Lauren: Working in Constitucion.

The doctor from Mercy Malaysia and me, his speaking partner.
Where we saw patients. I sat in a chair next to this cot, and translated between the Malayisan doctor and the people who came into the clinic.
There are towns of these media aguas. This one Puertas Verdes consisted of 90 families. As the spooky fog indicates, it was absolutely miserably cold and the temperature inside these huts wasn't much different from the outside.
People worked really hard to make their media agua their own, building porches, installing glass windows. It will take at least a year to build enough housing for the internally displaced people living in these camps.
Sunday Mass at Puertas Verdes.

Sometimes things just seem to be fate. I was really looking for jobs here in Santiago, mostly as an English teacher. Then, without having even applied I got a call from the Malaysian Embassy looking for a translator for an International NGO headed south to do some medical earthquake relief work.

A way to contribute to earthquake relief, in my field (I was a poli sci major, too), and with decent pay found me? I had to say yes. I got the call on a Tuesday, met the doctor and nurse team on Thursday, and was in a 4x4 with seven strangers by 8 a.m. Friday.

As with this whole South American experience, I went in with the mentality that if worse came to worse, if things were too much to bare, there's always a way home and quickly noted where the bus station was. I didn't know these people at all and would be living with them for the good part of a month -- a bit scary, but also adventurous and exciting.

We were working in conjunction with the local medical authorities, who sent us to camps of internally displaced people and rural posts they could not get to. There was a clinic downtown Contitucion that had been destroyed, and the clinic in nearby Cerro Alto was now responsible for the health of 40,000 people. Normally they were at capacity with 2,000-3,000, and eager for someone to get out to the camps.

On Saturday we started out at the largest IDP camp: Puertas Verdes. There had been a problem with clean drinking water and tons of people had horrible diarrhea and were vomiting. Clean water is really the difference between life and death. I've known that, but never seen a community of people dangerously suffering from diarrhea first hand.

Our first patient was a young mom with a sweet little girl who just started to projectile vomit in the clinic and I totally lost my cool, bursting into tears. Now, first of all I have never been in a clinical setting except when I myself am visiting a doctor. And to see a young mom, probably my age, with a girl who had diarrhea for about four days was just a lot for me to take. I knew this wasn't going to be a luxury vacation, but it was hard for me to see people so sick from something that should be preventable.

After that and a good talk with our doctor I was in better shape. I was helping people in the camp talk to our team of Mercy Malaysia team. That day I think we visited nearly 50 people.

Every day we'd load the car with medical supplies and set out to either an IDP camp or a rural post that the clinic couldn't attend to. So many people were affected by the earthquake or tsunami. One camp, Los Canas, almost entirely consisted of folks who had their homes on the beach and watched them get swept away, left with almost nothing.

Immediately, when we went to another camp with better water, the range of illnesses was vast. With the cold there were a lot of common cold cases, especially for folks living in tents and media aguas. It was just bone chillingly cold and the inside of those huts were almost no different than the outside.

As always, no one could say my name. It's almost impossible here. In Contitucion I was now Lorinz, which was close enough for me.

As Lorinz, I said things to people that I never before said to another human being. "Please remove your pants so we can take a look at that rash," "Does the pain in your side move to your right testicle?," "May I examine your breasts?" and "You need to lose weight." That last one was actually the most difficult, especially when people get defensive, so I started tossing in "The doctor says ..." before saying "you're too fat".

We worked in at least 10 different places, some a hour's drive from our base clinic, far off onto dirt roads.

One of these rural assignments was doing house calls to bedridden people who had either what's here called a brain attack (thrombosis), late stage dementia, or, like one girl, contracted meningitis as a child. In meeting with these folks, I again realized what a privileged life I lead. Not only did I have clean drinking water, but was able to walk, run, sit, eat, talk, get out of bed without the assistance of another person.

One woman had her adobe house near the river washed away when it swelled from the tsunami. When I told her she was a good daughter for caring for her bedridden mom, she started to cry saying "She's all I have" and I knew she meant it. She really had nothing else. Second and last time I cried. She gave me some mums, which grow like crazy here.

Another case that really affected me was that of a man who complained of something relatively normal for the rural setting, he might have fallen off his horse or injured himself doing wood work (logging was a common occupation there). With him was his daughter, and something just didn't seem right. She was a nervous wreck, but didn't say anything. I was worried there might have been abuse, but later learned that the roof of their house collapsed immediately after the earthquake started, instantly crushing and killing her 10-year-old brother.

