Earthquake 4 : still going strong

Just before going to bed last night, I sent an email to friends who plan to visit in April. The theme was that the tremors have been diminishing in both frequency and force. How wrong I was! Having apparently slept through a minor tremor around midnight, we were rudely awoken about 0400 by another, violent enough to shake the house and dislodge Sheena's birthday cards, although there was no other damage. Being awoken like that with an immediate adrenaline rush and heart pounding, precludes further sleep for quite a while and many people spent the remaining hours of darkness outside.

In fact the quakes seem to become more difficult to deal with emotionally as time goes on. This may be related to the last one being during the night, but there is also something Pavlovian about it. For me, it is the roaring noise which produces a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm sure, too, that the background of having experienced a dozen or so significant tremors, having talked about them, having listened to others' stories, having witnessed a lot of damage and having visited scenes of death have also taken their toll. In any case, there is a lot of fear around and last night was a setback in overcoming that.

It has been reported that there were several injuries and 1 death in this part of Rwanda as a result of last night's tremors.