May 29, 2022 By Cassandra Johnson
They told us to be prepared for tremors and something else even more destructive. Still we carried on with our days: Morning briefings before heading out to various volunteer projects. Breakfast together prepared by different groups of us on various days. Lunch on our own or sometimes graciously offered by whom we were assisting. Dinner in the evening again (taking turns preparing that for the group as well.) Sometimes we might venture further for dinner, but weekday time was a bit limited. We made up for that on 1 and a half day weekends and some other nights.
The daily structure only varied in the inner details, including socializing, and some illness. Remote South America. Who knew what the day could bring even when we were warned about it. We got comfortable with very little comfort. We remained motivated only faltering in our fatigue and natural human errors, working and chilling, while our distinctly wild yet generous behaviors played out amongst one another.
This weekday morning felt about the same but somehow also seemed a little off. We now lived in an earthquake zone. Our projects were centered around that recovery. Still when I felt the structure shaking around me in my 4-person room, nothing odd occurred to me except, why was there such an early disturbance. I knew there was a guy selling some items in transit and yelling (always way too early) but it wasn’t him. I also knew there could be the random odd noises. There was the nearby rooster, yet this was so not the rooster. I kind of got the sense this was some kind of city work vehicle and in my sleepy daze, I curiously (and strangely) wondered why a truck was driving through our house.
Just by chance, I had sat up moments earlier. Maybe that was a sixth sense. Perhaps I would have been more dazed had the rumbling been the first event rousing me. Less than two seconds later, I realized the feeling was the earth moving and cursed one emphatic time, as I pulled my sleeping back down towards my ankle (the sleeping bags were a cozy and hygienic addition to our bunk beds sometimes). Of course, somehow, mine got hung up around my ankles. I slowed my pace and moved into mechanical mode, knowing step by step what I at least felt I needed to do. Naturally, I looked a few paces across from me to see what was happening in the other two bunk beds. My roommate, in the bunkbed below me, seemed to be long gone. I noticed her sleeping bag had been flung across the room. I was oddly amused at that scene but then…
What ensued had to be one of the funniest scariest moments I had yet to witness. You don’t often get those two feelings in tandem. We can all do strange, or let’s just say, interesting things during a crisis. We can be good at emergencies and likewise have odd ideas sporadically pop into our heads. I was witnessing this, before any of us could even fathom our regular breakfast meeting, when I looked below to the small center of the room and saw my closest volunteer friend Margaret. Like me, she was also moving mechanically, rushing over to one of our two shared desks and rushing in the direction of the door. These moments were still startling but then, suddenly, our fourth roommate decided her best bet was to jump off her top bunk instead of traversing the several ladder steps which could also get her below. She promptly misaimed and landed on top of Margaret. The two of them were now on the floor. We would ask her later why she hadn’t taken those steps and apparently, humorously, and even courageously, she thought it made more sense at the time and would be faster. Now we all realized this made it take a little longer, as they recovered, and we got our bearings as much as could be expected. I felt even more endeared to her because she was now making sure Margaret was okay and taking command of the situation, telling us all to hurry and get out.
We were now where we needed to be after some interesting but notably organized action. We were between our place and Gabriela’s home who doubled as a mother figure to many of us (a great maker of cakes and provider of other services if we needed it). She was having a good laugh, noticing all the bare feet and bare legs of the guys who filed out into the safe zone. The tremors had subsided and now many of them were noticing the mosquitos thoroughly enjoying the skin exposed from the shortish shorts they either slept in or selected to wear in their haste.
I was glad Gabriella could laugh. True entrepreneur by the way. She was in the group of locals who shared the reaction of this being barely anything compared to the devastating earthquake years earlier. Other people feeling the trauma were understandably very upset, saddened and brought back to the time when the massive earthquake had leveled the city. We were fine but it did bring to mind that going through those few minutes walking across a shaky ground had been 10 times more intense for them. How unreal for them to have experienced what destroyed homes and infrastructure and sadly took lives. This was a reminder of why we came. Along with the residents, we were a part of overcoming destruction and now at breakfast, as my roommates and I chuckled over our initial reactions in our room just a bit ago, we were happy for the chance we had to be here. There was fortune in our gratefulness for survival and commemoration. There was fortune in our ability to enjoy one another and the friends we now had and have in Pisco.