pirate-looking local in the longboat. Today however, the sea was calm so, even though it was still a little leap onto the boat and the locals did look like pirates, it wasn't very scary.

A bearded man with glasses who didn't really look like the rest of the locals came over to sit next to me in the boat and introduced himself as Simon; he told me I was going to stay at his and his wife's house. The boat chugged around the rocky outcrop where we had seen the sunrise and we got our first glimpse of Adamstown - or at least the several houses perched on the cliff near the miniscule settlement. Soon we reached Bounty Bay, a small marina (with a big boat shed) precariously jutting out from below the cliffs. As we jetted in I read the large sign stating "Welcome to Pitcairn Island" - unbelievable, I was here, the last remnants of the Bounty were scattered along the bottom somewhere in the vicinity. The air was cool, I felt like I was in a dream.

About another third of the population was there at the dock waiting for us on their quad bikes, the main means of transport on the island. Simon helped me get my bag on his quad and, before I had much of a chance to take in the rest of the scene or say hi to anyone, we were motoring up the Hill of Difficulty, which is as steep as the name entails. Then we went through Adamstown, which is made up of a few houses, a complex with a post office and town hall, a tiny store and a prison. The school I'd later find out was on the outskirts of town.

Simon and his wife, who are British and American respectively, run the small community store and are the only non-Pitcairners living on Pitcairn. Their house is on a lovely bluff with 180-degree views out to sea. My room turned out to be a whole house with a living room, kitchen, bedroom and a shower but the toilet was the most rudimentary pit toilet I have ever seen - cowboy-style wooden door and all. Not that I minded.


There was a lot to do at the store with all the new supplies coming in so Simon asked if I didn't mind if he left me for awhile. He'd come get me in an hour or so to show me around the island and introduce me to people. No problem, I said, I still felt the boat's motion, was tired and had a lot to take in.

Please click on 'Pitcairn Island' at the right of this page under 'labels' to read my two previous posts about my trip to Pitcairn: Trying to Get There and Voyage to Pitcairn. I'll keep continuing the story over the next few months.

The Winning Pearl

Voila. My husband was finally able to get a photo of the 10mm round "A" grade natural color Tahitian pearl worth $200 that Kamoka Pearls is giving away for Passports With Purpose. Proceeds go to build that now near-famous school in Cambodia plus the increasingly plentiful overflow funds will go to other good causes in the area. So here is the pearl in all it's glory. To me it says "pendant" but I'm sure it would be great as a ring too.