When the Earth Quakes: Some Peruvian insight

A personal interest of mine has always been natural disasters. Since I was a child I was more interested in the strange phenomena that the Mother Nature created, than other news headlines. Now, this has never meant that I have ever wished to be caught in any kind of catastrophic event, nor that I wish to see it happen anywhere in particular or to anyone in particular for that matter. This is a simple appreciation at the impressive forces that lay beneath the rich soil we walk on, within the deep blue oceans we admire, or the endless skies we tend to look over on a daily basis.

I remember when I was 8 years old and going to my small public library and finding all the books available on Tornadoes and Hurricanes available in the "Junior" section for my third grade science project. This was when computer library systems were still new to me, and I remember thinking that there simply wasn't enough information, and that I needed more. From the "Juniors" section, it was a quick upgrade to the adults section to gather more information. I ripped the books off the shelves and sat on the floor reading (with the help of my parents) about barometric pressure changes, cloud formations, and learning about the scales used in order to measure the strength fascinated me to no end. I was engulfed by the notion that something so much bigger than me or anyone around me existed. The very idea that something as calm as a blue sky with a light breeze could become as violent as a 1/2 mile wide vortex in a matter of minutes was something I needed to find a way to comprehend.
Side bar: my third grade teacher, Mrs.Poppy, thought my spiral representation of the changes in pressure resulting in a tornado was more than deserving of a A+. I feel like projects completed before Wikipedia and the internet are truly deserving of a increase in letter grade since the research was truly labour intensive. 

When I was done reading all the available books on meteorology the library had, I remember asking my parents what other kinds of bad things could happen naturally on earth. From this, my parents suggested I stopped looking at the skies and "dug a little deeper". The cleverness of that statement only becomes apparent to me as I sit here and write it down for you, but it was probably marks the beginning of a long and fickle love affair with the world of earthquakes. I can remember reading stories of persons who would relive the memories of the ground opening up and then "swallowing" cars, followed by the ground snapping back shut with the car nowhere to be seen. I also remember looking at pictures from the 9.2 Anchorage earthquake in 1964 in those book. One picture in particular is still ingrained in my memory, it may not have been one of the most famous pictures from that event, but it was remarkable to me. There's a single blue car in the forefront which looks like it dove off the cliff above, but when you focus on the backdrop you notice the cliff is actually the entire left side of the block which has sunk about 15-20 ft. With the wonders of Google, I was able to track down this picture, and have included it below. But the sheer power that must be behind an earthquake is almost indescribable. For those of you unaware of what causes an earthquake, in layman's terms its simply the friction resulting from the sliding or rubbing of tectonic plates (I apologize if there are any seismologists reading this since this may be an oversimplification, but I find that overly simple, is simple enough for non-scholars like myself).

My first first-hand recollection of an earthquake was from my parents in my early-early 20s when my interest in natural disasters had been rekindled. Having grown up in Peru until they moved to Canada some 20-odd years ago, they had lived through their fair share of frightening earthquakes. This would mark my initial encounter with what I now identify as indigenous knowledge sharing. They told me that in Peru when they were growing up there were major earthquakes ever 4 years, or so. To me, this was truly frightening, knowing that I would visit Peru from time to time, statistically speaking my chances of encountering one was pretty high. However, they reassured me that this was not as true as it had been through the 1960s and 1970s. They often referred to three major events in Peruvian history, the 1970 Ancash Earthquake and the 1974 Lima earthquake, and the 2007 Ica earthquake. They could only guesstimate what the ritcher scale reading was in the former two, but they guessed it must have been at least 7.6-7.8. Now, I don't know about anyone reading this, but when the earth begins to move, I would never be able to guage the degree to which it is vibrating- I have two settings: calm and earthquake.

It wasn't until my internship right now in Lima, that I would have the time and access to lots of native Limenos that my true understanding of what its like to live in a city that has seen so much...movement, per-say. I will break down the things I heard by lessons told to me.

