After 4 hours of sleep I awoke to people rustling around the house. Plenty of the family members were up and about, preparing a cold breakfast for the children, and Alex had left to take an uncle to visit on some older relatives. I felt in the way and groggy, so I made my way over to an armchair that sat in the kitchen corner. I drifted in and out of sleep there for 20 minutes before Alex returned with his Jeep.

When he did, his aunt collected everyone’s cellphones, including mine, and hooked them up to the car battery. I sat in the Jeep and typed out the first installment of this blog series, then posted it using the internet connection on my phone. I watched as families waited in line for the water truck then carried large jugs back to their homes. Alex played catch with his niece. Other children played baseball in the empty lot across the street. There were bits of completely normal activity amidst chaos.

After all the cell phones were charged, Alex and I drove off to go back to our respective apartments. Of course, as I entered mine, another 4.2 aftershock hit and I almost left again immediately, but instead I organized things as best I could, fed the fish, and cleaned up most of what had spilled on the kitchen floor. I took the stuffed foldable mattress and my sleeping bag. My friend Nicole offered to lend me a tent. I met Alex downstairs, and we dumped our important things in the Jeep. We then walked 2 blocks with our camping equipment to an empty lot where Nicole’s family and several neighbors from her apartment building had set up a camp the night before. We cooked chorizo and chicken on a grill one of Nicole’s neighbors had carried to the lot. As it became evening we drank warm rum and coke because there was no ice to be bought or borrowed. We played Uno, and then one of Nicole’s older neighbors started a conversation with me about Chicago, in which he played the part of expert. 

Eventually I climbed into the tent that was mine for the night with my flippable mattress and thin blanket, and fell asleep to the sounds of more chatter and someone in a nearby tent snoring loudly. 

I’ve never been a smoker, but after the 8.2 earthquake, I understood why my friend Alex needed a cigarette to calm down. It took a while to find some, but after buying 6 packs, and visiting most of our friends and Alex’s family that we worried about, he declared that he was going back to his apartment to get some important stuff. “Are you sure?” I asked, “I think its still dangerous.” He assured me he would be ok, and offered to go to my apartment if I didn’t want to go in. I agreed, but told him that I had locked the doorknob lock to my apartment and didn’t have keys. “Don’t worry. I have a credit card and strong legs,” he told me. I requested my passport, my computer and my phone charger, explaning where he could find them. I was glad our apartments . “There was also a stack of clean clothes on the bed. It’s probably on the floor now, but if you can find it that would be great.” I emptied my backpack onto the back seat of his jeep and handed it to him. He walked toward the apartment building, where some families had already set up tents in the parking lot, by the light of his cellphone.

I sat in the jeep, not knowing what to do. Then my cell phone buzzed. My mother had finally responded to my Whatsapp message. I felt calmer. I got a facebook message from Martin, my friend who had been working in a frozen yogurt shop at the mall in Iquique. He was fine and was going to spend the night with some French students he had met in the mall parking lot. My boss from the Interdisciplinary Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies called from Santiago to check on me. Another professor from the center called a few minutes later. Andrea wrote again, asking if everything was ok with me. I assured her all was well, though it had already been 15 minutes and I was starting to worry about Alex as the aftershocks continued every few minutes. Finally, after what felt like an hour, but was probably only 20 minutes, I saw Alex’s shadow, a man with a headlamp, a backpack on his back, and one in each hand, walking toward the jeep. “I got all the necessities” he told me: he had brought my passport and charger, but realized he had forgotten my computer. “I’ll go back for it tomorrow,” I told him. He had also grabbed the stack of clothes and my running shoes which had been near the sofa (good thing I leave things lying around). He said the level of water in the fish tank hadn’t seemed to drop. I hoped he was right. 

We drove back to his aunt’s house, where much of the family had assembled. One daughter and one son still lived at home, and another had brought her husband and two children to the house. We took his another to the house he lived in with his wife and two children to pick up the rest of the family, some clothing, blankets, and their computers. His wife and children were waiting outside for us when we arrived. Though the house wasn’t in danger of collapsing, it was a night when no one wanted to sleep alone. The more people the better. Even if it meant sleeping on a kitchen floor, everyone just wanted to be with their families as the 4.0-5.5 Richter aftershocks continued.

