Survivors

I have now been back from Nepal for almost a week. As I sit in my small, but comfortable flat in the UK, with refrigerated food, in a city with working banks, public transportation, electricity, Internet and running water, as well as numerous shops selling anything I could want to eat, my thoughts return to the people I met in Nepal. The now homeless family who are sharing a tent with 75 others who are also homeless; a tent they built by removing the plastic sheeting over their greenhouse and repurposing it with items they had at hand -- rope, poles, and who knows what other tools they found.

I remember the other shelters I saw, constructed from sheets of metal tied to branches, pushed up against dirt embankments to steady them. In my mind I see the fields of ripening crops that they grow themselves, teaching each new generation how to plant seeds, nurture the tiny seedlings and harvest when the grain and vegetables are ready. I recall the streams of clear, mountain water channeled through carefully shaped rocks. I see the goats and the cows penned up in quickly constructed shelters to protect them from the hot sun.

I think about how in the midst of a disaster not of their own making, these people immediately found ways to survive.

I wonder to myself, if this massive earthquake had happened where I live, to us, how would we have made it?

I am clueless about growing my own food. Every time I try to nurture an herb, I kill it. My one attempt at growing potted tomatoes was an utter failure. I don't know how to milk an animal or find the eggs that a hen hides so cunningly. I can barely put up a flimsy camping tent, let alone salvage random objects from a mound of debris and construct a shelter. When I go camping, I leave the tent in the evening and eat at a restaurant before going back to the wilderness to sleep because I can't figure out how to cook on a camping stove. At my best, I can tighten a screw on my kitchen cabinets.


Basically, as a city dweller in the developed world, I would be helpless in a natural disaster. Utterly vulnerable. For all our electricity and internet and indoor plumbing, I wouldn't know the first thing to do to support myself if all the infrastructure and resources were suddenly gone.

To me, the Nepali people are like McGuyver.

In spite of what they don't have, and regardless of the trauma they might have been experiencing, they immediately did what they could to survive. The Nepali people didn't wait around for the government or foreign aid groups to come and do things for them. They pulled each other from the rubble, even if it took hours or days. They built temporary shelters for themselves and their animals. And when someone was hurt, the people of the village assisted or carried the injured person to the nearest hospital or clinic or mobile health center.

One Humedica doctor I talked to said she observed that the Nepali people take care of one another. I heard that from the family who told me they shared their rice with others in the village, even when thieves tried to steal what little they had left. And I heard that from the woman who said the village was sharing 10 bags of rice they'd bought together on credit from the nearest functional shop.

As people who live much closer to the land than we do, who have built their own houses with their own bare hands, and on a daily basis must solve problems with their own ingenuity using what they have, the Nepali people seem impressively resilient in the face of a catastrophe.

Not to say that they are just fine on their own and don't need -- or want -- help. The people I talked to were so grateful that the church would come to assist them in getting back on their feet.

Many of them lost their existing food supplies when their two- and three-story homes collapsed. One family told me they had taken nothing but boiled water for 10 days before our team arrived with emergency food.

Some lost livestock, which they depended on for milk and eggs and meat. A man told me that his house collapsed on his cow and chickens which were housed on the bottom floor.

And when the monsoon rains come soon, these inventive temporary shelters will not shield them. They need rain-proof structures, and fast.

The people of Nepal need, and want, help. With the right help, they will not only survive, but rebuild their lives and thrive once again.

If you would like to be part of the story in sending your support and love to the people of Nepal, consider a donation through Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, at www.ncm.org/nepal.

Behind the scenes

The high noon sun was creating deep shadows on the people’s faces on Monday,as I stood in the center of about two dozen pressing close around me. When the villagers of Tindhara, a remote location 60 kilometers east of Kathmandu, realized that I was writing down stories of their experiences in the earthquake, many wanted to share and others were eager to listen.

