When the earthquake struck, the brick walls simply crumbled at the orphanage in Tanzania’s far northwestern Kagera region.
Clutching one of the youngest children, Saada Suleiman said she tried to run as Saturday’s tremor made the ground heave beneath her feet.
“I felt something, as though someone was pushing me from behind, and suddenly the building was shaking,” said Suleiman, who operates the Uyacho Orphanage Centre in Bukoba township.
“It felt like an electric shock,” she told Al Jazeera, shaking her body and arms to demonstrate the strength of the quake.
People came to help – and Suleiman and the tiny baby were carried to safety.
Though the Uyacho orphanage was reduced to piles of rubble and dangerously half-collapsed walls, none of the children living there was hurt.