Chapter Six
A Year of Living

Vernal Equinox, 1966
This is the lazy Monday of a strenuous weekend. Saturday we rode our bikes up Bwala hill to the other side of the valley, and rode down a path to the floor of the valley. [I still remember not liking the bike ride up the hill. Some things never change. We never did really use the bikes much. So much for Peace Corps’ ideals]. We saw some mud huts at a close distance. We saw lots of people, most of whom were friendly and smiling. We must have made quite a picture of affluent “mzunguism” in our tennis shoes, with cameras over our backs, trying like hell not to let those bicycles pull down that hill on our heads. We needed sneakers with spikes! The valley turned out to be much deeper than we had thought. It was almost more than I could manage to push the bike up that other side!

That evening we had Jim over for pot roast. Then we walked down to the Tropic Inn for a drink. We returned early and went straight to bed. At about five in the morning I awoke to hear Lou say, “What the hell is that?” Then I heard a horn honking, almost in a rhythm, and at the same time I realized that the bed was pitching around. I stood up to look out the window, still half asleep, and felt the floor shaking. We finally realized that it was an earth tremor. It was pretty scary. There are warnings and precautions against hurricanes; in the event of a tornado you can go to the southwest corner, but where does one hide when the whole earth shakes? It felt bad enough, but it didn’t even knock down any pictures.

All day yesterday we typed handout sheets and corrected tests. Again we went to bed all tired out. Again this morning about five there was a tremor. Again the horn throbbed. But this time we just turned over and went back to sleep. Are we becoming callous? (Entire section FMP)

March 21, 1966
Again – later in the evening – we discovered when we got the Argus this afternoon that 100 people were killed in that “mild tremor” of early Sunday morning. My God. The whole Fort Portal area was hard-hit. I bet Roz and Trudy were really scared. I would have been. We never guessed that it was so serious. We will send the clipping home to our parents. I hope it doesn’t scare them too much. It shouldn’t. With that open field in the front we can be fairly safe. But I’m going to sleep lightly for a few days, I’m sure of that. I wonder if the tremor we felt this morning was of any harm to any other part of the country.

I also forgot to say that on Saturday we found a snake on the porch. Sometime when I’m feeling sadistic maybe I’ll write that fact to Grandma. Actually, it was (I’m almost positive) a species called Brown’s house snake – which never gets to be more than about 10” long and is harmless. The boys found it and were determined to kill it. Stanley even got the hoe and I was forced to stand guard over the poor thing. It was the first snake I’ve ever seen that I wasn’t afraid of. (FMP)