Gripping my reporter’s notebook and pen, I fielded questions to a Nepali pastor who translated for us, and he relayed back their stories. Although the people were undoubtedly traumatized – 34 of their friends and family had died in a village of just more than 1,000, and all of them had lost their homes – they really wanted to talk about it.

I had never been in a situation like this before. As a journalist for the past 15 years, I’ve done countless interviews, but never in a disaster or in such a tightly pressed little crowd.

One man was carrying a boy with his entire leg in a cast. Their house had collapsed on the boy and it took the father and several neighbors a few hours to dig him out. Fortunately he was able to get medical treatment. Another man’s arm was in a sling. He can’t move his fingers. He has visited a doctor but that doctor apparently didn’t have any way to treat him. Yet, he is one of the lucky ones, climbing out of the ruins of his house alive. He plans to go to a hospital to get an X-ray and perhaps surgery to correct the broken bone.

The most disturbing was a man who wanted to show me his torn finger. It’s a gruesome injury. The tip of his finger is split in half and terribly swollen – an open wound that hasn’t been disinfected and he hasn’t had access to antibiotics. The finger is wrapped in a pitiful single strip of filthy gauze, which is doing nothing to protect the gaping flesh from dirt and dust, and he has nothing but a blister pack of painkillers.

He showed us the house that is now in ruins. During the 90-second earthquake, he pulled his wife and two grandchildren through the door before the walls fell on his arm, slicing open his finger.  They didn’t reach his mother in time. Three days later the village pulled her body from the layers of bricks and planks of wood that had buried her.

I could see why places like Tindhara hadn’t been reached by government or aid groups more than 10 days after the earthquake. The six-hour drive from Kathmandu was grueling – and we were only traveling 60 kilometers.  Our convoy was made up of three large flat-bed trucks carrying the rice, oil and salt, accompanied by a four-wheel vehicle (I started out in that one) and then a handful of motorcycles, each carrying two people. The total number of people going to Tindhara was about 20 Nazarene pastors and leaders.

The plan was that a motorcycle would go ahead of the convoy to let us know of any obstacles. The other motorcycles would travel around the three trucks. The four-wheel drive vehicle  brought up the rear, carrying me and the videographer, Steve, the Nepal NCM coordinator Dilli, and the Eurasia Regional NCM coordinator Jorg Eich. Our vehicle was intended to spot any bags of rice or oil that might have toppled out of the trucks.

We were told the drive would be 2.5 to three hours. Since we ran out the door at 5 a.m., no one ate breakfast or had tea or coffee. I decided not to drink anything so that I wouldn’t be the cause of a complicated stop for a bathroom on the way.

As we left the district of Kathmandu, the city looked normal. All the buildings were intact and businesses were open. Fortunately the NCM center is in a district of the city that was undamaged by the quake. We started climbing into the hills surrounding the city, on roads that had been paved years ago.

When we began descending into a wide, beautiful, green valley, enclosed by terraced mountain sides where rural people were growing rice and other vegetables, the conditions began to deteriorate. The climate in Nepal is very dry because of the altitude. The roads were layered in a thick red dust kicked up by the trucks. Being in the rear, we were the recipients of the dust from all three trucks. The windshield, my camera gear and everything else were soon coated. (When I washed my hair the next morning, the water ran a dirty brown.)

At the bottom of the valley, people told us the roads were only going to get much worse. The team decided to leave several motorcycles and our small SUV. We divided up between the truck cabs and the backs of the trucks with the rice and kept going.

As we climbed up the other side of the valley and into the mountains, the dusty roads became more pitted, or lined with rough, sometimes sharp river stones, or were washed out by streams created by rainstorms. We rocked back and forth for the next three hours, my spine even cracking at times. Often I was thrown into the driver (couldn’t have been more than a teenager) or his assistant to my left (also a teenager). Once I thought to myself, is this what the earthquake felt like?

We began to encounter collapsed houses, built of red brick and mud, roofed with tiles or corrugated metal sheets. Sometimes a two- or three-story house had just a large crack in the wall; other times one end of the house had slid off, revealing the floors inside. Other times we passed nothing but piles of bricks, wooden beams and roof tiles for hundreds of feet.

