Wendyl Nissen: Home sweet home

I feel as though I never left home. Since filing my last column while on holiday in Paris, the earthquake struck in Christchurch.

Initially I stood in front of the television in Paris and wept, surprising myself at the ferocity of emotions which burst forth. I watched as a boy about the same age as my son was dragged from the wreckage.

"Is he dead?" I asked my equally overcome husband.

"Probably," he said, moving to sit beside me on the bed and put his arms around me.

"He might have survived," I said hopefully. People just don't die like that in New Zealand. We have accidents and violent shootings but those are brief and distant encounters we have become used to dealing with.

I became obsessed with this boy and swapped from TV coverage to the internet, monitoring the New Zealand Herald website on my computer and my husband's iPhone night and day.

I worried about my children unnecessarily as they were safe in Auckland. And I briefly wondered about coming home. But it didn't take me long to realise that there wasn't a lot I could do.

I have relatives who have skills which are needed, such as burying people and emergency care. But apart from writing a newsletter I couldn't think of much else I was any good at.

And neither could a lot of people, judging by the social networks. With the sharing of grief came a huge sense of not knowing what to do. Sending love and sympathy on the internet, which few of the victims were able to access, was one thing, but others found they couldn't function in their lives. They were wrung out with grief.

Meanwhile, in Paris and Brittany we got very used to hearing the phrase "tremblement de terre" as the French expressed their concern for our country and our families, often reaching across shop counters to hold my hand.

The earthquake has received good coverage in Europe because, as The Times columnist Libby Purves observed, "We are more riveted to these stories than even to the greater horrors of Haiti or Pakistan - empathy inevitably focuses on those whose lives are more like our own."

She was impressed by our Kiwi spirit. "Despite grief, anger and shock, the local press is full of mutual aid and stoical, even humorous, resignation." And she points out that Cantabrians and the Queenslanders before them in the floods just waded in to help without consulting anyone.

She says that in the UK people are too scared to help each other in case they affect an insurance payout or are accused of child molestation.

"I hope I am wrong, but a lot of UK culture seems to militate against the full-hearted, headlong solidarity we admire in our close Antipodean cousins."

She has a point. There's the modest Ahesi "Ace" Sapaoaga, known as the "The Awesome Maori Guy - IncrediBRO Hulk" as Facebook users called him, after seeing him on TV throwing rocks around rescuing people after the quake.

And the doctors - in Christchurch for a conference - who amputated legs using a fold-out knife and a hacksaw presented to them by a local builder.

There was also a Facebook call-out for someone to help an elderly couple dig their way out of their home, which resulted in 20 people turning up the next day armed with food and drink. And let's not forget the YouTube clip which was the first piece of humour. It featured a neighbour calling out to Don to come and look outside his house in a typical laconic Kiwi way. "It's a f***ing river flowing down the middle of Don's bloody driveway."

As I write this, it has been nine days since the earthquake and news has just come in of a small earthquake in Wellington. And the boy dragged out of the rubble, Jaime Gilbert, has just been buried.

"How have you found Paris this time?" asked my husband cautiously. This is our fifth trip and the first which has had me connected online. Fifteen years ago we phoned home twice in two weeks while on our honeymoon. On our last trip we popped into one of the many internet cafes which now don't exist to check on emails and keep in touch with home once or twice a week.

This trip I've spent an average of three hours a day plugged in.

"Honestly?" I replied. "I can't wait to get home."