Update

Hello all. As most of you know, on Tuesday morning there was an earthquake on a fault line in the Pacific that we felt on American Samoa. First, a little background on the geography of the islands to avoid confusion. John and I live on Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa. The outer islands in American Samoa are called Manu'a. The Manu'a islands were unaffected. There is also a different group of islands called Western Samoa. Western Samoa is often referred to as Independent Samoa or just Samoa. So when you hear the news reporting on Samoa, that isn't where we live, we live in American Samoa. The city of Apia, where there was great devastation, is in Western Samoa. I know it's confusing, I just think it helps to know what is actually happening where.

On Tuesday morning, I got a ride to work with another teacher. We were in a small bakery a little before 7:00 a.m. buying breakfast when we felt the earthquake. We left the bakery until the earthquake stopped. We were able to stand in the parking lot while it ended. We felt the shaking for about 4 minutes. Then we drove to work and got ready for the day. When I was in my classroom, the teachers told us all to bring the kids down for an assembly. We got news of the tsunami and dismissed the students for the day to find their families. I know all of the educators reading this are wondering how you can just let hundreds of elementary students literally run home in an emergency without notifying their parents, but that's just the Samoan way.

I teach in the village of Aloau, which is on top of a mountain and therefore very safe. John teaches nearer to the base of the mountain and we live in-between. By the time I left my school a few minutes later, the top of the mountain looked like a parking lot. Pickup trucks full of people were coming up the mountain for safety. Another teacher and I drove (very slowly, because of the traffic) down the mountain because she needed to pick up her kids and I needed to find John. I waited at John's school with him until all of the kids were picked up and we went home to wait for more news.

John and I don't have a T.V. or radio, so most of the information we got was through the, "coconut wireless," the way news typically travels on the island. Luckily, our Internet was working (it is very unreliable) so we e-mailed a few people back home and asked them to spread word of our safety. We also contacted our Field Director and learned that the rest of the volunteers were also safe.

Yesterday, Wed., we reported to our schools but they didn't need us so we met up back at home. John and I went to the local chapter of the Red Cross in the afternoon. We loaded up some pickup trucks with donated McDonalds and drove into Pago Pago (the capitol city), which is the biggest city on Tutuila. The photos above are from Pago Pago. Then we drove over an hour to the east side of the island, which is more rural and also hit hard by the waves. There is currently no electricity on the east side. There is a shelter (really just a generous guy's house) tucked way back in the jungle. We dropped off the rest of the food there. The relief efforts are really disorganized, but there are people coming from off island soon that have more experience in disaster relief so that should be a big help.

The strangest thing is that some parts of the island, like our village, have been completely unaffected, while others lie in ruin. One thing that has impressed me since we first got here is the way that people care for each other. You won't find any homelessness or street children here because of the incredible family structure. Everyone knows each other or is related, so they watch out for one another. So, from what I can tell, the situation is tragic, but not desperate. The other side to that coin, though, is that almost everyone knows people who were injured or killed or left homeless, so no one is unaffected.

I read an essay a while ago (I don't remember the author) about a family that had been stricken with unimaginable bad luck. The author tells her sister, "What that family needs is grace", and the sister responds, "What that family needs is casseroles". And the author concludes that there isn't much of a difference. The wave of concern and the acts of helping are born of the same spirit. So I think that the best response to these events is twofold: sending lots of positive thoughts, energies or prayers to whoever you believe listens, along with whatever resources you can spare at the moment, to whatever aid organization you trust. I know that the Red Cross and Oxfam both have teams on the way.

Sorry that this was so verbose--I understand that many of you are hungry for details that we haven't been able to provide recently, so I hope this helped. We'll try to stay in contact over the coming days. Again, John and I are fine. Thanks for all of the concern.