Once we were high enough, with a view down into some lower hills, we could see entire villages flattened, dotted with sheets of plastic stretched out to create temporary shelters.

Then we entered one or two villages where the already narrow road was even tighter because the structures on either side had fallen into our path. In these instances, we had to actually drive over what was left of the houses to pass through.

After six hours of teeth-jarring travel, with only one stop for a meal at a roadside restaurant at about 8:30 a.m., we entered Tindhara around noon.

One of the motorcycles had gone on ahead and alerted the village. The people had gathered in the narrow street, surrounded by rubble. And the distribution began. I did my interviews.

At one point Steve and I went to visit one of the temporary houses that the people were building by pulling the corrugated metal roofs from the debris of their homes and propping on planks and branches to form crude shelters. This family of 7 or 8 had managed to save some furniture and other objects, such as purses, a New York Yankees ballcap, some blankets, some bags of food and other items which they had dragged up the slope to higher ground in their shelter. They were all sleeping in a space no more than 150 square feet. In fact the furniture and things took up about 85% of that space, so we really couldn’t figure out how/where they were stretching out to sleep. I think Steve plans to make a short video about this.

Around 3 p.m., the last time I had eaten was 8:30 a.m., and I had only sipped about one bottle of water all day. I realized I was in danger of getting dehydrated, and getting a migraine due to lack of food and water. I had a couple of granola bars, but I felt uncomfortable eating them in front of these hungry people. I also didn’t know where to get more purified water. I hadn’t used a toilet since 8:30 either, another sign I was getting dehydrated. I was definitely thirsty.

Rev. Dilli told me that the village was named after a clean mountain spring which would be safe to drink from. And I remembered that I had brought water purification pills with me. So I walked down the road to three cold streams of water coming out of a rock on a hillside and filled up my one-liter water bottle, then put in the water purification tablet. I looked at the instructions and saw that I had to wait 30 minutes for the pill to completely clean the water.

I found Steve squatting in the shade and I joined him, followed by Jorg. We had been working hard for several hours and the sun and lack of water and food was getting to us. I reminded myself that this momentary discomfort was nothing compared to what these people had endured for 8 or 9 days, and on top of that I had the knowledge that I was driving back into the capital to eat a warm homecooked meal, drink all the water I wanted and sleep in the shelter of a comfortable bed in a safe concrete building. By the way, the spring water was quite good.

When the food distribution was finished, we all said goodbye to the people and returned back the way we had gone, stopping at one point to pick up a man who had broken his leg in the earthquake and wanted to visit a hospital in Kathmandu, and stopping again at 5 p.m. to grab a small meal at a roadside restaurant.

We arrived at the Nazarene center at 9 p.m. Then Jorg and Steve and I stayed up until past 1 a.m. filing reports and pictures and article.

The man who stole the rice

I was in the last of three trucks in our convoy, when the procession came to an abrupt halt amid mounds of debris thrown by last week's earthquake into the narrow, pitted dirt road. Through the dusty windshield, I strained to see why we had stopped.

Ahead of us, surrounding the first truck was a very large group of men.

While there seemed to be some commotion at the first truck in the front, I noticed an elderly Nepali man reach for something near the first truck, which was partially obscured by the second flat-bed in front of me. Then the man began walking toward us, bearing what appeared to be one of the 25-kilogram bags of rice our people had so carefully loaded into the three trucks after sunset last night.

As he passed us, I wondered if he had managed to steal the bag of rice while everyone's attention was diverted to the crowd of men blocking the road. I was in the cab of the third truck, sandwiched between the driver and his assistant, neither of whom spoke English. So there was no one to alert to what might have been a theft.

Suddenly the tightly packed crowd began to move back and the first truck started forward. The second truck started up its engine and followed, and we came again last. The entire episode was, momentarily, a mystery to me.

