Saturday, October 3, 2009 11:17:46 PM PT
Slept for 10.5 hours today. Man, I’m just totally wiped out.
We woke up in the afternoon and went into Seattle. Katrina hasn’t been feeling well, seems like a cold is trying to get her. Hopefully the sleep will start to turn things around.
We had a great day in Seattle, though. Absolutely, no question, the best food we’ve had since January of this year. The stuff we’ve been cooking at home in Alega has been good, too, but in terms of going out somewhere to eat, today was just awesome. And I had my first good beer in 9 months. It was a local brew from Pike Brewery. It was all right, but normally not something I’d write home about. In this case, however, I’m writing home about it.
Seattle is just such a beautiful city. It’s very clean, the people are super-nice, and Pike Place Market just stuns me every time. Flowers, fruit, handicrafts--all wonderful. Had the best apple today that I have ever had in my whole life. It was a Honey Crisp apple, and the sweet juices just ran down all over my mouth. Just incredible. (The apples in American Samoa are terrible. Worst apples I’ve ever had, by a long shot.)
Well, we have a very early flight tomorrow, and another long day of travel. So I should wrap it up here. But let me close by saying how wonderfully amazing it is to be back on American soil. It’s almost bizarre. Still too close and too much shock to have more thoughts on the differences between island life and mainland life. But I’ll put something together sometime soon.
peace,
Mark
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
exhaustion in airports
Friday, October 2, 2009 11:23:45 AM HT
In Honolulu. exhaustion is setting in. I almost fell asleep sitting on the floor of the airport with a magazine in my hand. Had the loudest snorer i’ve ever heard sitting next to me on the plane.
Katrina just said, “but everyone has a loud snorer next to them on the plane.” I responded, “no--not like that guy.”
Next stop: Seattle. And hopefully, sleep.
In Honolulu. exhaustion is setting in. I almost fell asleep sitting on the floor of the airport with a magazine in my hand. Had the loudest snorer i’ve ever heard sitting next to me on the plane.
Katrina just said, “but everyone has a loud snorer next to them on the plane.” I responded, “no--not like that guy.”
Next stop: Seattle. And hopefully, sleep.
Leaving, On A Jet Plane
So, we have managed to fly out tonight from Pago Pago. I write to you all from 30,000 feet, about one hour outside American Samoa, and heading to a US state for the first time since January.
A lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, relief. Relief to be getting off the island. Relief to be leaving behind the perpetual madness that is American Samoa, and specifically the madness that is currently under way. The looting, the rubble, the dust, the destruction.
And yet, at the same time, it is odd because this doesn’t feel like the best time to leave. There are real needs here that can be fairly overwhelming, and I know Katrina feels in some way responsible to her patients. But the “responsibility” she feels is not one birthed out of guilt. No, she has developed a very real love for her patients. She’s been frantically calling the ones she’s had phone numbers for, just making sure they’re OK. This is part of the deep respect I have for her--she truly cares about her patients, in all aspects of their lives. A rare quality indeed. And so it feels weird. How can any doctor leave on a night like this? A night when the needs are so many.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been dying to get off this island for quite awhile now. And in some ways, our departure couldn’t come at a better time for us: our village will be without electricity for probably a month, the mess of the island is intense, and the rebuilding effort hasn’t even really begun at all. There’s just the dichotomy of wanting to leave, and wanting to stay. In many ways, that is perhaps the necessary tension at this point. Our trip home had been planned for quite some time now, and we could not have easily moved our plane tickets, our hotel reservations, our wedding date, etc. So I am personally not regretting the decision to leave as planned, it’s just that we live in this tension. This necessary tension.
Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll try to share some of the stories we’ve heard. The stories of survival, and the stories of loss.
Sorry it’s been a little while since my last update. I hope it will be easier to stay in touch over the next few days. Now then, on to Honolulu, and then Seattle.
Fa’afetai lava,
mark
A lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, relief. Relief to be getting off the island. Relief to be leaving behind the perpetual madness that is American Samoa, and specifically the madness that is currently under way. The looting, the rubble, the dust, the destruction.
