All shook up

At around 3:30am on Friday morning, we woke up to our beds shaking vigorously. Earthquake! 3 times. 5.6 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was at Lake Kivu on the Democratic Republic of Congo side. Of course, living in earthquake country, it was not the first time that I experienced an earthquake, but it was pretty strong and went on for what felt like quite a while the first two times. Plus, nobody had warned us that earthquakes can happen in this area, so we never anticipated it.

While our WhatsApp group immediately went berserk, our seasoned earthquake experts from Japan did not bother. Some of us went downstairs to the lobby after the second or third time. Praveen came down with his cup of tea and wifi router - the survival essentials, eh. Some grabbed their passports. Some were in deshabillé. I emptied the safe and came down with my backpack and hiking shoes and was ready for anything... except I forgot to grab some water.

Our thoughts went to Louise, IBM DE, and her girls. Louise is in Kibuye on Lake Kivu holding a girls' tech camp. We WhatsApp'ed her and were relieved to hear that they were all fine and that camp was continuing. Unfortunately, we later learned through the news that two children perished in the earthquake when their house collapsed in Bukavu, DRC :(

On our side, after it was clear that the excitement was over, we headed back to our respective rooms and tried to go back to sleep. Luckily, we were able to sleep in just a little more that morning. We had found out during the week that Friday was going to be a holiday. Folks didn't quite know because the holiday is newly established this year - for Thanksgiving, in appreciation of the harvest. So we had the day off. We hired our usual drivers to take us around. We had to pay them separately because the holiday was not covered as part of their usual work agreement.

After a delicious late lunch at Sol e Luna Italian restaurant, we decided to head to the Genocide Memorial. It was not easy to digest, but it was a must to understand what the people went through and to pay our respects. The exhibit consisted of videos, photos, descriptions, testimonials, actual skulls and bones, a children's gallery, and others. There's a warning just before the second portion of the exhibit that it's about to get graphic (did not post the more graphic photos here). Outside, there were mass graves and a wall of names. The open grave was covered. You can say that we were shaken after our visit.

Later on, we went back to l'Hotel des Mille Collines for dinner and music. Dinner was outdoors. Music was jazz indoors. It started later than we had expected. The singers were amazing. They sang Sam Smith, Happy, and classics like Whitney Houston and Lean On Me. Bhuvana had been looking forward to dancing, so another kind of shaking took place that night ;)

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