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Popayan, Colombia, photo by commons.wikimedia.org
Backpacking through South America during my junior year in college at Universidad de los Andes I woke up to a 7.5 Richter Scale Earthquake in Popayan, Colombia. My camping group and I had stayed in a historic pension our first night in the old colonial capital of Colombia and thought we would rest from many days of camping.
Just before 8 am a "ding" sounded in the porcelain sink. Someone yelled "Terremoto!" We simply continued talking thinking this was no hour to get up and moving until brick and mortar fell on either side the face of one of my fellow campers. We ran down the stairs as if were negotiating tires in football practice. The stairs answered back. After the initial bouncy sprint, we found ourselves half-dressed, fortunately in sweats, carrying all the available camera equipment, gathered in the plaza below. Everyone waited while I ran back up to get our passports and backpacks. As I looked out the window they shouted. " get out now!" After we divided up the passports and backpacks we split up to take photographs and got caught up in the adrenaline of being de facto photojournalists. We passed people wrapped in sheets, half asleep, and a man walking by in a three piece suit and hat with a dribble of blood running down is ghostly, dust-covered cheek.
We were able to catch a ride on the back of a truck from Popayan to Cali. In Cali, our hosts had a "ham radio." Back in the days before cellphones and Internet, radio operators would call all over the world for fun. Just by coincidence, the amateur radio enthusiast was talking to my home town at the time, Alexandria, Virginia, so he was thrilled to have the chance to contact the location again. I gave him my parents' phone number and asked him to call.
When radio operator on the other end called the conversation went like this:
"Hello, this is ....in Alexandria, Virginia. I just want to report that your daughter in Colombia survived the earthquake in Popayan and is now in Cali."
"What earthquake?!" My parents said.
I am happy they didn't reply "What daughter?" After asking so many times "Where is our daughter?" I am sure they do ask themselves that first question sometimes.
I wish I had those photographs today, I never did see them. I will always remember how we were at first so disbelieving. We found out what our choices in a crisis were not because of blind trust but by the face-to-face encounter with a the roof collasping over our heads and someone yelling "Earthquake!"
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Day 15 - Recipe 15