And yet, at the same time, it is odd because this doesn’t feel like the best time to leave. There are real needs here that can be fairly overwhelming, and I know Katrina feels in some way responsible to her patients. But the “responsibility” she feels is not one birthed out of guilt. No, she has developed a very real love for her patients. She’s been frantically calling the ones she’s had phone numbers for, just making sure they’re OK. This is part of the deep respect I have for her--she truly cares about her patients, in all aspects of their lives. A rare quality indeed. And so it feels weird. How can any doctor leave on a night like this? A night when the needs are so many.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been dying to get off this island for quite awhile now. And in some ways, our departure couldn’t come at a better time for us: our village will be without electricity for probably a month, the mess of the island is intense, and the rebuilding effort hasn’t even really begun at all. There’s just the dichotomy of wanting to leave, and wanting to stay. In many ways, that is perhaps the necessary tension at this point. Our trip home had been planned for quite some time now, and we could not have easily moved our plane tickets, our hotel reservations, our wedding date, etc. So I am personally not regretting the decision to leave as planned, it’s just that we live in this tension. This necessary tension.
Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll try to share some of the stories we’ve heard. The stories of survival, and the stories of loss.
Sorry it’s been a little while since my last update. I hope it will be easier to stay in touch over the next few days. Now then, on to Honolulu, and then Seattle.
Fa’afetai lava,
mark
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Oddity of Pizza Dough and Tsunami
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:18:51 PM GMT-11:00
It is an incredibly odd experience to live through a natural disaster in what could be described as a “3rd World Country.” Several times (in prior days), Katrina and I had cursed the fact that our stove/oven and hot water heater are powered by gas instead of electricity. The gas runs out sometimes, we have to call the gas company, they take several days to come out and refill the tanks, during which time we take cold showers, etc. But the odd thing is that during a disaster like this, where we have no electricity whatsoever, it’s pretty incredible to have a gas stove.
Monday night, we made our classic homemade pizza dough. This is something Katrina and I love doing together. I am the kneader in the operation, which is an oft overlooked position. Usually it is the “concocter” of the dough that is given the credit, and look, I’m not deriding that. The “concocter” (if you will) is responsible for the assimilation of all the ingredients, the mixing of said ingredients, and the general oversight of the affair. But it is the kneader who then must take these raw ingredients and make something of them. It is the kneader who breaks the yeast down so that it can work through the whole dough. If the dough is kneaded well, then it will rise well. And so that is my humble job. And I work at it faithfully, gladly, and, some would even say, methodically.
So, we had made some pizza dough on Monday night, and our stove was working Tuesday night after the tsunami, since it runs on gas. So, what did we do? We made fresh pizza. We had some cheese we had previously frozen, we had some basic tomato sauce (which we season heavily with our unique--and dare i say, patented?--spice combination), and we had our fresh pizza dough.
And so we inhabited a strange world on Tuesday for countless reasons. We had survived a natural disaster, we were wondering when the next tremor would be, we can constantly hear the Pacific Ocean roaring outside anyway, and we had no power. And let me tell you, when there is no power out on the east side of American Samoa, it is dark. I mean, there are no lights anywhere. It’s just you and the moon, and that’s it. And in the midst of the rubble, the dust, and the strange exhausted peace after the chaos, we made fresh homemade pizza in our gas-fired oven. And we drank a Vailima, which is a beer brewed only in Western Samoa, in honor of the day. We are thankful that this day, which could have gone so badly for us in so many different ways, ended in fresh pizza and beer. What a strange, miraculous set of events for us. Our neighbor Nate, who works for the EPA, and who we had previously spent almost no time with, came over and we fed him fresh pizza. What an interesting end to an unbelievable day.
Tomorrow is Thursday for us, and we will hopefully be packing during the day in anticipation of flying out on Thursday night. We will undoubtedly struggle with some guilty feelings over leaving in the midst of crisis here, especially Katrina with her work at the hospital. I’ll tell you more soon about some of the stories we’ve heard from folks. Survival stories. The kind of stories that heighten the awareness of the fragility of life.
Indeed, we are both struck here with the strangeness of a life that sometimes seems so random: in the harbor, one boat is lifted up and over a building, killing everyone inside, and another is left in essentially the same place it was anchored a few minutes earlier. We are reminded of the great blessing of life, the blessing that we have of getting out of bed each morning and going about the rhythms of the day. It is only when those rhythms are interrupted, when the time signature changes, that we stop and notice.
And so we are thankful today to be alive. Katrina could easily have been on the road heading into work when the tsunami hit. It wouldn’t have been hard at all for that to happen. It would have been a fairly normal morning for her to be driving at that time. But she was at home with me. And when the tsunami hit, we grabbed some stuff and ran up the mountain as fast as we could. We are thankful. We are thankful for many things today. We are thankful for life, we are thankful for each other, we are thankful we live near a mountain, we are thankful we have a lot of candles, and we are thankful to have a gas-fired oven.