Throughout our stay we saw a lot of people with PTSD. Shaking, crying, nervous, unable to eat, sleep, unable to relax. One young girl, maybe 8 years old, was unable to eat after the earthquake and had lost a lot of weight, concerning her big sister who brought her in for a check up.

The entire trip was a real eye opener. Even though we were near the destroyed beach community, it was basically the Taj Mahal compared to how so many people are now living. I was prepared for tent living, and instead was in a cabin, with (usually) hot water, three course dinners prepared by the other members of the team, and a bed.

I was so touched by the kindness people there showed us, despite facing challenges of immeasurable proportion.

Coming home, I realized how much I really have and I am so grateful for everything.

-- Lauren

Aneya & Lauren: The Miracle of Twitter.

"Long live Chile!"
Batman says "Strength to Chile!"
All of those garbage bags are filled with donations for the people of Conception
Same with the tents and cardboard boxes.
"Chile United!"
It was a hot day, but everyone was working diligently and happily.
A sampling of what they wanted people to donate. Food, water, shelter. The basics.

Lauren: Yesterday Aneya and I ventured up to Salvador where I saw a bunch of tents on a run earlier, quite a walk but we wanted to be able to talk to people. Were they living in these tents or what were they used for?

Aneya: I just really wanted to get out of the house, it was becoming really depressing, sitting around, reading all the devastating news. So out we went, on the lookout for the Peruvians Lauren had talked about earlier. She said they were living in tents so that's what we were looking for.

Lauren: As we approached there was Latin-style hip hop coming from gigantic speakers. Surely, this could not be where people were living. I was approached by a really sweet guy, Renato, who told me that he and his friend just decided to sit in the park around 3 p.m. Sunday and start Tweeting, saying they would take donations.

Aneya: There were a couple tents and bags and bags of what looked like garbage, plus boxes filled with goods, and people milling about everywhere. Interesting....Lauren started talking to Renato, while I went around and took pictures.

Lauren: Renato had been on vacation with his friend in Santiago, his friend was on vacation from college and Renato, another 20-something, were here from the north when the earthquake struck. They didn't know how they could help, and this seemed as good a way to contribute as any. By Thursday their two person operation became a 350 person collaboration, and from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. people would stay at this makeshift donation center and collect anything people could spare: cleaning supplies, water, food, clothes.

Aneya: That story is incredible. And the fact that Twitter, of all things, made it possible! I love seeing young people getting involved, and I love the fact that a social networking site helped unite all these people in a common cause. The whole thing was quite inspiring.

Lauren: There were just so many people here, it was amazing. And to think it just started with a couple of Tweets saying they would be sitting in the park, accepting donations with no sure way to get it to the south. Now Carpa de Ayuda, "tent of help," has an organization coming to pick up supplies in the morning and an army truck carts off a full truck every day.

Aneya: They had a list of things, like water, bread, tents, any type of dried food, shampoo, anything people could give. There was a nice energy around that place, what with the Latin music, everyone was smiling, contributing, helping, everyone seemed happy to be there.

Lauren: It was really just remarkable to see these people pull together. They made little lanterns with inspirational sayings, were blasting music, had a large Batman character with a Chilean flag. They were clearly having a good time while helping their fellow Chileans in the South. Today is their last day at the Salvador metro station collecting goods. After that they're headed back up north.

-- Aneya & Lauren

Lauren: Los Cités.

Peruvians in Santiago have been some of the worst hit from Saturday's 8.8 earthquake. Much of the city has been able to recover pretty quickly, in our neighborhood you almost wouldn't know that there had been an earthquake except for the shortage of non carbonated water and bread, and (until recently) the lack of hot water.

But many immigrants living in Santiago from Peru especially, but also from Ecuador and Bolivia had been living in antiquated adobe apartments, made basically from clay, arraigned a lot like Gladys for those of you who know what I'm talking about. They're little rooms down a corridor with a walkway outside and rooms on either side of the walkway. As many as 15 people will live in one room, while they save and send money home. These little apartments go for about $20/month.

Chilean newspapers have reported that as many as 500 Peruvians have been affected by the quake.

I met a Peruvian man, Clemente Chavez, in the Plaza de Armas where the city was founded nearly 400 years ago. He said the adobe walls of his house split open, and he was living with a friend of a friend until he found a new home.

Another Peruvian who works at a restaurant near our apartment told me many Peruvians are living in tents outside their homes or in parks until they could return home.