It wasn't until after the whole day was over and some of us were gathered over dinner around an outdoor plastic table at a roadside restaurant (with a view to the hazy, distant outline of the Himalayas) that I heard the story.

We had been passing through a village that had been flattened in the April 25 earthquake. When the men of the village saw our vehicles loaded with rice, they swarmed the road to stop us and demand that we give up the load -- 305 bags in total, enough to feed more than 1,200 people for a month. These bags were destined for a larger, harder hit village several hours ahead on our route.

The Nepal District accountant and church leader, a young man in his 30s with a deceptively placid personality in any other situation, bravely stood up on the bed of the first truck and calmly -- but firmly -- addressed the demanding crowd. He explained that we were Nazarene Compassionate Ministries and through the support of generous people around the world, we had purchased this rice and determined through careful research that a village further up the mountain desperately needed this assistance. He pointed out that nonprofit organizations like ours, who are trying to help as many people as we can who are in need, might be less willing to help this village in the future if the people behaved badly and stole from us.

At these words, the men were ashamed and they backed away from our trucks. But not before the elderly man slipped in and pulled a bag of rice from the truck, then calmly walked away.

The Nazarene workers collected contact information from the men, who asked them to consider coming back to help them as well.

Our convoy continued on to the Tindhara village, home to more than 1,200 people, 34 of whom were killed in the earthquake. It had been determined by a needs assessment conducted on Friday, by a team of 5 Nazarene pastors who rushed there by motorcycle, that 100 percent of the homes in the village had been destroyed. The people didn't even have tents, and were constructing temporary shelters by pulling the corrugated metal roofs from the rubble and propping them on stilts made of branches or bamboo, then draping the sides with tarps and cloths.

Many had lost the tools they used to farm, as they were buried when their homes collapsed. Some livestock were also killed by falling structures. Several told us that their stores of corn, millet and rice were hopelessly lost because in the mess created by their fallen homes, the grains mixed with mud and dirt and were now inedible. One woman told us her family had ingested nothing but boiled water since the day of the earthquake.

The group of more than 20 Nazarene pastors and leaders, including the Nepal NCM coordinator and and the Eurasia Regional NCM coordinator (NCM stands for Nazarene Compassionate ministries, a relief and development arm of the Church of the Nazarene denomination), spent more than two hours handing out the 305 bags of rice (well, 304, since one had been stolen on the way), as well as oil and salt, to each family, determining the amount to be given based on how many people were in the household. The calm and orderly distribution spoke well of the team.

To my surprise, I heard later that the man who had stolen the rice pulled up on a motorcycle midway through the distribution. He approached the Nazarene team and apologized for the theft, and he handed back the rice. He had been thinking about what he heard when our accountant had bravely addressed the crowd, about how we were just there to help, and how this village was in such desperate need. He felt he must give back the rice and apologize. The entire team was surprised and thanked the man, who turned around and left.

We had departed Kathmandu at 5:30 a.m. We arrived at Tindhara at sometime past 12:30 and by 1 p.m. distribution under the hot, dry early May sun was under way. The team put up a banner that announced that we were Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, and on every bag of rice and oil and salt there was a sticker with more information about our organization.  Every family had their food by 3:30, and we said goodbye and departed, our leaders planning to return soon to continue ministry to this devastated village.

The entire experience was a glowing example to me of Nazarenes' care and compassion for the "least of these." Only a few in this village are Christians, but the church gave out food to anyone and everyone, with no strings attached regarding religion or anything else. Also, I was impressed by the teamwork, the organization, the good communication, and the efficiency of the operation. Finally, I was impressed with how it was the Nazarene pastors and leaders who made the decisions and led the distribution; this is truly a local church, grassroots-led effort here in Nepal.

