Day 1

Yesterday afternoon, as the second round of earthquake tremors rippled through Kigali, we got a call from the Associated Press. They needed footage of the earthquake's aftermath. We loaded up our camera gear, called our wonderful driver Papa Fred and began the long five hour journey to Cyangugu, the southwestern most area of Rwanda.

Here are some pictures from our drive from Kigali to Cyangugu:

It was dark by the time we passed through the Nyungwe Forest so we didn't get to see the monkeys and chimpanzees in their home. Instead we bumped along the rocky road looking up at the cliffs above us, then down on the road before us to see the rocks and earth that had crumbled off.

We arrived in Cyangugu late and went straight to the Gihundwe Hospital. It's a typical 3rd world clinic -- dimly lit with overworked doctors and crowded rooms filled with metal beds and patients. The director of the hospital said that earlier in the day there were long lines of injured people along the concrete path outside the hospital. In the afternoon ten doctors had arrived from Kigali to help out so by the time we arrived they seemed to have moved the people with minor injuries through. We toured the hospital rooms. Injured people from neighboring villages lay on beds with broken arms, head gashes and broken legs. We were told 34 people had died in Rwanda due to the quake.

Photos at Gihundwe Hospital:

We got to our accommodations, a Catholic retreat center up the hill from the beautiful Lake Kivu. For the duration of our drive we'd been receiving messages from our friends in Kigali that officials were warning to stay out of buildings between 8 pm and midnight. Apparently the were some warning issued based on a prediction of another earthquake. However, it was well after midnight when we arrived and finally sat down to edit the video footage. A minor tremor around 2 AM made me realize how uneasy I was about being so close to the epicenter. We jumped from the computer and lunged for the door frame, then laughed when the shaking didn't amount to much.

Continue reading "Update from the Epicenter" »

Posted by Amy at 09:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Cyangugu, in southwest Rwanda -- the epicenter of this morning's earthquake

Until this morning I've never experienced an earthquake.

At 9:43 AM, as I was planning how to spend my Sunday the dining room hutch, floors, and window panes began rattling. I had just woken to the distant chorus of church-goers singing hymns in kinyarwanda. I'm such a sucker for good Christian music -- bluegrass, gospel, and now kinyarwanda hymns. Hearing the soulful music is the only time when I actually entertain the idea of conversion. In a nation as Christian as this one, with a fast-growing shift away from Catholicism to evangelical churches, I was trying to decide which church invitation to accept. I could join a new friend at the Assembly of God church this afternoon, or I could accompany a women who heads one of the Kigali prisons to the Zionist church this evening. I'm looking forward to entering this world of Rwanda that I haven't seen yet. I plan to bring my mini-disc recorder and make a field recording of the music.

My thoughts were interrupted by the slight rocking of the ground beneath my feet. Last night at dinner at Restaurant Hellenique, I had been talking to some NGOs about efforts underway to harness the methane gas from the volcano outside of Goma to provide electricity for the region. So already volcanos and plates were on my mind. But I've never thought of this area as particularly proned to quakes.

The shaking we felt here pales to what people in the epicenter, 300 km away in Cyangugu felt.

The strangest thing to me is that it's now been nearly three hours since the earthquake, yet there are still no news reports -- only a mention on two geological survey sites. Registering at a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter scale, it's hardly insubstantial. The area where it occurred is densely populated. Surely there's been a fair amount of damage.

**UPDATE

KIGALI (AFP) - At least 23 people died Sunday in western Rwanda after a strong earthquake shook several countries in Africa's Great Lakes region, Radio Rwanda reported.

For more about the cause of earthquakes in this region, read on.

Continue reading "My Very First Earthquake" »

Posted by Amy at 09:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)