Passing of the Storm

Monday 26th April 2010, 7.05am, Ratu Kini Resort - Mana Island

Without really knowing it, I think I've known all week that something has been brewing. Days of light rain and my tempestuous mood reached a climax yesterday afternoon, and were then broken overnight by a real tempest, a real storm to wash away the anxiety of the past 7 days. At around 9pm yesterday evening the heavens opened and the rain finally did what it has been threatening to do, it came down in heavy, violent droves, flooding Mana Island in water knee deep. We were caught in a cyclone.

Palm trees have been uprooted, thatched roofs damaged, beach debris washed ashore, winds raged around our straw hut at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour, the night sky was burnt and scarred by a kaleidoscope of lightning, and I have never heard thunder so deep, so deafeningly bellowing in my whole life. The volume of it reverberated through my ear drums, vibrating my insides like a nauseating base line played on stadium speakers. It sounded like God's wrath, it was terrifying. Throughout the early hours of this morning I sat awake in bed listening to the elements cause havoc outside my rattling shutters, wetness dripping on my feet from the buckling leaf ceiling pregnant with rain water, puddles coming in under the door, the wind shaking the foundations of our hut, and convinced that we would be lucky to make it through the night unharmed.

We don't have to deal with these kind of weather conditions in Britain, or at least not in London. We live in the blissful ignorance of a temperate climate, where we never get a truly brilliant baking summer, but where in return for this, we neither have to endure the kind of natural disasters that weather can inflict so brutally on other parts of the world. I have always enjoyed storms at home, but this is because I live in a sturdy semi-detached brick house with a well insulated roof, double glazing, thick carpets and central heating. It is a rare pleasure to be cocooned in warmth and safety and smugness in my cosy box of a bedroom at home whilst the rain pours down on hard, cold streets outside my lead panelled window. Being in the middle of a tropical cyclone, in a hut made from straw and bamboo, surrounded by the sound of trees crashing to the forest floor just yards from your bed, well this is a markedly less pleasurable storm experience, take it from me temperate climate dwellers.

It might be an over exaggeration to say that I feared for my life, but there definitely was one self indulgent moment of morbidness where I remember sulking at how pathetic a gravestone epitaph 'she was killed by rain and wind' would be. Far more desirable to be 'eaten by lion' or 'shot in bank heist' or 'drowned saving family of 5 from strong currents'. Death by rain and wind, well that's about as impressive a final curtain as being run over by a milk float. I may have allowed my imagination to run away with me a little, but this is what I do, and I needed some distraction from the thunder.

The cyclone came and went, and I am happy to say that no one need draft my obituary just yet. The elements have purged themselves over the islands of Fiji, and where yesterday there were acres of grey cloud, there is now a clear blue sky and fierce, scorching sunshine. The islanders are cleaning up the mess and mopping the flood water from their homes, and I, like the weather am in the lightest mood I have been in all week. The clouds were sat even heavier on my heart than they were on the sky, but for now at least, it seems this storm has passed.