1. When the ground sways you have 20 seconds to run.  My grandmother frequently recalls an earthquake here in Lima when she was still the principal of an all-girls school. It happened at 9am on a holiday, she and the other teachers were having a meeting when the ground began to shake. She recalls standing up and running for the doors like you usually would in those circumstances. But as the movement grew in violence she not only headed out the front door, but ran past the school yard and into the streets to avoid the bricks that she still, to this day, describes as popping out of the wall like popping corn kernels. When she reached the streets and turned around to look at her school, she was just in time to see in crumble into a pile of indistinguishable rubble. At this point in the conversation, she always clasps her hands holds them to her mouth and thanks God that there were no children in the building that day, and that no one was hurt. This is followed by a warning that, 'if you can get out in less than 20 seconds, you run until you are outside and away from a building. And if you can't get out of a building than find the structural beams and something to hold over your head just in case of flying debris.'
Similarly to my grandmother, my father recalls being in school during an earthquake where the teacher refused to let anyone leave the building when the quake began. He and a classmate decided to make a run for it and made it out of the building when the windows imploded on the classroom in which they had been 10 seconds before.

2. If you are near the ocean, at sea level and you feel a strong earthquake, run for the hills. Since Lima is a city that runs along the good part of the pacific coast, it is common knowledge here that if you happen to be on the beach and an earthquake hits, you have a reasonable amount of time to seek higher ground. In this particular instance, I am not sure who told me this story, but I remember it perfectly. I was sitting on a beach when I was 9 just south of Lima when a family friend or possible distant relative, since you are somehow related to everyone here in someway, began to discuss the retreat of the ocean after a strong earthquake. She, or someone she knew (my Spanish was not the best at the time) had been there to witness the ocean retreat back to the horizon leaving only a frightening visual for all those who saw it, only to come back a short while later in full force.
Similarly, during the 1970 Ancash earthquake, an entire town located in the valley of Huascaran disappeared. In this case they were not near the ocean, but the earthquake was so strong that an entire northern face of the mountain collapsed with rock and ice and buried the town and killed some 70, 000 people. The only survivors from this town were the children who had attended the circus at the stadium which was located on higher grounds. This particular Earthquake was May 31, 1970 which is now commemorated as National Earthquake Preparedness day here, and the area where the town once lay is a national cemetry where any form of reconstruction is prohibited.

3. The Month of October is the unofficial earthquake month. On October 2nd of this year I was on a bus into the center of Lima and I was overhearing two elderly women talk about the beautiful breeze we were having. And one women commented to the other, "This is earthquake breeze" while the other one commented back "Its about the right time of year". With this, I turned around and politely asked them what they meant by "right time of year" and they began to tell me about what October meant to Peruvians. Apparently, here there is native belief that October is the unofficial month of Earthquakes since some of the strongest earthquakes are felt in October. However, this quickly became a debate between the two about May and October being pretty close in numbers, and finally an agreement that in truth May and October are the months to be cautious in. As for the breeze, this can be explained by the next lesson.

4. Earthquakes change the weather. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Is she seriously expecting us to buy this one?! The two aren't connected." Under normal circumstances, a logical person would stand to reason that no, changes in the ground don't affect changes in the atmosphere, and if I hadn't noticed this for myself I too would be filing that one under 'things I am too logical to swallow'. But alas, this is a lesson I will endorse. I have not been in any major earthquakes (thankfully), but I have been in a few tremors.
  **Side bar: In Spanish, there is a distinction between Terremoto, an earthquake, (~7.0 on the Ritcher scale), and Temblor, a tremor, (less than ~7.0 on the Ritcher Scale). In English, when the earth moves, its automatically considered an earthquake, but not here.**
Back to the story, in the times I have been in a tremor the following day you notice a change in the climate. Last April there was a tremor at about 2am and it was fairly significant, I remember being awakened to a swaying ceiling fan and the housekeeper screaming "Temblor! Temblor!". Later that morning I awoke to find that the perpetual sunny, hot days had now clouded completely over into a grim overcast sky. At this point I should point out that Lima has two seasons, perpetual sunshine and hot weather in the summer, and endless overcast grey cold days in the winter. My grandparents were the ones to point out that this was normal with strong seismic movements, and that that tremor had marked the end of summer for them that year.

