There are hints telling you what happened. There are debris on the pavement, every now and then a group of tents in front of a damaged building, but mostly one notices the look in people’s eyes: a mix of sadness and resignation ((This country is constantly hit by earthquakes and in the last five years it suffered of seven events over magnitude 6)).
I went here to do some volunteering with other CSers — nothing extraordinary, just a couple of days of fund raising — and I can see that people here is really bound by this tragedy: everybody was donating happily, easing out our activities. The sum raised with the Telethon was more than double than the one expected.
Maski organised a nice Free hugs in the main square, and I noticed that at the beginning people were kinda scared, and not at all prone to be hugged! Luckily, this attitude changed later on, as more people was crowding the square ((Also I noticed that a proper field disposition of the huggers can greatly improve the effectiveness of the event: we were two rows of huggers, letting the to-be-hugged people walking in between. This way they had the time to realize what was going on entering the row, being hugged at the other end :-) )).
Despite of the general atmosphere, we managed having a lot of fun, experimenting local drinks — like the Terremoto ((Home drink of «La Piojera». If you ask for a second one it is called «Réplica», meaning «aftershock»)) and the Pisco — local food and local bars: the infamous «Café con piernas», where we performed a Free Hugs Afterhours :-).
Photos are — unsurprisingly enough — here and here.
Ma de chi xee e cueate dea foto in copertina?
Åe xe Å‚e mie, oviamente! Invidioso? :-)