Well the last two days sure have been exciting! Yesterday was our first day back from the farm, so I wanted to relax a bit, but at 11:40 am I was instead greeting with another big honking earthquake! A 7.2!!! Aftershock! Then a few minutes later, a 6.7, and a few minutes after that a 6.0. What in the world???
I have to say it's really amazing here. We had all of those earthquakes, one of which was the same size that leveled a whole Caribbean country, and everyone just went, "Huh. How unusual," and went about their business. I didn't lose power, cable or internet, so I got to watch the presidential inauguration that was happening live on television. They were in Valparaiso, which at that point had a tsunami warning, and they didn't even stop. I gather that they sped up the ceremony quite a bit but still, it didn't stop. When it was over, then Pinera said, "Ok, everyone out, there might be a tsunami." Just as cool as pie.
Outside my apartment, it was like nothing happened even immediately after the earthquakes. During the first one, I ran into the kitchen because the cabinets were unsecured and I really wasn't feeling like losing any more dishes. While holding the cabinets shut, I glanced out the window and could see other buildings gently shaking but not much else was happening. The epicenter of this earthquake was much closer to the city, but much less happened. It's a testament to two things: a) how much stronger an 8.8 earthquake really is (the Richter scale isn't linear-- it's logarithmic, so a difference of 1 point in magnitude is actually hundreds of times bigger), and b) how sturdy this city and its people are.
We were out at the farm for a few days before this to get things going. That was a real experience-- still no power, which also means no running water. We had drinking water that we brought and water to wash dishes from a gas-powered well pump. Cell phones were still touch and go. When we got there, I headed up to the house and did the best thing I know how to do in these situations: Clean. Somehow when I get stressed, I clean. Those of you who knew me when I was a pre-teen may be surprised at this, but it's true! It also helps when you have a lot of stuff to clean.
During this time, an architect we know through some other farm building work came by with his father, who is a seismic engineer. How cool is that as a job? He looked at our house and determined that things were not quite as bad as we thought. The kitchen, our bedroom and our bathroom are salvageable. The livingroom and diningroom are totally goners. In fact, when we arrived, it was clear that the chimney was leaning at a much more precarious angle than it had been before. Luckily it's leaning away from the house and not towards it. But obviously if it falls, it's going to be a huge mess.
Each night around 6:30pm, the light would start to wane and we'd realize that we better start thinking about dinner. With only candles to light our way, meals would become extremely difficult to manage after dark. We were lucky enough to have the wife of one of the employees volunteer to cook for us. She wasn't able to help with the physical labor, so this was her way of contributing and she did a bang-up job! We ate barbecued beef one night from a local cow, and humitas another night-- a Chilean dish like a tamale but with no filling, just simple, delicious steamed corn flavored with onion and basil. Of course, the one topic that did come up is the difference in hygiene expectations between city people and country people. One day I walked into the storage shed and there was the rest of the aforementioned cow hanging up. I realized there was no refrigeration at that point, but I guess I thought it had been split up and cooked and eaten? It was extremely dubious to me and started to smell a little questionable, but it was still cooked and eaten (not by us). Everyone was fine, incidentally. I wonder how much we city people over-do the hygiene stuff, but on the other hand, after an incident where I wound up in the hospital after eating bad food, I don't really want to find out either........
After dinner each night, it was completely dark as far as the eye could see. I have never seen more stars at the farm. There isn't much light pollution out there to begin with, but whatever there had been was terminated by the power outage. We could see every constellation (most of which I don't know because it's the southern sky-- can anyone tell me what the little-dipper looking thing by Orion is???), a big band of the Milky Way, and the Clouds of Magellan- two "puffs" of the Milky Way that look like clouds in the sky.
None of us were willing to sleep inside, with aftershocks still happening several times a day, and they are loud there. Michelle and Johannes set up camp outside the house with two beds they found inside. Nick and I decided to sleep in the car. We have a Subaru Outback, so with the back seats flipped down, it was a little bigger than a twin sized bed. To be honest, the accommodations weren't so bad. The car moved with every little tectonic activity, but it felt safe since we were away from buildings but still with a solid roof over our heads. The most uncomfortable thing was the morning when people coming into the farm could see inside the windows! Must be strange to see the Patron sleeping in his car....
So the experience was not as horrible as I imagined. I have never gone camping before this, and I certainly didn't anticipate my first "camping" trip to be under these circumstances. I'm the kind of person that normally absolutely requires a daily shower, a flushing toilet, and a bed, but somehow I managed. You'd probably all die if you saw a picture of me unshowered, with a handkerchief on my head, doing physical labor. Somewhere there is a picture of just that though! I will try to dig it up to share...
On the way home, we stopped and had a meal at our favorite restaurant, which we were pleased to find suffered little or no damage. I felt guilty, to be honest, to be eating a delicious meal while the people at the farm still had no electricity or water. But the class thing is weird here. They would never have come with us. Restaurant dining is just not something they do. And for us, it felt important to try to have some normalcy. If we stopped doing everything, the economy would collapse. Weird dilemma to have-- to assuage guilt, or to keep the economy functioning. In the end, I think working hard to help those that we can, but still trying to do normal things like eat out sometimes, is the most appropriate compromise.