The reason that our leadership chose to first reach out to Tindhara after the earthquake was in part due to the fact that one of our Nazarene members in Kathmandu grew up in this village, and his family still lives here (they also lost their home). It was this young man who made the connection and also has an abiding hope that our denomination will start a Nazarene compassionate ministries center here soon to bring other services to the village, such as a child-focused community development project and community based health care. Because of this young man, it is also the desire of the district leadership to establish a presence in this village. The earthquake unexpectedly opened that door.

The young man from Tindhara* said: "I'm very happy, because of you I can help my neighbors."

*Name omitted for security reasons.

First day in Nepal, 8 days after the earthquake

Sitting in the gate area of the Istanbul airport, waiting for my flight to Kathmandu airport, I looked around at the other passengers and wondered what their stories were, why they were on this flight 7 days after a major earthquake that has killed more than 6,000 people in Nepal.

Then the woman next to me asked me a question, and I found out why she was going.

She is from Spain, and is going as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders to assist in developing a psychological response to the trauma of April 25th's 7.8-magnitude earthquake. While she has done some counseling and trauma response in war zones, she had never worked in the wake of a natural disaster. She asked me if it was my first time in a disaster zone, and I nodded.

"How do you feel? Are you afraid?" she asked me.

"Afraid of what?" I asked.

"Aftershocks."

I admitted that I hadn't thought much about aftershocks, that my big fear was being required to ride a motorcycle in order to get outside Kathmandu or to more distant places for gathering stories. I don't like motorcycles.

Just three days ago I found out about this trip. I received the phone call at 11 p.m. my time in Manchester, UK, that the Church of the Nazarene needed a journalist to accompany a videographer to help connect the global church with the local church in Nepal, and to tell the stories of how the church is responding to the needs for shelter, food and water around the country. Just two days ago I agreed to come and Friday was the first I knew about the details. I was on a plane by Saturday morning.

I had a daytime flight from Manchester to Istanbul, then laid over for about 3 hours before catching my overnight flight to Kathmandu. I watched a couple movies, slept for a couple of hours. When I awoke and got restless, I slid open the window shade and realized that it was dawn. The sun would be up soon. Above the grey nothingness below poked the razor-sharp teeth of the Himalayas, chewing up the horizon. There was a molten orange glow along the edges of a few of the peaks. I grabbed my mobile phone and as I snapped a few pictures, suddenly the glow turned into a blinding blaze, and the sun triumphantly climbed above the edge into view. It was magnificent. I couldn't help but think about the metaphors.

We have more than 100 organized churches and more than as many church plants, attended by over 8,000 Nazarenes in Nepal. The country's district superintendent, Rev. Dilli, in collaboration with the Eurasia Region's compassionate ministries coordinator, Jörg Eich, and in partnership with other NGOs, is mobilizing the Nepali church to gather food such as rice and sugar and distribute it to the villages which have been hit hard by the earthquake. They are also developing a plan to ensure people have clean water and shelter.

I arrived on the same flight with Steve, an American videographer who also dropped everything to come and help capture the stories on video. We've had breakfast, grabbed a short nap, and after lunch our first order of business is to interview Rev. Dilli and Jörg on camera to talk about the situation as it stands right now. Then Rev. Dilli said he would take us to visit the Nazarene church where he was preaching when the earthquake struck, show us where the congregation fled outside and began praying as the ground rolled beneath them, and also to another Nazarene church which was gathered for worship and came through the earthquake undamaged.

I am sitting at an unused desk, eavesdropping on Dilli and Jörg in the next office talking about how many thousand bags of rice they need, how much sugar, oil and salt -- they're talking about tons of food staples. Dilli says they're going out to distribute food tomorrow about 70 km from Kathmandu and it sounds like we'll go with them to interview people and capture the stories in that location. I really hope there won't be motorcycles involved.

Having posted news about this sudden trip on social media, and seeing the amazingly swift and positive response of friends and colleagues around the world who are praying for Nepal, praying for the church here, and praying for me and Steve (and my husband Andrew who is supporting me from Manchester), I feel surrounded and lifted up in prayer.

Pray that I won't have to ride a motorcycle. :-)