A friend from Peru said that the Chilean government was reaching out to Peruvians offering them a way home if they wished to return.

On a run yesterday, I found an encampment in the park of people that had been displaced by the earthquake. It was relatively small compared to others in different parts of the parque forestal, only about 50 people. They had white lunch bags propped up around their small square of grass where they were living that were decorated red, white and blue, (the colors of Chile's flag), that had little inspirational sayings like "Go, Chile!".

-- Lauren

Lauren: More on how you can help.

Yesterday, Aneya and I ventured into Barrio Brasil where we met a man, whose house neighbored an old apartment building. A wall of the apartment building fell on his house, and his already antiquated home was crushed. He and his wife were trapped in their bed for between three and four hours while they waited for help. His house was totally demolished, but he and his wife are OK, staying at their son's house, but left with almost no worldly possessions (See the below post).

The above organization's name means "A roof for Chile," which is what so many Chilean's need right now. Before the Feb. 26 catastrophe, Un Techo para Chile was working to provide a roof for every homeless person in Chile to commemorate the bicentennial. Now, after the 8.8 earthquake, this organization is working to restore communities that had been reduced to rubble.

Another way people can contribute to rebuilding Chile is through the Chilean Red Cross, which is working to restore connections between families that have lost contact because of Saturday's temblor.

-- Lauren

Aneya & Lauren: Chilean Families.

Aneya: So Lauren and I both noticed the difference in the way families interact here in Chile compared to the U.S. Obviously Latin culture revolves around the family structure, and the kids are always supposed to take care of the elders. Generations of families live together in one house, and it's extremely uncommon for a young woman to live on her own.

Lauren: Everything is geared toward the family. Ads for public works projects, Coca Cola commercials everything is cast in this "Your family will be better for doing this" light. Coca Cola brings the family together. Cleaning the river? "For the family to enjoy," government ads tell us. I would never let a kid "enjoy" the torrential Mopocho, but that's just me. Ads arn't so much about being cool, but about your family being better for doing something.

Aneya: Although families can be affectionate and loving in the States, it's usually done in private, whereas here, affection is loud and proud, you constantly see children being kissed and hugged and loved by their parents. It's really quite touching to see.

Lauren: All the time. It's really touching. At a busy bus station, at lunch, people are always hugging their spouse and being affectionate with their kids.

Aneya: Younger children here seem pretty well behaved and yet they also seem to have a lot of freedom. I wrote earlier about children swimming in the fountains here, their parents watching from the grass, a bemused expression on their faces.

Lauren: I kind of see a correlation between parents being nicer, and kids being better behaved. Because kids don't see their parents acting childish, screaming, and pitching a fit, they arn't raise to act that way, but maybe that's just my perception.

Aneya: Commercials here are geared towards the family, with everything from Coke to crackers being branded as a way to bring your family together. It's such an important part of life here, people are not only close to their siblings, but to their cousins, their cousin's cousins, their aunt's, their aunt's sister's cousin, I mean, the list goes on.

Lauren: When we went tangoing with Daniela's family we were with five different generations of cousins. Her cousins, then her cousins cousins, and her cousins cousins cousins, all who knew each other from parties and family functions!

Aneya: Part of what makes this whole situation so sad is the missing family members. Chilean TV has been showing non stop coverage of the quake and it's aftermath, and most of the reporting revolves around people missing their family members. A grandmother cries because she can't find her 12-year-old grand daughter. A mother sobs because her baby has been found, dead underneath piles of rubble. It's really hard to watch, and yet they don't try and sugar coat the images like they do in the States. It's raw, it's real, and it's heartbreaking.

Lauren: The story that is sticking with me is about these Peruvian housing areas, cites, where families live 15 to one apartment that costs $20/month so they can send money home to Peru. These little apartments are old, antiquated, and made from adobe. When the quake hit, many just crumbled. More to come on this.

Daniela sent me a story where a woman was looking for her daughter through the dust and debris, and found one of her daughters dolls. She realized the doll was actually her toddler daughter when she started bleeding from her mouth.

A lot of the coverage here also geared toward families, because that's what people here really care about, but thinking about it, I would probably be like that in the states, too.

-- Aneya & Lauren

Lauren: Finding Family Members in Chile.

After the Saturday's 8.8 earthquake, Aneya and I were contacted within a few hours by the U.S. Embassy.