5. Hallow silence in this city is rarely a good thing. The final lesson, and frankly the one I am most vigilant of is silence in the city. Before an earthquake begins it is common knowledge here that a deafening silence is heard between when all the animals go crazy, and when the roar from the earth begins. And for those however many milliseconds, you can't hear anything.
If this were in the middle of Montana, or the Prairies, I would agree that silence is normal, but in a city that had traffic at any hour of the day and is in a constant state of construction and car alarms, complete silence is enough to wake you up in the morning. And on more than one occasion, I have woken up concerned when I heard nothing. However, both times this has happened it has been on a holiday morning where no one bothers coming out until much later in the day.

I should note that since I have been in Lima, 2 tremors have occurred, the first I was in the car and felt nothing. The second we were on the 6th floor in the MEDA office, and the building swayed. It was a very odd sensation, imagine sitting on the edge of the shore being hit by waves. The initial motion is strong and it pushed you one way, while the retreat of the water pushed you back the opposite way. It was strangely soothing but frightening while you held your breath waiting for it to worsen.
After all, everyone in the ring of fire is waiting for "the big one", and everyone around here says we're due. Let's hope that's a piece of indigenous knowledge that I won't be verifying for readers!

1970-Ancash earthquake Rubble

1964 Anchorage, Alaska Earthquake

[Cue Dolly Parton music] Workin' 9 to 5... well, more like 9ish to 6ish

MEDA has a few projects going on in Peru; but I am part of Techno-Links (TL), which is a brand spanking new project in Lima. Unlike some other projects which are more focused on specific sectors or regions, TL is broad in the sense that we focus on all of Peru and all of Nicaragua. Let me do a little professional pitch to everyone reading this – so you have a better understanding of what it is we are working on Peru. It’s actually kind of cool- and I say that with no irony or sarcasm!

TL is a “competitive agriculture technology program”, or so our tagline says. We are a program that seeks to expand the agriculture market. In essence we are looking to connect small producers with the technology they need to expand their market, and in turn expand their incomes and better their lives. How do would we do this, you ask? Great question. Well, it’s a competition! Organizations or companies send us applications with their ideas, and we determine if we think it’s something we would like to fund to see develop. We are looking to work with input suppliers, cooperatives, associations, or really anyone in a position to run a project that will have a broad scope. A very basic example: a cooperative may apply and say they intend to purchase machinery that will help them develop their crops faster. The project may consist of purchasing the machinery and training everyone to use it, maintain it etc. I’m not sure if this is a real example, but this was the way I explained it to myself earlier.

Currently we are in the first phase, or the pilot phase, since we are still learning about the sectors we are working in. I can honestly say you can prepare as best you can, but something will always come out of nowhere to surprise you in these introductory phases.

The Office:

We are working in a rather small office on the border of Magdalena and San Isidro here in Lima. If you have been to Lima before you may be familiar with San Isidro- its where a lot of the corporate head offices are located. Its relatively modern and green in comparison to the center of Lima.

Currently, there are 4 of us working here all the time, the project manager, accountant, administrative assistant and myself. However, in about a week and a half we will be joined by another intern. Since it is such a small team, it’s nice to get to know everyone really well. The office ambiance is very low key, which is very comforting when you are new to a country.

The Work:

The work is self-paced, I can do as much as I feel like on a daily basis since I am responsible for certain tasks. At this point, it is a matter of revising what we have done and what we should change or keep the same for the next phase. Personally, I am a bit of an organizational fanatic so revision and organization of things is my forte.

A side project of mine was to create and monitor social media outlets for this project. I figured since most of the organizations we were interested in and some of the companies we had been in contact with had active Facebook and Twitter pages, why not give it a shot for our organization too? Well, we launched it not too long ago, and I think it will serve a lot of purpose in the upcoming stages- we’ve already got some good traffic on the sites. Also, it’s a good way of know what is going on in terms of fairs and expos relating to the industry we are targeting.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to attend Expo Café Peru 2011, it was Peru’s expo for coffee producers, and input suppliers. I went to go mingle and attend a few presentations… and obviously, for the coffee. The fair was relatively small, but the coffee was delicious! I will post about this expo in a later blog, with pictures! As soon as I find cables to connect my camera to my computer and extract the pictures.