I’m also thankful that I had another Vailima tonight.
peace,
mark
It is an incredibly odd experience to live through a natural disaster in what could be described as a “3rd World Country.” Several times (in prior days), Katrina and I had cursed the fact that our stove/oven and hot water heater are powered by gas instead of electricity. The gas runs out sometimes, we have to call the gas company, they take several days to come out and refill the tanks, during which time we take cold showers, etc. But the odd thing is that during a disaster like this, where we have no electricity whatsoever, it’s pretty incredible to have a gas stove.
Monday night, we made our classic homemade pizza dough. This is something Katrina and I love doing together. I am the kneader in the operation, which is an oft overlooked position. Usually it is the “concocter” of the dough that is given the credit, and look, I’m not deriding that. The “concocter” (if you will) is responsible for the assimilation of all the ingredients, the mixing of said ingredients, and the general oversight of the affair. But it is the kneader who then must take these raw ingredients and make something of them. It is the kneader who breaks the yeast down so that it can work through the whole dough. If the dough is kneaded well, then it will rise well. And so that is my humble job. And I work at it faithfully, gladly, and, some would even say, methodically.
So, we had made some pizza dough on Monday night, and our stove was working Tuesday night after the tsunami, since it runs on gas. So, what did we do? We made fresh pizza. We had some cheese we had previously frozen, we had some basic tomato sauce (which we season heavily with our unique--and dare i say, patented?--spice combination), and we had our fresh pizza dough.
And so we inhabited a strange world on Tuesday for countless reasons. We had survived a natural disaster, we were wondering when the next tremor would be, we can constantly hear the Pacific Ocean roaring outside anyway, and we had no power. And let me tell you, when there is no power out on the east side of American Samoa, it is dark. I mean, there are no lights anywhere. It’s just you and the moon, and that’s it. And in the midst of the rubble, the dust, and the strange exhausted peace after the chaos, we made fresh homemade pizza in our gas-fired oven. And we drank a Vailima, which is a beer brewed only in Western Samoa, in honor of the day. We are thankful that this day, which could have gone so badly for us in so many different ways, ended in fresh pizza and beer. What a strange, miraculous set of events for us. Our neighbor Nate, who works for the EPA, and who we had previously spent almost no time with, came over and we fed him fresh pizza. What an interesting end to an unbelievable day.
Tomorrow is Thursday for us, and we will hopefully be packing during the day in anticipation of flying out on Thursday night. We will undoubtedly struggle with some guilty feelings over leaving in the midst of crisis here, especially Katrina with her work at the hospital. I’ll tell you more soon about some of the stories we’ve heard from folks. Survival stories. The kind of stories that heighten the awareness of the fragility of life.
Indeed, we are both struck here with the strangeness of a life that sometimes seems so random: in the harbor, one boat is lifted up and over a building, killing everyone inside, and another is left in essentially the same place it was anchored a few minutes earlier. We are reminded of the great blessing of life, the blessing that we have of getting out of bed each morning and going about the rhythms of the day. It is only when those rhythms are interrupted, when the time signature changes, that we stop and notice.
And so we are thankful today to be alive. Katrina could easily have been on the road heading into work when the tsunami hit. It wouldn’t have been hard at all for that to happen. It would have been a fairly normal morning for her to be driving at that time. But she was at home with me. And when the tsunami hit, we grabbed some stuff and ran up the mountain as fast as we could. We are thankful. We are thankful for many things today. We are thankful for life, we are thankful for each other, we are thankful we live near a mountain, we are thankful we have a lot of candles, and we are thankful to have a gas-fired oven.
I’m also thankful that I had another Vailima tonight.
peace,
mark
Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:17:05 PM GMT-11:00
Been at the hospital all day, although I’m currently at the Samoa News building. Katrina has been working mostly in the ER today. Only a little bit in the morgue, thankfully.
Things are slowly getting cleaned up here, and parts of the island are looking better. Our village is still without power and water, and will remain so for awhile. They’re currently saying it may take up to a month to get power restored to our side of the island. Crazy. There’s a substation close to the canneries (the tuna canneries are between our house and Pago Pago), and the whole substation is down. That area got hit particularly badly. They tried to figure out how to get some new generators from New Zealand, but NZ is on a different power cycle than we are, so no dice on that. The new generators will most likely have to come in by boat, so we’re definitely looking at a decent bit of time before they can get here.