We returned to the house where just outside the gate everyone was sipping rum and coke and talking. Like the many families that were sitting just outside their homes, some with bonfires, some visiting with neighbors, inside seemed much scarier than outside. For one night, the desire to close off a family’s inside space no longer existed (as I wrote about here). The street was more comforting than walled in space of the home. Around 2am, we decided to go inside. The four young children were all sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the living room, with the father of two of them on the couch. The rest of use sat a few feet away at the big table playing Uno and drinking the Rum and Coke Alex had rescued from his apartment. No one wanted to sleep. Every 30 minutes or so we would all feel a rumble of the earth, and sit up straight at attention, hoping it would subside and not grow into a tremor necessitating going outdoors again.

By 4 am, I had moved to a sleeping bag in a side room, and drifted off to sleep while Alex and some of his cousins stayed awake to “keep watch.” The truth is, as exhausted as I was, I didn’t really want to sleep either. It wasn’t so much that “keeping watch” would really help anything, but the thought of waking up to another violent shaking almost kept me from drifting off. Almost.

for the rest of the story
part one
part two
part four
part five

After leaving our apartment complex, my friend Alex and I set out driving around a city that felt entirely foreign in the almost-complete dark. The only points of light were car headlights and occasional bonfires neighbors had built to stay warm in the windy night air while wearing the shorts and tshirts they had been wearing when they ran out of their homes. 

We first slowly drove past an apartment building near ours’, where my friend Nicole lives with her family. Yelling “Nicole!” out the window proved useless, as the group of people that had gathered outside was in the hundreds, but we did manage to spot her father and a smile and wave from him assured us things were alright. 

We left there to check on a different uncle and his family, arriving on a side street, I met the whole family, hanging out on an empty concrete futbol cancha. While Alex went across the street to the family’s house, his young cousin told me that an internal wall had fallen and her mother’s foot had been hurt. “But we’re alright. It was exciting!” She commented. I could tell she was anxious. She seemed happy, but just wouldn’t stop talking. Asking me all sorts of questions, telling me all sorts of details from her day before the earthquake happened. It was as if, if she could just keep talking she wouldn’t pay attention to the more recent events and her fears would subside. 

I felt bad, I was only half paying attention. It was about this time, 45 minutes more or less after the quake had happened, that my friends in La Paz, Bolivia started sending facebook messages that popped up on my phone. They had felt tremors as well, even 750 kilometers away, and immediately turned on the television news. Hearing the earthquake’s epicenter was near me in Iquique, they wrote to see if I was ok. Most told me there were likely to be aftershocks and I should get on a bus to La Paz as soon as I could. And though I would have really loved to have done that immediately, I knew it would be impossible. With no power, and many highways likely blocked by falling rock, travel between cities wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. 

Next we passed by Alex’s cousin’s house, where we parked the jeep, barely missing a fallen electric cable. After navigating the electric situation, we confirmed the family was ok, but without cigarettes. Alex too was craving one but everyone seemed to be out. By the time walked back to the jeep, I had received at least 10 facebook messages from my friend Andrea, who was vacationing in a region further south. She was worried about a mutual friend and when I told her I was with Alex she asked us to drive over and check on her. And from there we started making rounds checking on friends. First, we went to Alex’s old neighborhood, where he had lived for 10 years. Essentially going door to door, he made sure everyone was accounted for. It was fairly easy, because most people were sitting on their stoops or had gathered on the sidewalk just outside their homes. We stopped and talked, drinking coffee with our friend Samanta and her family, who also lived in the neighborhood. Like Alex and his cousin, everyone was craving a smoke, and after finishing our coffee we set out again to find tobacco. Along the way we stopped by our friend Martin’s house, where he lives with his parents. He had been at work in Iquique, his mother informed us, but had texted to say he was alright. Then off to check on Leo, who we found safe at home, though he had been on a bus the steep highway between Iquique and Alto Hospicio when the earthquake hit, cracking the pavement several feet deep. He had to walk the rest of the way home, which took about an hour. “My mother assaulted me with hugs when I walked it he door” he told us as he took a long drag from a cigarette he had offered to share with Alex. I even took a drag, feeling shaken because my mother still had not responded to my Whatsapp message. 

Leo also gave us a hint on a place that might be open selling cigarettes, it turned out to not be true, but as we drove down the one of the main streets of the city, about 2 hours after the quake had hit, there were occasional corner stores that were dimly lit with flashlights, and long lines waiting on the sidewalk. People were buying water, as the news had already spread that there would be no running water for at least two days. I was thankful for 5 liter bottle I had been told to buy. Though the first three shops had already sold out of cigarettes, the fourth was well stocked, and Alex pooled all the cash we had between the two of us and bought 6 packs.

