Wake-up call — Aftershock at 4:33 a.m.

I’m stealing a phrase from Pascal Antoine’s blog entry on HaitiXchange.  The aftershock that shook me awake “…was nerve rattling and a big wake-up call for me.”  A 4.7-magnitude of a wake-up call, according to the Richter scale.

The bed wiggled and my thigh fat jiggled.  I sat up and it took me a moment to process — given whatever REM stage my brain was at then. 

But I managed to extricate myself from the mosquito net, slip on my pink flip flops from the Dollar Store back home, and grab my bag with passport inside. 

I made it out my bedroom door and was the only one in the hallway. Had I imagined it?  I stood still to determine if it still was going on.

No one else was up, and since it seemed to have stopped I decided to go back to my bed.  Where I lay awake until my alarm went off at 6:30 a.m.

I lost two hours of sleep.  But many of those who’d lived through last month’s earthquake were really spooked.  It caused panic, a Haitian radio station reported.  People downtown ran out into the streets.  Pascal, who is a friend of a HelpAge International staffer, said he heard screaming throughout his apartment building.

It gave the tinyest taste of what it felt like, the big one last month.  Almost everyone who’s described it to me said they thought the world was ending.  In some ways, for the quake’s survivors, the world as they knew it did end. 

Almost everyone that was here Jan. 12 now sleeps outside, even if their house still is standing.  One of HelpAge International’s recent hires here said, “My 7-year-old son refuses to go to school, unless I go and sit next to him.” 

That laid-back tropical ease here only goes so deep.  Simmering just beneath that mellow exterior brews this unresolved jitteriness.  For now, at least.