Trembling

It is 5:46 and I am gently shaken out of a dream. Literally. The earth trembles again. I hear rumbling and the mosquito net dances back and forth.

On Saturday night, the Nyiragongo began to spit fire. Nyiragongo is a volcano in Congo, near the border with Rwanda. The last eruption was in 2002 when lava destroyed a large part of the city of Goma and killed more than 200 people. Fortunately, this time there were far fewer deaths. The lava mostly flowed in a different direction. The smouldering rubble stopped at the airport. But even so, several villages were destroyed and an important access road to the north was blocked. People fled the scene holding everything they could carry on their heads or backs. Through the deepest darkness -because the electricity failed-, with behind them the threatening glow of so much nature violence. Many crossed the border into Rwanda in the dead of night. Most have now returned, especially when the earth began to tremble in Rwanda.

It seems to be a normal phenomenon after a volcanic eruption. The earth's strata must find a new balance. What were still very small, sometimes hardly noticeable movements on Sunday became tremors on Monday and Tuesday that were also picked up by the USGS. We can also feel it in Kigali, more than 100km away. Yesterday there was a strong one that lasted for more than 15 seconds. I could hear the windows rattling and the walls creaking. The water in the bottle on my table was swaying wildly back and forth. In Rubavo, on the border with Congo, basically neighbouring Goma, buildings were damaged, and people are sleeping outside for fear of being buried under rubble.

Even at a safe distance, every quake is a bit scary.