FARMING AGAIN: Mereana Mills plans to supply seedlings and tools for people in Vanuatu to grow their own food.
Living through Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu was the scariest thing Mereana Mills has ever been through - and she was a cop for 14 years.
Mrs Mills and her husband, Wayne, both former police officers, have been living in Vanuatu since 2010, renting out their Papamoa home to pay the mortgage.
After seeing the destruction and helping with the evacuation, the Mills have started a Givealittle fundraising effort to help the Ni Vanuatu (people of Vanuatu) rebuild their lives by supplying seedlings and tools to grow their own food.
Mrs Mills said spending a harrowing 20 hours bolted inside their concrete block Port Vila home as the wind and rain howled around them was the scariest thing she had ever done.
"My husband had been nailing thick boards of wood against all the windows beforehand. When we were sitting there, the wind was howling and howling. The intense part of the storm lasted about 10 hours and it was pretty rough for five hours before and after as well.
"Our house got a full frontal buffeting at one of the windows. Our curtains started blowing and we thought we were going to lose it. I went to it and put my hands against it to try and hold it and I could feel it vibrating.
"It was scary because if that window had gone, our roof would have gone.
"We're both ex-cops and don't scare that easily, but we were frightened. We both tried to be tough and we didn't sleep all night.
"I've seen a lot of things but it's the scariest thing I've done in my life."
During the rain Mrs Mills said the ceiling was swaying up and down, then water started pouring in through a light fixture.
"I said, 'This is so frightening it's going to give me an ulcer or cancer'. If the roof went, we would probably have been in the s*** because we couldn't go outside with all the debris and iron flying around."
When the storm abated about 5am the next morning Mrs Mills said roofs had been ripped off throughout her neighbourhood, including that of the nearby school. From Sunday to Tuesday, the two had volunteered their services for the New Zealand High Commission trying to track Kiwis down for their worried families and helping with an evacuation flight.
Within the first few hours of the volunteers starting work, there were 40 inquiries from family members.
Mrs Mills said because there was no power or phone available, one of the volunteers went around to all the hotels and asked tourists to fill out information forms.
People staying on more remote islands were harder to track down and Mrs Mills turned to contacts she had made in her years living in Vanuatu, asking them to do some digging on her behalf.
Mrs Mills also helped with registering and prioritising evacuees for the NZ Air Force's Hercules flight.
She remembers seeing Courtney Tilby's name on one of the boards of people who had not made contact with their family back home.
She was one of two New Zealanders on the island of Pentecost.
Mrs Mills made a trip to a nearby village to track down the family of a child adopted by a friend.
One thing that struck her about Ni Vanuatu during this trip was their resilience. "The Ni Vanuatu had already started getting the good bits of iron that they could re-use again. It was stacked up in nice piles. Bits of wood were being collected. Everyone was looking at what they could salvage."
Mr and Mrs Mills returned to New Zealand on Wednesday for a family wedding. On the plane home Mrs Mills sat next to a woman who works at EastPack. The two women began talking about what they could do to help. The easiest and most practical thing to do would be to raise seedlings and buy tools to give to the Ni Vanuatu, the majority of whom were farmers, she said.
"Farming is in their DNA. I thought I would set up a Givealittle page with the idea of buying tools and seeds."
Mrs Mills is asking for donations that will be used for those purposes.
The Mills will be returning to Vanuatu on April 1 but Mrs Mills' job in Port Vila is not likely to start again for a few weeks, so in the meantime she and her husband plan to raise seedlings, then use her contacts to ship them and tools, free of charge, around Vanuatu.
Any costs in importing seeds, converting currency and shipping would be paid for out of their pockets to ensure all donations went to the Ni Vanuatu, she said.
"Farming is how they earn their income already, but their crops have been decimated. If we give them the opportunity to start their gardens again and sell their product to local markets, it's an easy thing we can do ourselves without the bureaucracy."