Preparing my breakfast M. tumbled drowsy into the kitchen. „Was there an aftershock?“ „No, everything is fine. Nobody felt anything, everything is fine!“ We were all in a tense mood today.
There was a meeting for the students at 9:00. They announced that while orientation and the start of lectures would be delayed several days, they would be organizing students who wanted to volunteer with clean up after the earthquake. They would be coordinating teams of students to help in the worst affected suburban areas doing fun stuff like shoveling mud. Anyone could help by providing cars to transport volunteers would be greatly appreciated. Of course I volunteered both myself and Harry to help.
We went in a convoy of cars to one of the southern suburbs outside of the city center. Our main goal was to clear the drains of mud so that the water could flow again. There is a real risk of water-borne disease affecting the city and so we spent several hours shoveling piles of mud onto the sidewalk to free the drains. We rewarded ourselves with a short lunch break after we finished – the university provided pies, fruit, juice and even cookies. There was a small aftershock during our break but it was so small I could only feel it because I was resting my hand on the grass.
After lunch we went back down the street knocking on doors to see if any of the residents needed help cleaning mud from their property. Many of the houses had driveways that were covered in mud and several had large gardens that were just as bad. I ended up in a group of 6 boys and just 1 other girl. The boys acted as typical boys do and started competing to see who could shovel fastest, who could load the biggest wheel barrow… and who could actually lift it. There was another aftershock while we were working in the garden of one of the houses. This one was much bigger than the first and it rattled windows and made several things fall over. It was the first real aftershock I had experience and it scared me.
Once we had finished we headed back to Lincoln in trusty old Harry. We stopped in at New World for more supplies – nice cold beer for all the hard work I had done! It was more expensive than I had intended as neither of the girls had brought their wallets and F.’s credit card didn’t work, so I was left paying for everything. At least I got my beer. The only sign of things being different from normal in the supermarket was a restriction on bread to a maximum of one loaf of bread per customer – until we got back out the front door where a long queue had started to form. In between us going in and leaving again, they had started restricting entry to the supermarket. It was something you’re a little more used to seeing outside a nightclub than a supermarket.
Back home we had a student party. We played pool (on a terrible, terrible table), drank beer and I was promised a real Lincoln University student T-shirt for helping with the volunteers. I was really blending in as a student!