Those looking for family members from outside Chile who are traveling here should contact their respective embassy. It helps if your relative has registered with the embassy, and I really can't vouch for the effectiveness of other embassies, but the U.S. Embassy was really helpful in contacting us, making sure we were OK, and keeping us informed of our options.

There's also a new Google app, the Google Person Finder: Chile Earthquake, that may be helpful for those trying to reach family members who are citizens of Chile. Again, I haven't used it and can't vouch for its effectiveness.

Some people, especially those in regions V through IX, are still without electricity and internet service, and cellphone service is still terrible.

Anyone who knows of better ways to find missing people please comment with a link below.

-- Lauren

Lauren: The Earthquake.

I can't help but feel that writing anything about the minimal inconveniences we experienced yesterday is extremely narcissistic and trite. Although we were touched by the yesterday's catastrophe, it was in the slightest and most insignificant ways.

No, we still don't have gas and can't cook, we're short on food, and we were trapped inside our apartment the majority of the day yesterday, but we have our lives, our friends, and we had the option of sleeping in our own beds last night, which many people living in Chile can't say. I say that we had the option because neither of us slept more than a few hours, and stayed up until about 4 a.m. constantly refreshing the different news and social networking sites and for the latest news.

Is it just a rumor that supermarkets in our area will be closed for two weeks? Hopefully the number fatalities has stayed the same. How are our friends around the city? They were OK two hours ago, but how about now? Did that last aftershock do any damage, hurt anyone else? Simultaneously we were glued to all major news stations and sites, and still repelled and scared by what we saw.

Yesterday's earthquake was the most powerful natural disaster I've ever experienced. Aneya and I came home about an hour before the quake, and immediately feel deep asleep. We both woke up during the earthquake an hour later, but didn't think too much of it and we both stayed in bed, waking up at a leisurely 9:30 a.m.

I woke up before Aneya, and walked out to the kitchen where I found the fridge about two feet from where we had left it the night before, the first reminder of the quake that we had quickly filed away as a minor temblor not worthy of getting out of bed for. I went to the bathroom and found out the electricity wasn't working, and decided to check my phone where I saw several frantic texts and missed calls from my mom and our Chilean connection Daniela. If she was texting, she was OK.

I looked outside and saw an apocalyptic-looking brown sky, and opening the window introduced smoky smells and debris into the apartment.

Aneya woke up and we decided to place a few international phone calls. The first to France, then Vegas, then LA, where I discovered my mom had an Embassy search party out looking for the two of us. The electricity was restored about 11 a.m. when we decided to contact our respective family and friends with a quick update "We're OK."

Still things did not seem frantic. Ambulances, police, and firefighters were zooming by every few minutes, which was a bit unnerving, but of course they would. We were in a large city and certain precautions needed to be taken. Trying to make breakfast we learned that the gas had been cut; we later learned it was all of Santiago Centro that was without gas.

It wasn't until we tried to venture outside that we discovered we were stuck. The deadbolt of our apartment had jammed in all the shaking yesterday, and no matter how we fiddled with it, our door was not going to open. We called the doorman who informed us the woman we sublease from was en route with someone else who would free us.

Thirty other residents in our building had similar problems with their deadbolts, many having the door broken down and were now without front doors. Marta came and with her dad, hacked away enough of our door to free us, which is what began to set us both on edge. The loud, almost deafening pounding of them trying to get us out of our apartment, the images of rubble on TV. Things were starting to feel more real.

The business of getting us out of the apartment took about 30 minutes and left us with a hole in our door, so standing outside you can see into our apartment through a smallish crack. Not too big, and the door still shuts so lots to be grateful for.

We asked how other people who were locked inside were getting out of their apartments, were the police breaking down doors, and Marta said the police were busy, it was either other neighbors or they would be stuck inside for a while, which was a horrible feeling I have to say. Being stuck inside was it's own kind of torture, but when we finally could we walked down the ten flights of stairs to get more information, see what had happened to our new home Santiago, and get provisions.

Santiaguinos have always, from the moment we got here, had a very happy, peaceful disposition, which never ceased to amaze us. They were always so good to us, and so nice to each other it almost made me suspicious. Why are you people so nice? But walking down the streets yesterday, there was a serious change in the atmosphere. People were really depressed, and the strangest people were out on the streets.

A blind woman who clearly wasn't used to walking alone was vehement about finding this one street, so Aneya and I helped her cross the street and she just took off quickly down the sidewalk. In Santiago, anyone passing by would have helped her, people here are just like that, they would never just pass a blind person by, but yesterday she clearly had to wait for someone to point her in the right direction.

