Post Earthquake relief works: My Second Week in Nepal

By now more than 7000 people had lost their life because of the earthquake. However life had started to come back to normal as magnitude and frequency of aftershocks was decreasing.  People had started to come back to Kathmandu and streets had started to be busy and moving.  This week I, along with some of my friends were to start with relief material distribution within the vicinity of the Kathmandu valley.

Khokhana,Lalitpur    
We did survey of nearby villages on the outskirts of Kathmandu: Lubhu, Imadol, Khokana, etc. These area were severely affected by earthquake resulting significant loss of life and property. While in Khokhana, we met a Buddhist monk in a bhuddhist center where around 140 people were living after they had lost their houses. We enquired about the need there and came to know that they were in dire need of sanitation items. 

We organized sanitation items for 140 peoples the same day and the very next day we went to the same place to handover it to Vikshyu Sudhiru. We thanked vikshyu for helping people at such critical period and departed to prepare for next program.

Jhaukhel VDC, Bhaktapur

We had collaborated to with Rotaract Club of Himalaya Patan for our next program in Jhaukhel village of Bhaktapur. Jhaukhel is one of the oldest settlements of Kathmandu valley and most of the houses there were broken down by earthquake. On behalf of SVCET Nepali students, we had arranged sanitation packs for 126 families which included various items like toiletries, mosquito repellent, first aid kits, etc. While Rotaract club had arranged for food and medical team.

We reached Jhaukhel at around 11 am and started to arrange things for distribution. Our medical team also settled their camp swiftly and within some minutes we  would start our camp on full range. As we started to distribute relief material, I heard people making noise and crying. I thought that some dacoits have committed crime. But after few more second ground shook like anything. Then I realized that it was an earthquake. I could see many elderly people, infants and children, women crying. While some of volunteers started to run to open space, I requested the villagers to not to panic and just stay where they had been, Given the difficult location of school, chances of stampede were high. So we just stayed there. The quake gave up within 30 seconds, but increased our fear again. People who had resumed to normal life started to fear again. Aftershocks continued as we went to open space. People were so worried to ensure safety of their relatives and friends. In couple of  minutes, phone line was busy. However I texted my brother to inform I was safe and got to know everything was fine in home.

We rested in open place for a while and interacted with local people. People were not only scared but also irritated with frequent nature of earthquake.  A constant cloud of fear and uncertainty still surrounded them. I got to helpless to see people being panicked. But there was nothing we could besies what we were doing. After about an hour, we resumed our operation in open field and started providing health care and relief materials. About 126 families were benefitted from the camp. We thanked everyone of helping us to organize program in smooth and effective manner and promised of any possible help in future.

It was about 5 pm in the evening when we returned. On way we saw many old houses in Bhaktapur area being demolished by earthquake. People were outside of their building, in open places and were making sure about safety of their family, relatives, friends and neighbors. Amidst all these uncertainty, we still had hoped to help people and bring their life back to normalcy.

Bela VDC, Kavre District

We were informed by one of our friends that some 30 family in Bela village of Kavre district were in dire need of relief materials as no other organizations had been there since day 1 of earthquake. We arranged all available sanitary items and made 30 packs. Meanwhile we had also collected blankets through Rotary International 3292, Nepal and Bhutan. Now only thing that we needed was Tarpaulins. Out of 30 tarpaulins that were needed, I collected 10 from Rotary International 3292 and remaining 20 was provided by Manish Gautam brother from Rotaract club of Kasthamandap. We collected all the items and headed off to Bela. Since we had only few beneficiary families and things were not in big quantity, we decided to curb cost by travelling in public bus. Though it gave us some inconvenience it helped us to save cost. 

We finally reached the place at 10 am. From there it was 30 minutes walking to reach the village. We carried the boxes ourselves and walked down the way to reach the village. In coordination with a local school teacher, we distribute the materials to available families. As we were about to return, the very local teacher offered us food. We didn’t want to become burden to people at such difficult situation and thus declined the offer thankfully. But a Nepali never gives up in hospitality, no matter in what condition his family is. He insisted that he would prepare basic meal.  Finally we agreed and stayed there for lunch.