Kei-Gold
The Solomon Islands government will have to review its geographical map of Renonga Island as they will no longer have the coastal village of Mondo in existence. Instead, a new village with a new name will sit high up in the hills known as Kei-Gold meaning, blessed village. Heavy landslides due to the 2nd April 2007 Tsunami and earthquake had significant impact on the lives of thousands of people in the Northwest of Solomon Islands causing displacement, deaths and chaos. Among the many villages that suffered from the disaster, the village of Mondo, which was about a 2 hour boat ride from Gizo, capital of Western Province, used to be home to approximately 70 families. But this was no more. Mondo was horrifically swept away by the landslide. Before the Tsunami and earthquake, the village of Mondo had a piped gravity water supply and a primary school. People were happily living with easy access to fishing, their main income for their sustainable livelihood. “We had all basic minimum things we needed in this small village and we were quite content” says a village elder. “The Tsunami totally destabilized our livelihood; children lost their school. A lot of us lost our assets as they were washed away by the landslide and we all lost our precious piped water supply. Now we depend upon the water from stream for drinking. It is a long walk to the stream and we fear the water is contaminated,” he adds. For fear of a similar disaster to come, the villagers decided to move further up in the hill to reconstruct their village. Through the strong family ties and everyone’s participation the villagers were able to build homes in the new location, a 45 minute uphill walk from the “old” coastal village of Mondo. With technical and financial assistance from UNICEF and strong community participation, the newly constructed village received piped water from a spring water source 2 kilometers away. The village elder comments that the task was hard but they did it together as a community. “We built the primary school and our children have started to go to school again. The school has a water point and hand washing facility. We are planning to build latrines at the school as well.” In addition to emergency assistance during and after the onset of the disaster, the village has been fortunate that they got water supply, a school, a health center and the women have received hygiene awareness training says the village elder. He further comments saying that each one of the villagers had contributed a significant amount of voluntary labor to carry more than 2,000 meters of pipes and fittings, cement and other construction materials and digging 2,000 meters of trench and pipe laying. This was how they implemented the project. “Our women do not have walk 2 kilometers to collect water for drinking and washing clothes anymore. It is in front our homes now,” he says. The village appreciates the assistance provided by UNICEF and more importantly thanked each other for working so hard to make the project a complete success. The villagers are so happy that they even changed its name to Kei-Gold, meaning Hello-Gold, and literally meaning we received all that we expected.
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