The After Shock- Thoughts and Reflections

I have been meaning to write this blog for about a week or 2 now. Some how it kept slipping away from me. Not because I'm not up to analyzing and facing catastrophic and jarring events; to be frank, it takes time to reflect. And get real folks, it's not like I'm facing a deficit of spare hours these days but you gotta catch my drift when I say that it's been something easy and convenient to put off. Reliving and reminiscing about a tragedy is not ringin´my bell. --- Especially after the three, THREE, aftershocks (7.2, 6.7, 6.0 mf's) that rocked my office, and re-jolted those memories of the night of the 27th right into plain, unobstructed and tear-inducing leg-quivering consciousness. Because, from my frame of reference and life experience with EQ's, every time the earth moves, there's gonna be a 8.8 Richter- sized explosion. Not sure if I can ever "get used" to the temblores. And, people, plz stop cooing "tranquila" to me for Christ's sake.

Essentially, I have run the complete gamut of human emotions in one week-- profound sorrow, a fear for my life, heartache, pride, anger, helplessness, empowerment... No wonder I could barely concentrate enough to put on socks. Never have I felt so zombie-like even after the world's sloppiest night of binge drinking. I simply could not function. Paralyzed with a heart wrenching tembl-over.

Getting to work on Monday the 1st, I was literally SHOCKED at how cavalier everyone was acting. Like, yeah, something kinda strange happened over the weekend but it was like no biggie. So some of the roof fell down. So there are cracks in the walls all over the place. NBD bitches. Well, yours truly on the other hand-- emo wreck. Emo frakking wrek. Could barely speak. As a result, I started to get hella pissed at all my peeps for being so blah-nonchalant about it. COME ON PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT. It was the classic: "oh- yeah that sucks but nothing happened to me, so it doesn't affect my life." Sparked quite the rage in my guata. Here I am the rando gringa-- heartbroken, sob-prone, and devastated for this country and these people, and my coworkers who are, um, actually Chilean are acting SO NORMAL. Cue freak-out. It didn't compute.

But- come Friday, the country was awash in ways to help, cuentas corrientes in which to donate money, groups of students building techos para Chile, the country mobilizing itself to repair all damage in 48 hours. "Chile Ayuda Chile" the campaign was dubbed and, people, Chile really did help Chile. It was amazing how the whole country simultaneously opened their wallets, sacked their pantries and flooded volunteer centers. Together with some amigos, we pooled together a modest fund of $$, bought food and supplies for 10 family boxes, tossed 'em in the camioneta and valiantly drove to the campo-- we were gonna save the day. Riding in on our 4-wheeled white horse, it was almost impossible to pass through the streets because SO many people had congregated to bring supplies, rebuild homes, and fork over their weekend. Bypassing the masses, we drove around looking eagerly to dispense our little boxes made-with-care to families in dire straits. We were totally box-blocked, though, and found that of all the homes we went to, ZERO families took us up on our offer. They denied, with overwhelming kindness and gratitude, our goods, stating that they really weren't in need. Shockingly enough, no one took advantage of us. I couldn't believe it. Despite all the unnecessary looting in Concepción and the cultural undercurrent of stealing and entitlement, we were shied away and told to give to those facing true desperation. Consequently, after a day of literally driving around in circles (how cranky was I to be honest), we packed the truck bed with more than what we'd arrived with, and brought all the goodies to a house in Santiago, to a family taking everything to the Isla Juan Fernández (Robinson Crusoe Island.. read link, amazing story)-- hit horrifically by a raging tsunami. So, after a day of what felt like doing nothing, we finally we able to do something.

Not to mention the fact that, during the last minute Telethon, the goal of raising a quick $15million USD was more than DOUBLED. More than doubled people. Amazing. I was so surprised by these donors because on a day-to-day basis Santiaguinos can be seriously unpleasant. Walking down the street, in supermarkets, etc- if your walking in anonymity, you have the Chilean free reign to be an absolute asshole. Cue the Santiago-stink-eye. I've seen countless old peeps get pushed outta the way on the metro, people cutting you in line left & right, violent fights for absolutely no reason, and let's not forget about the nastygrosssickeningflaite "men" piropo-ing the women like we're carne... Por eso, I was so surprised at the instantaneous solidarity. Which made me think: what if Chileans (slash people in general) were like this all the time?? What if this spirit of service, one-worldedness, selflessness hung around long after the rubble is trucked away and normality restored?? How cool would that be?? Improbable but something to consider.

Anyway, hopefully this will be my last EQ related post. Hopefully things will return to semi-normality (hmm, country wide power outage this evening isn't a good sign) and we can rebuild, repair, restore the South, those who lost everything, those who need new homes. There is so much work to be done, but if the airs of the Teleton blow away the pre-EQ smog, I think we'll be as good as new in no time. Fuerza Chile...