I was on my bed when the second one hit. 11.45pm. Just laying there. Still. Then the bed started shaking, harder. I have a tall standing fan on the side of my bed and I held on to it, just incase. It took me two seconds to get off my buck-nekked arse, throw on shorts, run outside to get the phone and call Nadine to find out if she was alright. She had been home alone for a short while earlier in the evening and was a little scared. I was visibly shaken. When I got off the phone with her, I checked around the house to see if anything had moved and what could fall. There were two kerosene lamps that were so perched that a harder shock would throw them down, so I put them on the floor. I went back to bed, still shaking a little. For a few minutes afterward, I couldn’t decipher if the bed shaking was my doing, or if they were aftershocks. I was worried. My house is not very sturdy and I know a disaster of the sort, or a hurricane, could do some severe damage.

I hadn’t felt the one earlier in the afternoon that much. I was at school around a table with some friends. One of them said “Aye, earthquake” and the table was shaking. Thinking it was a joke and he was just rocking the table, I ignored it for a few half-seconds. Then the chairs started rocking too and we knew it was for real. Of course, girls screamed. 5.4. I got news that there was another today in the East. Didn’t feel that one at work. Signs? Well we got away from the hurricanes, and Dominica got struck by earthquakes a couple weeks ago. Well, we did have the floods and landslides in Tobago.

Where I live isn’t that bad. It doesn’t flood. Smooth road. No real problem for water, electricity or telephone. Well we don’t have cable, but hey. I still want to get out of there though. Two more weeks…and then a huge weight is lifting off my shoulders. HOPEFULLY…