There have been a lot of earthquakes in the news lately. This year seems particularly bad with the devastating quakes in Haiti and Chili and even one reported in the Philippines. When we lived in Davao on the southern island of Mindanao, we experienced an earthquake. We had just gone to bed when our dog,
Pochahontas started scratching at the door to the bedroom. We told her to go lie down and closed our eyes again. Then David said, "listen." I said that I didn't hear anything. He said, "that's the point, I don't hear anything." It was true, there were none of the usual night sounds of bugs, frogs or birds, just silence and
Pokey (the dog) whining. Then the bed started sliding across the floor (and no we weren't doing it!) Realizing that it was an earthquake, we jumped out of bed and quickly ran outside. We looked towards the top of the mountain. We lived at the base of Mt.
Apo, the tallest mountain in the country at over 9,600 ft., which is a dormant volcano. We also lived within a couple of kilometers from the shore of Davao gulf. Off shore to the east is the Mindanao deep, the second deepest place in the world. So we stood there wondering whether we should run to the shore to get away from the volcano's eruption or to run to the mountain to get away from a tsunami wave because of an off shore quake funneling water up the gulf. So we did neither, just staying there in the yard with the neighbors until we heard the sound of traffic on the street. The next day we heard that the epicenter of the quake was hundreds of miles to the south near the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and several miles deep. That quake didn't cause any damage, just shook us up.
Our second earthquake took place on a visit to Cebu, the second largest city in the country. Since we were just visiting for a day we decided to go eat lunch in a revolving restaurant on the top of a 14 story building in downtown Cebu. We wanted to get photos from the top and also have a treat of a meal in a nice
restaurant. As the waiter came to our table and was pouring glasses of water for us, we heard a pounding sound. The waiter started to cross himself (remember this is a Catholic nation). The water in the glasses was on a definite tilt. We realized the pounding was from the disc of the
restaurant hitting the center post of the building as it was shaken. We wondered if the motor was breaking down or what. It stopped after a few minutes and we continued with our meal. Later we read that it had been a 3.something quake and hadn't even been felt by the man on the street. It was only because we were up there on top of 14 stories that we felt it at all. Pretty benign, but memorable anyway.
This book was published back in September, 2011. I got my copy at a book signing at Tattered Cover. It is one of the set printed to celebrate "Peace Corps at 50". I was honored to be included in this volume with my story: "Of Girls and Dogs and Cats". This was edited from my two submissions that I printed here and here. Of course what was in the book was 4 pages.
