Aftershocks

The psychology of aftershocks is impossible. For the first few days the aftershocks were frequent, and when they happened people standing outside would stop what they were doing and brace themselves, and people inside would run outside. Though they never lasted long, and never caused any damage, they rattled people’s nerves so much. We all started imagining them after a while so if someone moved a table, or jumped off the top bunk suddenly, it could cause a whole roomful of people to startle. I started trying to see if water in a glass on the table was moving to figure out if the shaking was real or in my head. One morning at about 5 am we had one that had me and two of the people I was sharing a room with out the door in about 10 seconds. Somehow others slept, but we were up for the day. Then they got smaller and smaller so that by Sunday morning we all slept through one. We were getting ready to start moving kids back into buildings on Wednesday morning. Then, with all of the kids standing outside on the basketball court at about 6:15 am, talking about going back to sleep inside, we had another long, fairly strong rumble that evidently registered at 6.1. I was so furious – not because anything was damaged or anyone was hurt but because all these kids who had been building up the courage to go back inside for days were back to totally terrified again. We backed off on sleeping inside the dorms, but did move kids off the soccer field into two partially enclosed spaces. Sure enough, at about 4 am, there was NOT an aftershock, but someone thought they felt one, screamed, and created an absolute panic. I woke up when I heard every dog in the neighborhood barking like crazy. Great. This is awesome.

Then this afternoon, as I walked around with a sixteen year old who is really just terrified, we had another one. The details on this would be almost comically ironic if they weren’t actually so heart breaking. I was walking around with this kid showing him the difference between support columns that failed in the earthquake, and good columns. I’m getting quite good at talking about load bearing columns, diagonal cracks, and visible rebar in Kreyol … but I digress. We were standing at a place where there actually is some structural damage, but I was showing him that it’s not dangerous to stand on, that normal use would not cause any problems. He was totally following my logic, nodding in agreement, and to show him that this one wall wouldn’t fall over, I kicked it as hard as I could. He had just finished saying, “I see … it’s not even moving” when IT STARTED MOVING. Are you kidding me? Seriously? The kids ran out of the classrooms with a reasonable degree of calm and order given that the earth had just moved under their feet for about the thirtieth time in a week, and I looked at this kid with tears in his eyes and just said, “I’m so sorry. I guess we’re just going to have to live with this for a while.”

So, it would be really great if this would stop so we could all feel a tiny bit less crazy all the time. Yesterday I was teaching a Spanish class with some of the youngest kids (who I don’t usually teach, but I’m the only Spanish teacher in town right now ….) when I noticed that one little girl had her head down and was sobbing. I helped her to her feet and we walked outside for her to get some fresh air and she started calming down. I asked her if she was scared to be inside and she said no, so I asked why she was crying. Through her tears she explained that the little boy behind her kept hitting her in the head. I was ecstatic. An eleven year old girl crying because a boy is hitting her? That’s so NORMAL! I know exactly how to deal with that. Guess which naughty boy had me sitting next to him for the rest of the period?

Finally on Friday morning, while all the kids were all outside at the morning assembly, there were two small aftershocks, and no one really moved. They gasped a little, but didn’t stop what they were doing, and didn’t run anywhere. Maybe we’re on the way out of this finally.