go figure any Tuesday, in any city. It's 12.51 noon. Many are eating, others are still in the office, some are walking down the street and a few are inside their homes. Insurance But suddenly something changes.
The Earth, which always offers us support and stability, start shaking.
It is not a tremor of fear, it is a tremor pissed off, strong, unstoppable. The furniture in your house begins to oscillate and the objects on the table, where you were writing quietly a while ago, fall to the floor. The trees, buildings and advertising panels that accompany you on your walk wobble and you feel fear, as you've never felt before. Your feet, so accustomed to a horizontal floor, safe and immobile, experience for the first time the feeling of emptiness and your eyes intersect with the scared look of the one in front of you, which could well be a stranger, a friend or your reflection.
The tremor lasts a minute, maybe less but it seems infinite to you. The pissed off land slowly returns to itself and everything stands still, still. Inside you something has changed, you will never be the same.
The Christchurch earthquake of February 22, 2011 took the lives of 166 people. Were 6.3 degrees of magnitude that would mark the life of the city and its inhabitants forever. It has been 4 years but the scar is still alive and just walk in the center of the city to realize the bleakness of the stage. The heart of the tragedy is undoubtedly the Cathedral, which was once the protagonist of the city, today is nothing more than a pile of stacked stones.
And here is something weird. If you googles and look for info on the Christchurch earthquake, the news speaks mostly about the ability of New Zealanders to face the tragedy, and be reborn, like a phoenix. This is not what we have seen. The feeling in Christchurch is to walk through a ghost town: there are many, too many, still fenced areas, collapsed buildings.
In Chrischurch it is very easy to find work in the works, we have friends who were here and they told us that the pace of work is quite, quite calm. There were employers who suggested they go slowly, that the government pays (and well) and that it should be taken advantage of. It is as if business has been done in this tragedy, as if some companies have taken something out of the earthquake: money.
There are even tours that are dedicated to taking morbid tourists among the rubble and the main points affected by the earthquake of 2011. Obviously for a small price of $ 75. Rare. And sad.
An interesting initiative was the RE: START MALL, a shopping center formed by more than 50 containers where you will find shops, cafes and street-food.
Here we enjoy a super nice afternoon with Judith and Aitor from Less is More, which have been a touch of color and vitality for a city that, feeling it a lot, has seemed stagnant in time.
