The Wave

Some of you may have heard that there was a tsunami that hit the Marshall Islands. Don't worry- I'm ok. It was a pretty surreal experience...

On Wednesday I was walking to school when my cell phone rang. I thought it was Heather, who was home sick, so I was surprised when I picked up and heard a male voice. No introduction, just "Hi Sarah, how're you?" It took me a few seconds to realize it was my father calling, since it was so unexpected. He asked me if I had heard about the tsunami. For a second I thought he was referring to the typhoon that recently hit the Philippines, which the Filipina teachers at my school had been telling me about, but then I realized tsunamis and typhoons are different and I asked him "where?" "The Marshall Islands..."

"oh, no we didn't hear about that. They don't really tell us anything..."

Apparently there was an earthquake outside American Samoa, which caused a tsunami to hit that country, and now there was a tsunami predicted to hit the Marshalls at "2147 Zulu." Dad tried to translate this time into my time zone, and he came up with 8:47. "Um, it's 8:47 now, and I don't see any wall of water..."

I reassured him that tsunamis don't usually have too big an effect on the Marshall Islands (they need a continental shelf to really build up, and we are far from any shelf, sitting up volcanos which rise steeply and don't allow a wave to get going), and that anyway I'm in Laura which is the widest and highest-elevation piece of land in the Majuro atoll (highest being like 10 feet above sea level...) and we hung up.

It felt really weird walking to school in the bright sunlight, seeing everyone acting totally normal, while in my mind this imaginary wave washed over everything, sweeping away dogs, flies, trash, and students. I thought the potential danger had passed, but in the middle of my first class my students started leaving class and telling me we all had to go to the gym. I thought they were confused and told them the assembly (the one I'd helped Marlina write that announcement for) was at the END of the day. Then one of them mentioned a wave and I realized what was going on.

The whole school was milling around outside, apparently without organization or panic. Most of the students had no idea what was going on. No one seemed to be heading for the gym, the second-floor classrooms, or higher ground. I explained to a few of my students that a wave was supposed to be coming- "My dad called me all the way from the United States to tell me about it!" His timing had been off by an hour: it was now 9:47. After a few minutes our principal came over to tell me that the wave had passed "over there" and everything was fine. For the rest of the day a handwritten sign taped to the office door proclaimed "No More Waves- recess and then to regular classes."

Apparently the wave could've been a 9-foot swell over our island, a real threat. But it was low tide, so there was barely any wave at all. The whole thing was very surreal. I felt like we were isolated in this paradise bubble island where nothing could hurt us and even the news of a threat couldn't reach us. I've gone from the Dartmouth bubble to the RMI bubble...not bad!