This is where I will leave the brief sales pitch about the program and my surroundings because I am sure as I keep blogging I will fill readers in on more!

Wait! One last shameless sales pitch!

If you are interested in what we do, and get a chance, then check out our website: www.meda.org/technolinks, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Techno-Links/148566338569091, or Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/TechnoLinks_

The City of Kings

Since I am a bit of a research aficionado and naturally extremely curious-- so I figured it may be a good idea to give anyone reading this a brief, and hopefully interesting, mini- crash course in Lima (courtesy of google, wikipedia, and my own experience- naturally)! So lets stick to point form Q & A. 

Hm, where to start, where to start? Let's start with Pizarro. 

When was Lima founded?
Formally, on January 18, 1535 Francisco Pizarro founded the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru on the banks of the Rimac river. Before Lima was selected, it was between it, and a city named Juaja in the Andes. But Pizarro determined that Juaja was too difficult to get to as Lima has easy access to the ports on the Pacific.

What was Lima's original name?
Pizarro re-named Lima, La Cuidad de los Reyes, or the City of Kings. But soon it returned to its previous name. The name Lima is said to have risen from one of two sources: from Aymara, lima-limaq meaning yellow flower. Or two, from the Quechua rimaq, the name of the river. You see, like the Japanese, in Quechua 'r' and 'l' are interchangeable. So really rimaq, would have sounded like Limac. And from there, getting to Lima is pretty straight forward. 

If I were to give Lima a name, what would it be?

The city of traffic! I have never seen so much grid lock, from 7am-10pm there is traffic anywhere and everywhere. And the transit system is a mystery all in itself. And that particular topic deserves a blog post all to its self. 

Where in Peru is Lima located?

Lima spans along the coast of central Peru. The center of Lima is not located on the coast, it is located on the Rimac river (as previously mentioned). When Pizarro established Lima, he also established the "Callao" which was the main port in South America at the time. 

It mostly desert, and basically has two seasons- winter and summer. Winter (mid-April to mid-November) is 15C overcast, extremely humid and generally pretty depressing (weather-wise). Summer (late-November to April) on the other hand is 25C, less humid, and pure sun. Although, one should not mistake pure sun with blue skies. Oh no, Lima for the most part is very polluted so a clear day will have blue-grey skies. 

What is historic Lima known for?

Its Balconies. If you were to drive around the city you will see a lot of the old building have these balconies. Recently, the city has tried to have companies "adopt" them and renovate them. 

In my opinion, what is Lima really known for?

Its food. 

Limenos (people from Lima) truly have a liking for food. In particular they like super, sweet, super satly, and super spicy. Indulgence is most definetly a sin one will repeat time, and time again here. So far my favourites are Lomo Saltado- sliced and sauteed steak with red onion, tomato, and peppers served on a bed of steak cut fries and white rice, Alfajores- two biscuits (similar to short bread) with manjar blanco in between, Anticuchos- cow heart kebabs and picarones- what I will refer to as the Peruvian Donut since it is a fried batter in the shape of a ring served with a syrup. 

Delicious. 

And here are a few more random snap shots of some Lima-ness! The old post office (the pink building), the remains of older buildings in the center of lima, and finally in the Lima central market- where you can pretty find anything your heart may desire. 

"fee-fy-fo-fum, I can see over the heads of Peruviums"

As the doors opened up on Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, I breathed in the thick polluted air thinking 'this is the beginning of a new chapter of my life. I've never felt so ...tall! '.  

When the doors opened up on the airplane on a rather cold Friday evening, I thought to myself this is it, from this moment on, I am a citizen of the world and I will put all of my North American tendencies and expectations on the back burner and be open to anything that happens. After all, its all about the journey, right? As it turns out this was a lot harder than originally anticipated for the first hour and a half of my internship.

