Earthquake!

On Monday 5 December, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale, hit Lake Tanganyika. The epicenter of the earthquake was somewhere in the center of the lake, between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As Lupita is situated 3.8km from the Tanzanian mainland and roughly 60km from the DRC, we were quite surprised that we were not more seriously affected. I was in the office when the earthquake hit. With us being on the Great Rift, we often feel earthquake tremors on the island, but this was certainly the largest one that I have felt. My chair was shaking and even our filing cabinet was moving backwards and forwards. At one stage I actually got onto the floor to feel the full effect of the tremor.

Thank you to everyone who has been emailing us concerned about our well-being. We are all safe and completely unharmed. Luckily for us, the earthquake has had no affect on any of the buildings or structures that have been erected thus far (of course now Chris wants to advertise his building techniques as being EARTHQUAKE PROOF). We did however hear that one of the villages on the banks of the lake on the Congolese side was badly affected and several people died. What a year we are having! First Hurricane Katrina and now this massive earthquake. Hopefully 2006 will be less exciting in this regard.