That’s the news for right now. Katrina and I are trying to get home before dark again. We have lots of candles and a couple flashlights, but we need to pack some things before (hopefully) flying out on Thursday. We’ll see. We’re going to want to take more stuff home with us now, just to make sure some of our stuff is safe.
That’s it for now.
I’ll post more whenever possible.
Been at the hospital all day, although I’m currently at the Samoa News building. Katrina has been working mostly in the ER today. Only a little bit in the morgue, thankfully.
Things are slowly getting cleaned up here, and parts of the island are looking better. Our village is still without power and water, and will remain so for awhile. They’re currently saying it may take up to a month to get power restored to our side of the island. Crazy. There’s a substation close to the canneries (the tuna canneries are between our house and Pago Pago), and the whole substation is down. That area got hit particularly badly. They tried to figure out how to get some new generators from New Zealand, but NZ is on a different power cycle than we are, so no dice on that. The new generators will most likely have to come in by boat, so we’re definitely looking at a decent bit of time before they can get here.
That’s the news for right now. Katrina and I are trying to get home before dark again. We have lots of candles and a couple flashlights, but we need to pack some things before (hopefully) flying out on Thursday. We’ll see. We’re going to want to take more stuff home with us now, just to make sure some of our stuff is safe.
That’s it for now.
I’ll post more whenever possible.
We're OK for now
Hi, everyone. Oddly enough, I had just created this blog a few days ago, but hadn't posted anything yet. Little did I know that the first post would be about something like this.
Wow. I mean, what can I say? Katrina and I are OK right now, and we feel very lucky and blessed. It is absolutely crazy here, though. A few parts of the island aren't too bad, actually, and some places have power and water. The village where Katrina and I live, Alega, is not one of them. We don't have power or water currently. It's not quite yet summer here, so it is not insanely (as in equatorial) hot right now, but we're already having some hot days, so who knows what it's going to be like today. Our house itself is in great shape, though. No flooding at all.
The main "city" (I use the term "city" very loosely here), Pago Pago, is just destroyed. I mean, we went to a small grocery store on Monday for a few things, and yesterday, that store was completely trashed. Everything destroyed. There are a lot of buildings that are just not *there* anymore--they were totally washed away. There are large boats lying upside down on the other side of tall buildings. No idea how they even got there. Smashed buses, wrecked cars flipped over, you name it. Rubble and thick dust everywhere. I don't know what the news networks are showing back in the States, but it's sort of like a managed chaos here, if that makes any sense. Katrina and I are at the hospital right now. She's working in the ER and in the morgue. Right now there are 26 people dead, but they've just repaired a bridge going past the village of Leone, and I think there may be more dead arriving from that part of the island today. There's also a dive team being flown in from the US, and I imagine they will recover some bodies, as well. I'm sure that some people got swept out to sea when the tsunami itself started hitting. They brought in a couple big refrigeration units yesterday to start storing the dead bodies, but as is typical here, no one realized they needed to plug the units in until this morning, so there is definitely some decomposition going on.
I was helping yesterday doing "missing persons" stuff. We were set up in the hospital chapel taking names, descriptions, clothing, distinguishing marks, etc. of missing family members, neighbors, etc. The missing persons stuff is not actually too bad right now. We've now got it down to 2 missing people, in fact, but I don't have much hope for those cases.
Probably one of the big overarching things here is that the island was quite simply not prepared for anything like this. And we all knew it. That's the really sad part. There was no warning system in place, there are no real sirens throughout most of the island, no police cars driving up and down the streets telling people to evacuate, etc. Nothing. The earthquake itself hit a little before 7am Tuesday morning. It was intense, and it was *long*. I mean, it lasted a little over two minutes. If that doesn't seem long to you, try looking down at your watch and saying, "go!" Then wait for 2 minutes + and imagine your house shaking, stuff falling, dishes and lamps rattling, etc. Then tell me that 2 minutes doesn't seem very long. It was big. After it was over, there was nothing for maybe five minutes. The radio station was literally telling people, "no need to worry--there will not be a tsunami. Go about your business." So some people down in Pago went out into the streets. We didn't have a radio handy, so we didn't hear any of that nonsense. Then our dog started barking like crazy. Katrina ran outside, and waves were crashing over the road in front of our house. We threw some water and food in a bag fast and ran out the door. At that point, the first wave had receded, and you could see almost the entire coral reef right in front of our house, so we knew another wave was coming. We ran down the road toward a path that goes straight up into the mountains behind our house, and there was someone driving a pickup truck down the road. We hopped in the back of the pickup, and rode down to the path. Our whole village is actually a little better organized than some--it's pretty neighborly. So everyone from the village was hiking it up the mountain. Still, there was almost no communication. No official word from the government or anything. The governor was off-island in Hawaii, so who knows what he knew about it. We all waited at the top of the mountain for maybe 45 minutes, and then we got some kind of word that all was clear. So we hiked back down to our house. Our home backs right up against the mountain, so our next fear was of falling rocks. It seems like we're OK there, though.