When I first got to customs, I was pleasantly surprised that there was no line so I was excited that for once in my life I would be able to get my bags and be out of the airport within a reasonable amount of time. So, as I practically skipped toward the customs officer, and showed him my passport with a grin that spanned my entire face, he looked at me in all seriousness and asked why I was going to be staying so long in Lima. When I began to talk, it was like someone had turned on the faucet and I couldn't stop talking. I told him about the internship, and how it was such a good opportunity for me since it was a difficult field to get into especially right out of school. Then I began to tell him about how I was happy about being able to miss Canadian winter, but that I was going to miss my family and friends- even though I had family in Lima as well. At this point the customs officer looked at me with a half-smile, pushed my passport towards me a bit more and told me I could go now. Clearly, 7-hour flights in silence do not settle well with me. 

After this abrupt end to my life's story, I was a little embarrassed and decided that it was time to make my way toward the baggage claim. When I got there I realized that the belt hadn't even begun to move yet, so I knew I was there for the long haul. 20 minutes later, I threw my bags onto my cart with a wonky wheel and diagonally made my way towards the exit. So close, I could almost taste the freedom from my travels.

When I reached the final check point to exit the airport security zone, I handed the security guard my white customs paper, and pressed the final button for clearance. There is only two options, red or green. Red means you belong to the airport for the next 2 hours of your life, and green means you are off to- well, greener pastures per say.

"Hallelujah"

It came out green. Green means go, green meant for me what America meant to the Irish in the 1880s- maybe a little less dramatic but still- green meant I was a free woman in an exotic new land. And just as I pushed my cart forward to skip on down the passage, a tiny woman stepped out in front of the cart, looked at me and said "para alla" which means "go over there", and in this case, "there" was a giant x-ray machine. I didn't really have anything out of the ordinary in there, so I thought I have nothing to hide and proudly placed my extremely heavy bags on the belt and watched them go through. After about 2 minutes the gentleman conducting the scans said, you have 2 laptops, please re-enter the baggage area, and see claims.


Crap, so close. 


As I waited I witnessed a hand-full of people who looked as though they had tried to fit the entire contents of best buy or the Gap in their luggage, and as a result were being forced to document every item and pay duties on them.
I went up to the window and said, "listen I was told to come here and just pay a fine for the netbook I have since I have two laptops, is there a reason I have to wait here?"  The girl looked up at me and looked back down, "someone will be with you shortly."

As I looked at her, and the woman beside her, they were both watching tele-novelas (soap operas) on TV. I asked again, "can you please just print out the receipts, its really not that big of a deal, no bags need to be checked, you can ask the security at the x-ray machines."

Silence. 


-"Is there someone who isn't watching TV that can help me out please"
- "No."

What do you mean, no?! Clearly you are being paid to do something, so DO SOMETHING... Relax, Alicia, relax. One, one-thousand. Two- one thousand. Three, one-thousand. 


- "Where is the manager's office located? And what is her name."
- "Over there. It's Sofia"

As I walked over to Sophia, out of the corner of my eye I saw the girl scramble to sit up and start typing. So, as I knocked and explained to Sofia that no one was willing to help me out, she said she would go talk to them and it would get figured out.

Needless to say, the girl who had refused to help me out before, was more than willing to help me out now. And as I walked away I heard Sofia talk quietly but sternly to the girl indicating that she was not paid to watch TV. And it only took 40 minutes of back and forth corrections to my information, authorizations, stamps, signatures and typing on a what had to have been a printer borrowed from a museum.

Finally, I saw the outside world. And two things hit me right away- number one, wow was the air thick and polluted. Almost felt like I was short of breath and got a head ache instantly. Number two, for the first time in my life, I was semi-tall! I was able to see over people. I was able to see the tops of other people's heads!
In this new life I would no longer be the tiny one out of the crowd- being only 5'2" on a good day, for most Canadians I was Polly Pocket sized- I was sort of tall in Lima. I figured most women were around 5' tall at best...with high heels on.

...This was going to be interesting.