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.