He took long drags as we sat in the jeep outside the bodega. I even smoked half a cigarette. My mother still hadn’t responded to my Whatsapp message 3 hours later, and though I was sure she was fine, after feeling a bit traumatized, all I really wanted, was to hear that my mother loves me. The cigarette helped. I wasn’t sure if it was really the nicotine that had a calming effect, but it did somehow make me feel better. Maybe it was just a moment of stillness, deep breathing, and knowing that I was still alive after what felt like extreme airplane turbulence in my apartment. 

On April 1, 2014 I went with a friend to Humberstone, an old Saltpeter mining community about 40 minutes from Iquique. Humberstone is located in the pure high desert of La Pampa and has been a ghost town since the 1930s when German scientists discovered a way to manufacture synthetic saltpeter.

I returned to my apartment in Alto Hospicio, Chile around 7:30pm, covered in a layer of dust and desperately wanting a shower. I was also quite hungry, but so tired I just sat on the couch for at least thirty minutes, staring at my 5 fish in the 20 gallon tank that was already in the apartment when I rented it. I looked in the fridge and contemplated whether I would enjoy a bottled beer or a Coca Cola. I also looked at my food options: a bowl of tuna left over from lunch the day before, peanut butter and jelly, a variety of vegetables that I could cook with some rice and the hoisin sauce I brought back with me from the US. I eyed the bottles of liquor on the counter and wanted a little rum, but thought without food it might be a little too strong. I was in one of those moods where I was so hungry and tired I just couldn’t decide on anything. I thought maybe a shower would wake me up a bit.

I had a wonderful hot shower and got all the fine dust off my skin and out of my hair. I stepped out, put lotion on my sunburn and started brushing my teeth. The sink  made a strange clicking sound as the water was running. I turned off the water to listen, then everything started to shake. The window, the toilet, the shower door. I decided to go to the bedroom to get clothes, but I never made it there. I heard the top of the toilet bounce off the toilet seat and break on the floor. I heard everything fall out of the cabinet in the sink and spill across the tile. It was shaking so hard I had difficulty walking. I changed plan and headed for the kitchen doorway because it seemed the most sturdy. I sat down in the doorway, mostly because standing was impossible. As I sat, the refrigerator grazed my arm as it fell over. All its contents spilled out on the floor. The fridge falling scared me so I moved, now naked with the towel only in my hand, to the dining room table. But as soon as I got under it, the tv fell onto it, and I heard the clang of breaking glass, reminding me that the top is mirrored. Though it’s backed by plywood on the bottom, I decided this move had not been a good idea and crawled back to the kitchen doorway, through a large puddle of fish water, to the kitchen doorway where I sat in a puddle of beer from my now-broken six pack.

Holy fucking shit I muttered as I saw sparks and the shaking continued.

After three minutes that felt more like 10, the shaking stopped and I walked unsteadily, half crying, half laughing to the bedroom to look for clothes in the dark. I found a pair of jeans on the floor and shirt lying on the bed. I didn’t bother with underwear. I grabbed my cellphone, which had been plugged in and walked to the kitchen doorway where I felt for the 5 liter water bottle that had been on the table. A friend made me buy it the week before “in case.” I found my shoes in the middle of the floor, next to the sofa where I had kicked them off while watching the fish. The aquarium still was half full of water and I hoped it meant it was still structurally sound. I grabbed my backpack and joined the steady stream of neighbors walking down the stairs.

“Apurranse!” I kept hearing a mother yell to her children. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, a young boy, about 10 years old, grabbed my arm and called asked “Mamá?” “No soy yo” I had to tell him, but I walked with him until we found his mother in the parking lot. I sat down on the pavement and put my shoes on. I wrote to my mother on Whatsapp. “Mom I’m ok.” I wasn’t sure if the network would go out and I wanted to make sure something got out before a possible collapse.

I saw my neighbor and friend Alex who was leaving to go to his aunt’s house. He told me to come with him, and I, not having much of a plan, went along. I sat in his truck waiting for him to organize the backpack he had with him, and sent another message to my mom. “There was a big earthquake, but I’m out of the building and going to a friend’s. Don’t worry. I’ll write more later.” I answered a few more Whatsapp messages from friends in Iquique asking if I was ok, as we drove downhill towards the rest of the eerily dark city.