I was woken up very early this morning, by knocking on my bedroom door. It was my father. “Yinka! Yinka!” I was on my feet at once, dizzy and disoriented.
He must need me to open the gate or something,
was my immediate thought. I looked at the time, 3:30 am.
Wow, that’s early.
But I was half awake and it didn’t seem too strange.
“Paa Nii just called, apparently it was announced on the radio that there’s supposed to be an earthquake and that we have to go outside”, my dad said calmly as soon as I opened the door. OK, our neighbour, Paa Nii had called about something. That was all I could make sense of immediately.
My dad continued “I’m going to pray in my room, but you can go outside if you must”.
His initial sentence was now sinking in. It was like a delayed reaction.
What! An earthquake...Oh dear God, no!
My mum is out of the country, so it was just my dad, the help and myself at home. We were in complete darkness because of a power outage from the day before. I quickly grabbed a torch and my phone and went to warn the househelp. My twi is not the greatest and my ewe is even worse, so I struggled to let her know what the emergency was. I tried to remind her of the incident in Haiti, but she hadn’t heard of it. Eventually I told her in broken Twi,
"They say the land will shake and so we will stay outside”.
She understood. She quickly took our dog, Zippy back to her kennel. I didn’t think she should, given the situation. Zippy was in as much danger as we were and would be better off outside. But my dad, didn’t like my mum’s dog and so poor Zippy had to be locked up.
There were lots of voices outside. Almost all our neighbours were out. I said a couple of prayers. I wondered if I should dash indoors to get water or some sort of supplies. But the earthquake could strike any minute. My dad was still not out. So I went back indoors. He said he wasn’t coming out. He believed the power of his prayers were protecting him. He belonged to some offshoot of the Christian religion that believed in praying at several specific times of the day, among other sometimes strange rituals. I kind of believed in the power prayer, but I also believed in being practical...so I ran back outside. I only had my cover cloth on, securely tied around my neck.
Should I go change? Nah. At least I had underwear on...in case I was lucky enough to be pulled out of the rubble...
I know...what a silly thing to be thinking of at this time. But that’s me and my overactive imagination.
Some of the neighbours had been out since midnight.
I remembered my phone had an fm tuner, so Esinu (the help) and I tuned in to Peace FM as the calls kept coming in. It seemed there was an announcement made at Kasoa (a supposed earthquake prone area) by someone in a van and megaphone about this eminent danger to residents in the area and also by some radio station in the central region. There were kids who had to go to school this morning who had been up since 11:45 pm last night. I heard people in various locales, like Teshie Nungua were outside since around that time. The presenters on Peace FM urged people to go back to bed and that it was just a rumour. There hadn’t been any announcement that they’d heard of from the meteorological department. They made that point clear over and over again. Esinu and I needed no more convincing. We made our way back into the house. Today was going to be a rough day because of lack of sleep and even rougher for the poor kids who had been up since the night before.
But it could have been worse. Much worse.
So, a new gas station opened near where I live with my parents. And I must say the huge billboard showing a bored attendant does not instill much confidence. It's almost like it was an afterthought and she was suddenly dragged in front of a camera at the end of a long day.
