n my last blog post, about 100 years ago, I graded liquefaction into three qualities.
Grade A, I ventured, was the best – pure black sand, easy to shovel. B was heavy and wet, but (relatively, apparently, perhaps) clean. C was the worst, sludge mixed with sewerage.
I can now report a fourth grade of liquefaction. Grade D appeared in the last few days. Whether it is worse or better than C is a matter of taste, as it were. Grade D is moon-dust, come here to land on our planet, via some mysterious route through Middle Earth.
Grade D is as light as dust can be. It is a deathly light-grey. It lies before you, seemingly innocuous, ready to display your moon-print – one small step… until, that is, a grader passes or a puff of wind stirs it into a raging beast that goes for the nostrils. The nostrils are no match – with no evolutionary defence mechanism. We’d become extinct if this kept up for long.
We have had our share of Grade D these past few days, but yesterday’s nor’wester goaded it into surpassing itself beyond all understanding. In Dallington, our team of seven volunteers braved the streets of thick silt-dust, flung into the air by heavy machinery and the whipping wind. We knew what we were in for, driving in, as the cars driving out turned off their lights. Face masks helped but did not totally prevent seepage into the lungs. The eyes were always fair game. Half-an-hour and you’re straining, three hours and you’re ready to stage a retreat.
The past five days, we have moved from shovelling to leafleting to door-knocking, to door-knocking with food. I hope that doesn’t seem too upwardly mobile. The last activity is time-consuming but justified. Humanitarian need hides behind closed doors. Once encountered, it hides behind defiant human pride. Half the homes are deserted, many permanently. Of the remainder, maybe half are occupied by people who can cope – the middle-aged who are preparing to leave. The rest are the elderly and the infirm, and we’ve met a few. Without door-knocking, the world would not know of them.
We have arranged for water tankers to be relocated, for port-a-loos to be located, for cooked food and potable water to be delivered, for gas coupons to be distributed, for books to be handed over to relieve the tedium of home detention and the pain of a wrenching fear. We do not claim big miracles; tiny ones are sufficient.
The pride of the dispossessed wrenches at the emotions. The elderly come to the door. One has cancer, and her husband a heart condition. Another is recently widowed. Others remain fearful of eye. They hesitate when offered food. They have never accepted a hand-out before. They are proud of their past, and do not wish to lower their standards of self-reliance. They are the counterpoints to the looters roaming not far from where they live – in the primordial balance of good and evil that comprises human nature.
But they accept the offering and their eyes light up. Then they talk – telling tales of adversity and challenge, a week ago, a half-century ago. In earlier times, they had triumphed. Today, they are less sure. They are old, now. We reassure them. They thank us, with a superior wisdom and knowledge.
We do what we can, here in Christchurch. We shall rebuild. We shall have great challenges ahead, great decisions to make. We shall argue and oppose, and fall out with out each other over different judgements in the great human project that is democratic life. But the rebuilding will proceed.
Yet that is for the future. For now, for the present, this moment, we are one, at least down here where the wind blows and the moon-dust stirs. We shall remain one until the last body has been recovered, the last human fragment retrieved, the last funeral observed, the last body laid to rest, the final soul freed to soar to the heavens. Until that time, our small band, and the tens of thousands of others – the farmers and the students, the rescue teams and the army and the police, the counsellors and the officials – all of us will continue to perform tiny miracles together. We shall not be daunted by this greatest of natural disasters.