The part of the Tongan trench where the epicenter of the earthquake was located is probably about 80-100 miles away, and the tsunami hit here within 15 minutes. Man, that is a *fast* wave. I mean, that's what, almost 400mph? Amazing. We had another tremor this morning about 4am, but no tsunami from it. Who knows what will come over the next couple days. I know it's certainly not unusual to have more aftershocks even several days later, so we'll just have to keep an eye on things.
Katrina and I were supposed to leave the island tomorrow (Thursday) to head back to the States for a month. Not sure yet if we'll be able to leave then. The next flight out would be on Sunday (there are only two flights per week in/out of here). We heard two big planes coming in this morning, so that's a very good sign. Regardless of what you may have heard back in the States, the airport had a lot of debris on the runway, and has taken some effort to get cleaned up. SO, planes may be able to get in/out of here now, but the flights might be taken up with injuries needing to get to the hospital in Honolulu. We won't know for sure on that until a bit later. Hopefully we'll know today, though.
Katrina took a bunch of great pictures yesterday, but we walked out the door without the cable to hook it up to the computer here at the hospital, so I can't upload those yet. Keep checking back in here, though, and I'll hopefully get some shots up soon.
Thanks so much to you all back home who are thinking of and praying for us here. There will be many dark days ahead for the people of American Samoa. And apparently, the nation of Samoa (or Western Samoa, as it used to be known) got hit harder than we did. The capital of Samoa is Apia, and we've heard some bad stories from there so far. Katrina and I had visited (Western) Samoa back in July, so we can imagine very much how disastrous it could all be there. Most of Apia is at sea level, and many of the villages are low-lying.
Right now, the hospital here in American Samoa is under more control than you would think. There are enough workers and everything. Inexplicably, the supplies division decided to shut down to do inventory, though. People will be coming in with more respiratory problems soon from all the dust, but we can't give out any masks because the supplies department shut themselves down. Crazy, I know.
I'll be making updates here as often as I can.
Please spread the link to this blog around to everyone you can think of that might want to know what's going on here. We can't access Facebook, for instance, so please post this link on Katrina's Facebook page. I may be the only person with a US area code who does not have a Facebook page, so just let people know via email or whatever about this blog. Some people may not be able to get in touch with us, and I'd love to know that word is getting around to folks back home.
Thanks again, and I'll be in touch.
Don't hesitate to email, though I may not be able to get back to you anytime soon. Just keep checking the blog. You can leave comments here, as well, and they are much appreciated.
Peace to you all,
Mark
Wow. I mean, what can I say? Katrina and I are OK right now, and we feel very lucky and blessed. It is absolutely crazy here, though. A few parts of the island aren't too bad, actually, and some places have power and water. The village where Katrina and I live, Alega, is not one of them. We don't have power or water currently. It's not quite yet summer here, so it is not insanely (as in equatorial) hot right now, but we're already having some hot days, so who knows what it's going to be like today. Our house itself is in great shape, though. No flooding at all.
The main "city" (I use the term "city" very loosely here), Pago Pago, is just destroyed. I mean, we went to a small grocery store on Monday for a few things, and yesterday, that store was completely trashed. Everything destroyed. There are a lot of buildings that are just not *there* anymore--they were totally washed away. There are large boats lying upside down on the other side of tall buildings. No idea how they even got there. Smashed buses, wrecked cars flipped over, you name it. Rubble and thick dust everywhere. I don't know what the news networks are showing back in the States, but it's sort of like a managed chaos here, if that makes any sense. Katrina and I are at the hospital right now. She's working in the ER and in the morgue. Right now there are 26 people dead, but they've just repaired a bridge going past the village of Leone, and I think there may be more dead arriving from that part of the island today. There's also a dive team being flown in from the US, and I imagine they will recover some bodies, as well. I'm sure that some people got swept out to sea when the tsunami itself started hitting. They brought in a couple big refrigeration units yesterday to start storing the dead bodies, but as is typical here, no one realized they needed to plug the units in until this morning, so there is definitely some decomposition going on.
