Life After the Earthquake

All of a sudden in the middle of teaching my 5th-grade class, all the students jumped up, ran out of the classroom and yelled “Earthquake”. Apparently, one of the rocks fell from the wall and it sounded like an earthquake. I ran out with the kids because I had no idea what was going on. Once they all realized it was not an earthquake, everyone came back into the classroom. The kids were visibly shaken and hyper, so I had them take three deep breaths which seemed to calm everyone.

Earlier in the week, I was walking around the village with Selligram and he jumped and gasped because he thought he heard an earthquake. What he actually heard were children rolling down the hill on a homemade skateboard. Everyone is understandingly on high alert.

So many people lost their homes and are now living in shacks with metal/tin roofs. Selligram told me that the earthquake happened on a Saturday in the late morning. Because it was on Saturday, no children were at school. Children attend school six days a week and Saturday is their only day off. A lot of schools were heavily damaged and ruined. Many, many school children would have died had they been inside their school. Selligram also explained that because it was late morning, most people were already outside working the fields. If they had been inside, many more people would have died.

Even with all the earthquake devastation, people are warm, kind and giving. They continue to work hard at rebuilding their lives and they spread so much warmth and love as the do it.