#kam kam kam my god what a wretched world

[littlegildedswallow]

I'm 5 feet tall with a delicate build, and I work out regularly. No amount of body-building changes the fact that the average man could easily wrap his entire fucking hand around my neck and EASILY choke me to death, or break my wrists or my fucking spine. That terrifies me. It terrifies me than in a real one on one fight to the death, I'd probably be the one dying. I'm thinking of that video where a woman stabbed a guy with a big knife like 15 times, and he still kept fighting, whaling on her. What the fuck are those tiny "self defense" blades supposed to accomplish ? My best bet would probably be to slice his jugular or push my thumbs into his eye sockets, but how the fuck am I supposed to do that if he's restraining my arms. It TERRIFIES me that I can't fight, and even if I could, I'd probably not stand a chance against the average man, and definitely not if there were more than one.

Do any of you know self defense tips that ACTUALLY work? No convoluted moves. If a brute has got me in a fucking chokehold, I won't be thinking about the steps of popular self defense moves. I'll be panicking, losing strength and consciousness. The way i see it, my best bet would be carrying a fucking dagger, but even that requires intense training to learn how to use efficiently.

[kranketuturani]

I am a little heartbroken at the moment. And it’s 99% not because of that wretched virus, but you know, may as well get kicked in the guts while you’re down. 

2020 was meant to be an awesome year, and then Australia was kind of on fire, then kind of underwater, and I’d moved across the world, suddenly my mum probably can’t visit, my brother is stuck in Canada, and it’s not a great start. 

But then, in a cruel twist of fate, my second home (and also my third), got violently destroyed by Cyclone Harold. I lived in Vanuatu in 2015, I went through Cyclone Pam, I was everyone’s favourite missing Austratralian teen. I know what a category five means. 

It means nearly having the house fall on you, it means fleeing down the muddy hill, it means nearly slipping, skidding to halt to avoid falling trees, it means thinking a tree has come down on your seven year old brother, it means someone carrying the three year old, it means carrying 25kg of rice so the village can eat when you get there. I ran down a hill in my pajamas, I slept in a house the size of a lounge room with about 25 people. 

It means your crops are destroyed, you eat unripened bananas for a week (disgusting dry things). It means you eat flying fox/fruit bat (don’t ask), it means you drink coconut water that’s not quite right, it means you drink dirty water, it means you can’t contact family, it means you have to chop down houses and start again, it means you all get sick. 

The thing is Harold is worse than Pam. Not because he was stronger, although I think he probably was, we just don’t have category 6. But because, unlike Pam, people cannot send aid. Nations mobilised armies last time, we had Australian, New Zealand, French troops on the door step of the capital in days. Everyone was sending help, it was flying in on Hercs, coming in on boats. Charitites descended, I was airlifted out much to everyone in my village’s amazement. We dropped 100s of kilos of rices and 100s of litres of water to communities, we filled endless bottles, we built houses, we burned rubbish. The sheer number of people worked. 

That was five years ago. Do you know how long it takes to recover from a category 5 cyclone in an underfunded, developing nation? Five years minimum. And now, the ni-Vans have to do it all again. 

We have the internet on Pentecost now, and there’s a tuturani, a white person like me, who lives on the island. And the photos he’s posting absolutely break my heart. It looks like it has been bombed, buildings are twisted and mangled, nothing is green. If I didn’t know what village I was looking at, I couldn’t tell you because all our landmarks are gone. Can’t find the village near the mango tree if there’s not a mango tree to find. Every beautiful thing about the way the island looks is decimated. 

But my family are alive, my ancient adopted grandfather who is somewhere in his 90s (honestly, no one knows how old Jif Christopher is, but he speaks excellent English and has been running the place for as long as anyone can remember) is ok, everyone is healthy, no one is hurt. But both of my families, in the north and in central Pentecost have lost a lot. My central family lost all their buildings, our village lost its traditional hall which saved us last time.The school sounds like it was flattened, and the new church, just sorted after Pam, it’s gone again. My north family will have lost all their supporting non-concrete buildings. Gardens and food sources are wiped out, and there are a lot of people to feed.

Social distancing is not an option in Vanuatu, it is not an option in the South Pacific. Even if you did have a normal situation, people live in villages, people aren’t indoors unless they’re eating or they’re sleeping, and even then not always. The world cannot poor aid on them this time, because the world is busy trying to stop millions of deaths. And even if aid comes in, how will we know that all the aid workers aren’t carriers. A cyclone is bad, a category five is worse, that plus a pandemic, well, it doesn’t do to think about it. 

Please remember Vanuatu and what they’re going through. Remember Fiji and that they were hit too. Remember all the South Pacific nations as you sit tight at home, safe (I hope) in the walls of your home. Remember they are now fighting two fights in under-resourced nations. Remember that they are fighters. 

Vanuatu, yumi everiwan, yumi stanap long God. Yufala i tuff tumas. Yu savi beatem everi samting. Cyclone Harold, hemi kilem yufala, hemi wan bigfala storm, bae yufala i strong, yu no stap sapos wan cyclone hemi kam, yufala builimup everi samting bakagan. Mi lavim yu Vanuatu.