Al’s Time in Christchurch (re-posted from Al’s Blog)
I live in Auckland… I watch the news… Along with the rest of the Nation and the World, I watched the events of September and February unfold in Christchurch and my heart was devastatingly wrenched. Time has gone on and from afar the story appears to have become less about the tragic loss of life, and more about the failings of “the system” and eventually the buzz died down to a little piece half way through the news report. I am completely guilty of not keeping Christchurch in my consciousness… I had the luxury of distance from the heart of the problem and I didn’t wake up thinking about how crazy life is for the people that endure crazy trials day after day.
Fast forward to the events of the last few days. I sat in a Church service on Sunday where a grief counsellor was talking about how to manage stress and cope with the ongoing aftershocks and lack of trust in the ground below. I stayed a night with friends who have a “casual indifference” to the aftershocks… They have developed an active resignation to the status quo of daily shakes and for an outsider this seems completely surreal. I read a blog post last night when I was woken up at 3am by another aftershock… Joy Reid is a TVNZ reporter in Christchurch and I found her thoughts on living through the quakes to be more than poignant.
It is probably really bad of me to say, but I need to be transparent in writing this… I was kind of gutted that I didn’t feel the first 5.5 quake yesterday. I think to truly understand some things, you have to experience them for yourself. I had really wanted to know what it felt like to endure this time in Canterbury… This distant and uneducated fascination stopped indefinitely at 2:20pm when the 6.0 quake hit. I was sitting next to a wall of massive glass sliding doors on a camp overlooking Lyttleton Harbour… As the quake hit, there was a completely indescribable sinking in my very core as everything I knew about firm foundations was called into question over the course of what felt like forever. As we gathered outside after the buildings were evacuated, there was a whole array of responses. I saw parents calmly, but nervously looking for their kids… I saw kids who have been living this nightmare for far too many months, sobbing into their parent’s chests… Others were cracking jokes or checking out the landslides that were becoming evident across the harbour. How did I cope? I got my camera out and tried to capture the moment. I have pics of the headlands and pics of the people awkwardly standing around.
For some it seemed like an adventure… it was their first real connection with the shaky story of Canterbury… for others it was fearful and yet another kick in the guts… and others still were stuck in some kind of middle ground where they didn’t seem to know what to think or feel. Since that 6.0 quake I have to be completely honest and admit that I squirm internally every time the aftershocks come. I was woken from sleep twice and was longing to be back in my own bed where the worst that happens at 2am is a crying baby to change (or pass to her Mum). I have learned to listen for the faint rumblings that usually accompany an aftershock. In a few short hours I have learned a lot about life in Canterbury.
I don’t think that I can go back and avoid caring anymore. This experience is somehow eating away at my ability to gloss over the events. I also really like that when I put on my facebook that I “don’t particularly like these aftershocks”, that one of my Cantab friends accused me of being a “bit of aGirl”! Thanks Zoe… I actually laughed in an audible manner.
Many things have touched me since I have been down here. I stopped to take pictures of Beckenham Baptist. A church where I have spoken, trained, entertained and helped out over my time working for the Boys’ Brigade and ICONZ. It lies behind a chain-link fence, various sizes of rubble failing to announce that this was an amazing building that once housed the memories of weddings, funerals and other special moments. But that is a story repeated right across the city.
As I drove up the Cashmere Hills, it struck me that locals were strolling past the piles of rocks that used to form walls and boundaries, that to me were stark reminders of what has been happening here. How is it that what is crazily eye-catching for me, has slowly become part of the scenery here?
I want to finish writing this by encouraging you to NEVER EVER FORGET OR MINIMISE what is happening down here. There are still huge needs that need to be met and opportunities to care for Canterbury. The baseline Stress-Levels down here are so much higher than any that we experience outside of the shakiness. We need to look for opportunities to give Canterbury a break! I have a friend in the UK who has generously donated some cash and we have used that to provide flights for respite trips for the staff here at Living Springs… Having a break is probably something that can give these people the strength to carry on. I talked with my cousin on Sunday who reflected on 8 solid days of shoveling silt after the February quake. Him and his girlfriend reached a point where things were getting pretty tense, and a short break up in Hanmer Springs was a complete relationship saver! Sometimes a change of scenery is all you need to go back and face up to new and significant challenges…
Christchurch… the sun rose again today… and whatever today brings, it is guaranteed to dip behind the Southern Alps again tonight… It will again light up the hills and rivers and valleys tomorrow as life ticks on. But please know this… as it does this every day… you will have my prayers… my passionate and enduring support and I sincerely hope that it comes with a stop to these horrible horrible shakes. (I hit that full stop BANG as another aftershock hit!).