I was helping yesterday doing "missing persons" stuff. We were set up in the hospital chapel taking names, descriptions, clothing, distinguishing marks, etc. of missing family members, neighbors, etc. The missing persons stuff is not actually too bad right now. We've now got it down to 2 missing people, in fact, but I don't have much hope for those cases.
Probably one of the big overarching things here is that the island was quite simply not prepared for anything like this. And we all knew it. That's the really sad part. There was no warning system in place, there are no real sirens throughout most of the island, no police cars driving up and down the streets telling people to evacuate, etc. Nothing. The earthquake itself hit a little before 7am Tuesday morning. It was intense, and it was *long*. I mean, it lasted a little over two minutes. If that doesn't seem long to you, try looking down at your watch and saying, "go!" Then wait for 2 minutes + and imagine your house shaking, stuff falling, dishes and lamps rattling, etc. Then tell me that 2 minutes doesn't seem very long. It was big. After it was over, there was nothing for maybe five minutes. The radio station was literally telling people, "no need to worry--there will not be a tsunami. Go about your business." So some people down in Pago went out into the streets. We didn't have a radio handy, so we didn't hear any of that nonsense. Then our dog started barking like crazy. Katrina ran outside, and waves were crashing over the road in front of our house. We threw some water and food in a bag fast and ran out the door. At that point, the first wave had receded, and you could see almost the entire coral reef right in front of our house, so we knew another wave was coming. We ran down the road toward a path that goes straight up into the mountains behind our house, and there was someone driving a pickup truck down the road. We hopped in the back of the pickup, and rode down to the path. Our whole village is actually a little better organized than some--it's pretty neighborly. So everyone from the village was hiking it up the mountain. Still, there was almost no communication. No official word from the government or anything. The governor was off-island in Hawaii, so who knows what he knew about it. We all waited at the top of the mountain for maybe 45 minutes, and then we got some kind of word that all was clear. So we hiked back down to our house. Our home backs right up against the mountain, so our next fear was of falling rocks. It seems like we're OK there, though.
The part of the Tongan trench where the epicenter of the earthquake was located is probably about 80-100 miles away, and the tsunami hit here within 15 minutes. Man, that is a *fast* wave. I mean, that's what, almost 400mph? Amazing. We had another tremor this morning about 4am, but no tsunami from it. Who knows what will come over the next couple days. I know it's certainly not unusual to have more aftershocks even several days later, so we'll just have to keep an eye on things.
Katrina and I were supposed to leave the island tomorrow (Thursday) to head back to the States for a month. Not sure yet if we'll be able to leave then. The next flight out would be on Sunday (there are only two flights per week in/out of here). We heard two big planes coming in this morning, so that's a very good sign. Regardless of what you may have heard back in the States, the airport had a lot of debris on the runway, and has taken some effort to get cleaned up. SO, planes may be able to get in/out of here now, but the flights might be taken up with injuries needing to get to the hospital in Honolulu. We won't know for sure on that until a bit later. Hopefully we'll know today, though.
Katrina took a bunch of great pictures yesterday, but we walked out the door without the cable to hook it up to the computer here at the hospital, so I can't upload those yet. Keep checking back in here, though, and I'll hopefully get some shots up soon.
Thanks so much to you all back home who are thinking of and praying for us here. There will be many dark days ahead for the people of American Samoa. And apparently, the nation of Samoa (or Western Samoa, as it used to be known) got hit harder than we did. The capital of Samoa is Apia, and we've heard some bad stories from there so far. Katrina and I had visited (Western) Samoa back in July, so we can imagine very much how disastrous it could all be there. Most of Apia is at sea level, and many of the villages are low-lying.
Right now, the hospital here in American Samoa is under more control than you would think. There are enough workers and everything. Inexplicably, the supplies division decided to shut down to do inventory, though. People will be coming in with more respiratory problems soon from all the dust, but we can't give out any masks because the supplies department shut themselves down. Crazy, I know.
I'll be making updates here as often as I can.
Please spread the link to this blog around to everyone you can think of that might want to know what's going on here. We can't access Facebook, for instance, so please post this link on Katrina's Facebook page. I may be the only person with a US area code who does not have a Facebook page, so just let people know via email or whatever about this blog. Some people may not be able to get in touch with us, and I'd love to know that word is getting around to folks back home.
Thanks again, and I'll be in touch.
Don't hesitate to email, though I may not be able to get back to you anytime soon. Just keep checking the blog. You can leave comments here, as well, and they are much appreciated.
Peace to you all,
Mark
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