First person: aftershocks of Myanmar earthquake

For the Bangkok slum community of Khlong Toei, home to mission partners Elise and Jon Fletcher, the recent earthquake was a mild interruption to the day. The aftershocks came as shudders of horror at what others had suffered.

by Elise Fletcher

It’s not often that living in a slum community can be claimed as an advantage but during last Friday’s earthquake I can honestly say that I was in the best possible place! The houses in our community are intentionally lightweight, built on concrete stilts over swampy water and clay. They might not look much but they withstand a lot.

When the house began to sway, I assumed it was a train passing or heavy cargo being loaded at the nearby port; a daily sensation. When it gained momentum, I went outside along with a handful of other neighbours who were at home during the day. We watched the swinging overhead wires and hanging plants, aware by now that we were witnessing an earthquake. Then we all went back inside either to get on with the day or turn on the news.

It wasn’t until I received phone calls from my husband and son that I became aware of the chaos outside my low-rise cocoon. My husband, Jon, was visiting a hospital where all the patients were being wheeled out into the street, newborns included. Our children had been on the 5th floor of their school building and felt the tremors more drastically. They evacuated onto the playing field and spent an anxious afternoon dehydrating in the sun.

Leaving the community to collect the kids, I found that traffic was at a standstill, with all expressways and the skytrain closed. Damaged office and condo buildings were all awaiting inspection, people lining the pavements and spilling into the roads. I was very grateful to be weaving on a motorbike as some parents took all evening to reach the school.

The aftershocks have come as shudders of horror on hearing the news about loss of life in our own city and damage on a vast scale in neighbouring war-torn Myanmar. Lord have mercy.

As my perspective has gradually expanded from my own limited experience of the event, I have needed to adjust my understanding. What was felt as a minor interruption to my day brought devastation elsewhere. A few days on, I spoke to an elderly neighbour who had remained so insulated that she had not given the tremors much thought! I’m not sure that she actually believed my account of the damage beyond our community… it probably sounded far fetched.

In processing all this, I’ve been challenged about my attitude towards suffering that is outside my own sphere of experience. The familiar everyday problems right in front of me can deafen me to the plight of others whose story needs to be heard. That is not to belittle the suffering closer to home but to own that it is part of a much bigger picture with emanating ripples.

We are seeing the impact of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thinking with the withdrawal of USAID from frontlines around the world. Indifference has consequences! The scale of acquiescence on this matter suggests a level of blinkered thinking that has dulled human empathy. When we refuse to expand our experience of the world by listening deeply to the accounts of others, by seeing the horrors that are happening on our watch, we get stuck in small thinking; our own little earthquakes.

If our worldview and beliefs are not moving us towards more compassion, more inclusion, more loving action in the world, then maybe they need to expand! I don’t aspire to be ‘unshakeable’ anymore! Instead I invite the pain and injustice in the world to shake me out of my self-serving certainties and reform me for the integrated life that I am made for. May we love others with the breadth and vulnerability modelled by Jesus… with a love that absorbs pain and transforms it into new life.

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