Cyclone Renee, February 14-15th 2010

Some photos of cyclone Renee, which swiped out great swathe of land from Monuia Point...Monuia Point was the place on 'Uiha where one could stand and see both the sunrise and the sunset....where "east meets west".  As Pop surveyed the changed landscape after the tropical storm, he said, "Now there is no more Monuia Point".  Rudyard Kipling penned the famous lines, 

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet
Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great judgment seat;
But there is neither East nor West, border nor breed nor birth
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" (Ballad of East and West).

Mathmaticians refer to the distance between East and West as 'infinity', a line of infinity (Anton Bosch, www.erwam.com).  The symbol for infinity is a circle which crosses on itself, and it is in this space of crossing where East and West truly and only meet.

This is the angry sea after the storm had passed...the place where I'm standing used to taper into a "point" shape about sixty feet forward...the land was washed to the west of the island...

Several big trees like this fell down...the roots are shallow and no match for the relentless winds...

  This photo, not taken during Renee, was taken a few weeks after, when another tropical storm in Fiji, affected our waves for two days, they reached high as our front lawn...Long time 'Uiha residents tell us that these palms in front of Kali's house once were rooted into lawn, but that the beach has pushed up by the rising tide...