Dis-jointed

That's how life feels at the moment.  
So many places are not open, or closing early, or you have to drive halfway across town in congested traffic on broken roads just to get to a Warehouse that is open.  
Hamish has no kohanga and I have no idea when it will be open.  Most of the kaiako's homes are not safe to live in so they are busy dealing with that before anything else.   
There are piles of belongings and furniture on the roadside with 'FREE' signs - they are everywhere in our community - families gone to live elsewhere where they can flush the toilet and drink the water from out of the tap.  
Zoe's school started last week - they have an hour and a half of school each day until the temporary sewerage system is working.  There are 7 kids in Zoe's class, the school's roll is at about 40% of it's pre-earthquake numbers.  Many parent's hang around for the whole time that their child is there - partly because it's not long enough to bother going home but also because it's too hard to leave them at school again just yet- what if it happens again?
The teachers at Zoe's school are awesome.  They are heroes in my eyes for getting the kids all out safely and looking after them until parents could get there.  On the day of the earthquake I stayed there on the school field for as long as I could.  It took Iain 5 hours to drive across town (usually 20 mins) and I didn't want to be at home by myself with the kids.  
Too much broken glass on the floor and too many aftershocks. 
A couple of the teachers pulled out their guitars and got the kids singing - sometimes a large aftershock would hit in the middle of a song and the singing would pause for a second or two while everyone looked nervously around hoping the shaking wouldn't get any worse.  Then the shaking would stop and the song would keep going. 
Now, just like the power and water supply, everyone is disjointed, displaced, disconnected.  
We dig around looking for the broken bits so that we can fix them and, little by little, pull everyone together again. 
So that when people are ready, and when the shaking finally stops, the song can keep going.

Back to life....

It is so good to be back in our wee house, in our community.

Some things have changed.....

I do like how Mr Earthquake styled my paintings...

my kitchen...not so much!

At least I still have coffee.

We were driving to a friends house last night and got some great sewerage smells wafting into the car.  

"Ewww - that smells yucky" complained Hamish.

Zoe's reply blew me away: "Let's try and ignore the yucky smell Hamish and think about all the lovely things people are doing to help instead."

Yes - let's.

Why I love my community....

A friend told me this morning that she had to drive down the main road next to Aranui in the dark last night.  
It is severly damaged with holes and cars trapped everywhere and no streetlights on. 
The street was lined with young guys from the community wearing hoodies....
sounds ominous I know....
but they were all shining torches on the road to guide the cars through safely.  
A row of hooded angels.
Kia kaha

Devastated

Another big earthquake today. 
There will probably be sporadic blogging for a while.  
We have gone to stay with relatives out of town - feeling heartbroken and overwhelmed and guilty leaving my community behind but decided I can't be much use with the three little ones to care for so best to get them away and safe.

Bexley - a communtiy reeling from the quake - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

Realising just how much I love my neighbourhood and the people there.  
Hoping that everyone stays safe and that the help needed arrives.

Intentional by Proxy

When people ask me 'How is it going?' about where we live I find it a difficult question to answer. Inherent in the question is an assumption that we are 'doing' something - we're not.  We're not running any groups or programmes, we're not even 'building relationships' very much - the only thing we are 'doing' is our life here.  I know that 'intentional' is a buzz word at the moment - especially when it comes to building community but I would like to propose a new buzz word:

'unintentional'

It fits much better with my personality and my lifestyle.  I am pretty lazy and I've got three kids, my husband runs his own business on the other side of town and most of the time we are focusing on surviving.  
And that's why I'm most grateful for living here - by living here we get the easy way out, the chance to help others often arrives, quite literally, on our doorstep.  Like the time two young girls knocked on our door late one night freaked out about the guy they thought was following them - Iain gave them a ride home.  

Or there's the young Samoan girl who lives a few doors down who occasionally turns up to use our phone because they haven't been able to pay their phone bill and been disconnected.  
She brought me this one day to say thanks.


Or the other young girl who asked to ring her midwife from our house to cancel an appointment because she had no bus money - I was going that way anyway so I got to give her a lift and pick up her boyfriend on the way. 
See how lucky we are?  We get the chance to help people in a way that costs us very little time and energy but makes a difference to them.  Sometimes I think it can't even count as serving God because it costs us so little (I'm a bit masochistic that way).

True or....Pretend?

Kasey* has become a regular feature at our house.  She is one of Zoe's friends from school and one day she figured out where Zoe lived and has been here every other day since.  She often turns up just after school finishes and hangs around till teatime - I get the feeling she is expected to stay out of the way at home till then.   
She lives just around the corner with her Nanna as her mum is in prison.  The first time she showed up at our house I asked if her Nanna knew where she was - not likely. So I rang her Nanna to introduce myself and let her know where Kasey was - I'm sure her Nanna thinks I'm a bit weird now.  

Kasey is always making things up like 'It's my birthday tomorrow'(at least once a fortnight) and 'My mum gets out of prison next week and she's taking me to Australia.'(or something similar).  I am not sure if she really believes what she is saying or just likes to pretend - probably a bit of both.  
Much to our surprise her mum actually did turn up to pick her up on the weekend so I'm hoping for Kasey that she'll have a lot more 'real' things to look forward to this year.

The girl in the red dress.

I was dishing tea up on Wednesday when I turned around and saw a gorgeous wee girl standing next to me.  She was about 3 years old.  She wore a beautiful little dress.

"Hello - what's your name?" I asked and she just smiled.
"Where are you from?"...another smile...
"Does your mum know where you are?" She shakes her head and walks past me and down our hallway.  She hunts out where the toys are and sits down in front of Zoe's dollhouse and starts playing.  
The neighbour has been having a bit of a get together that afternoon so I assume that she's come from there...
"Have you been next door at Stacey's* house?"...nods head...."Is you Mum there?"...another nod.
"What's  your name sweetheart?" 
"Kya"
I get her to choose something to take with her and then take her back next door. Her Mum hasn't noticed that she was missing.  As I am talking to Stacey a partygoer gestures to her that it's time to go in and do drugs so she awkwardly finishes the conversation and heads in. 

I am haunted by Kya.    
I wonder what her life is like.