Typical day at the cart: earthquake, medical emergency, Chinese (finally)

OK, we’ve been doing the Chinese cart for over a month and a half now, and most of the time it has been uneventful: Chinese people may take a quick glance at our cart and then move on.

But this particular day, September 10, was definitely one to remember. First, about an hour and a half into our stint, I noticed that the sign on the building we were standing in front of was shaking. I pointed this out to Benjamin, my partner, adding that it was probably a plane flying overhead. No, he said, it is an earthquake. What! An earthquake?

It turns out he was right. It was indeed an earthquake, one of magnitude 5.9 with an epicenter in northwestern Tanzania that killed several people and was felt in all the East African countries. It should be noted that earthquakes are a rare occurrence in the Great Rift Valley.

Then, as we were discussing this, a dramatic thing took place across the street at the hotel. The second floor of the hotel (or first floor, for anywhere outside the U.S.) has a room where a bunch of people were watching a soccer match originating in the U.K. Every so often you would hear loud cheers coming from the room, which opened out onto a balcony with the overflow crowd. Then, suddenly, dozens of African guys spilled out on the street, some wearing nothing but underwear, and shouting in a language that Benjamin said was definitely not Kinyarwanda. There was mass confusion that went on for several minutes, until a van pulled up containing a group of Europeans (which caused me to believe there was going to be a riot), and then finally another van into which one of the Africans was carried. It happened that this guy fainted as a result of the earthquake, and his friends didn’t know what to do until someone finally got a vehicle and carted him off to a hospital.

As if this were not exciting enough, a few minutes later three Chinese men approached our cart and began to ask questions! We had a good discussion with them, and they ended up taking literature. This was the first time any Chinese people had come to the cart!

This experience is worth writing home about, wouldn’t you say?