Ahmed is a 15 year old who lives in the tent village of Morri Gorj. He has surviving parents as well as 5 brothers and 2 sisters...
"I was in school, in my math class and my teacher asked me to go get chalk for the class from the office. I got up and left the room and then the earthquake started and the ground started shaking. I looked inside my classroom and everyone was running out of their seats and running for the door where I stood. Around us the walls started crumbling and the ceiling started to fall and the classroom started to lean towards me as it crumbled so I ran and only one kid got out of that classroom besides me but the rest were still in the room.
I survived because I jumped when I saw the classroom start to tilt towards me onto lower ground. Its hard to exlpain where I jumped unless you know what its like to live in a mountainous area. I'll explain, there are levels to mountains and its because of some of these flat levels people are able to live on them and make roads. Where I jumped was a road below our school. I tried to move away from the crumbling rocks, that came from the school and the rock-filled mountain sides, toward the road barrier that keeps cars from flying off the mountains. But as soon as I rested on that barrier that crumbled as well to another lower level of the moutain that was able to comfort my fall because it was grassy.
I couldn't believe all of this was happening I felt as if "Qiyamat" had arrived (Day of Judgement) but at that time I was thinking less and reacting more. After I landed, I started climbing back up to my friends at school. When I got there I could barely see there was so much dust and debri in the air it choked you and you could hear kids screaming "Buchow! buchow! (Help! help!)".
At this moment I started feeling something ooze down my head and face and felt it and saw that I was bleeding. I didn't pay much attention to it then because I started helping get my schoolmates out of the rubble..."
Madina Public had approximately 500 students, there is no definite count of how many died during the earthquake.
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1 comments:
Zain, I want you to take this interview and write a parallel entry of what you were thinking and how you felt when this little boy told you what he did. I like the contrast against the "city architectures", we seem to get so wrapped up in the time-sensitive schedules of Western living that such tragedy becomes last week's news in a day.
A closed system, as is this world, and yet we have a long way to go before we are really a functioning international "society." Are you going to be writing more when you get back, or uploading the media you took when you were there?
There are very few of you in this world, let alone this country, and a complete portfolio of every experience you have in life is certainly not in vain.
[Maha]
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