Where sometimes the jotes were slightly offensive, there were really forward men out, which scared us. They would come up to us, not just shout from afar. The night before we learned about botellerias, bottle shops that served liquor, wine, and beer. At night, after about midnight they close their security gates and do business through them so no one tries to rob them. Yesterday at 4 p.m. these shops had their gates pulled tight, and were negotiating through the metal bars. If these big liquor store owners didn't feel safe enough to leave their shops open, maybe we shouldn't be in the streets. Aneya and I decided to make a quick stop for provisions and head home.

Little bits of debris were around the city, sometimes large chunks from hundreds-years old buildings, which was concerning because we didn't want anything loose to fall on us in an aftershock, which were numerous. A small aftershock every couple of minutes.

Nothing was open. Nothing. It was a ghost town, with a few people walking the streets, clearly assessing the damages to their city just like we had. We found a small German store that sold a few readymade meals, crackers, cookies, and soda and we bought five of everything. Potato salad, arroz con pollo (Aneya would eat the chicken, I could have some of the rice), a liter of Coke. No one else in the store seemed to be hoarding though, which astonished me. Was it just us? Was this uncommon behavior? We had nothing to eat so we needed as much of everything as we could have.

We were so tense, I couldn't tell if I was shaking because my body was so tight it was trembling or if it was the ground. It was usually the ground, but sometimes it was just me. I felt like I had run the marathon, especially after the 10 flight journey up to our apartment.

Aneya and I always joke that we have no friends here. There's Daniela, Valeria, and Sebastian, but really the only people we see very frequently are Daniela and each other. Once the earthquake hit and we realized how powerful it was, I noticed there were so many people in this country I cared deeply about.

How was tio Jorge in the south, who helped me find a hospital when I was sick? Madre Elysia who made us breakfast at the monastery? Gloria whose wedding we just went to, was she OK? I heard Mendoza had been bad. We had heard from Dani, Val, and Seba, but how were they now? Did an aftershock do anything to them? And their families, who had been so good to us. How were they? The other tio Jorge who taught us tango lessons? And his super sweet wife Isabel, who made smoking look cool again. How were they? The dorky engineers we salsaed with the night before? How were they? They were near old buildings that clearly bore the brunt of the earthquake.

The customary kiss on one cheek amazingly makes you feel different kind of kinship for people. You're allowing a stranger to get very close to you, in a very personal way, and it just makes a connection a handshake doesn't. How many cheeks had I kissed in this last month? At least a hundred, and I started imagining all the people I'd greeted in this way and thought of all of them. How are they now? The guy in Carahue who let us use his outhouse. Our sweet old neighbor who comes to visit her daughter on our floor from the fifth floor who showed me how to use the dryer to dry my sheets. How are these people holding up? Did they know someone who had been hurt?

It was a bit unnerving to think about and the frequent aftershocks were just really making me tense.

Each one had the potential to bring loose rubble down from tall buildings and all these people who I had just assured myself were safe, had a new threat with each small temblor. How were they now??

Chileans had been so good to us. People in cities across this country had looked out for us, been inexplicably nice to us, and we identified with them in many ways now. We walked streets with Chileans, Chile for an indefinite amount of time has become our home. And to see the people that have looked out for us and just been tremendously kind crying on TV, sleeping in lawns outside just wrecks emotional havoc. These are our neighbors. We know these people. This can't happen. These are our friends.

While I was concerned about people in Haiti and the health and infrastructure issues there, this hit closer to home -- because for now Chile is home.

Neither Aneya or I could sleep that night and at 2 a.m. I used our electric water boiler and made us instant mashed potatoes and we drank wine hoping to finally be able to sleep. It was amazing how hungry we were from a day of doing very little. After realizing that no matter how many times I click "Refresh" the LA Times and New York Times were not going to update and no more friends were going to change their Chile status on Facebook, it was time to try to sleep. We were awakened four hours later by a strong aftershock.

Not having gas to cook with or stores that are open has been no picnic, but we have so, so much to be grateful for it seems so insignificant to even mention what we don't have.

We have our lives. We still have a front door that can close at night, unlike many of our neighbors in our building. We had Aneya's iPhone for contacting our family. We were able to reach most of our family and friends through the internet before most of them even knew what had happened. And of course, we had each other to keep ourselves sane, when debris was floating into our window, the sky was brown with smoke, and sirens were blaring outside.

Thank you for all the love and support.

-- Lauren Williams