Post-Earthquake days: Overcoming Obstacles and moving forward with helping hands to comfort the victims!

The devastating Earthquake of April, that ruined Nepal within a single minute, was one of the most pathetic catastrophes and tremendous tragedies for Nepali that we ever experienced in the history. The powerful Earthquake and the subsequent series of aftershocks caused the mournful crisis throughout the country. Many lives were snatched brutally while many were trapped in the rubble, many people got severely injured while many went missing whose whereabouts is still unreported. It was so irreparable loss for Nepal that the various cultural heritages including the tallest tower called, ‘Dharahara’, are no more now as they are just in memories and photographs!

The few initial days turned out to be very gloomy for all of us. Soon after Earthquake struck Nepal, people started to come out of the homes to the open-spaces/grounds and spent many days in the tents. Situation was the same for my family too. We had no electricity, no battery back up in the phones and the communication channels were very fragile. Our home got severely cracked and later it got red-stickered (sign of uninhabitable). The things went utterly topsy-turvy that we were not sure what would be the next thing to do, how our lives would be patched up and move towards the normal situation again. Aftershocks were unceasingly striking our minds with fear and uncertainty, our concentration was just moving to the news of Radio Nepal. The depressing news regarding rising death toll and the deteriorating situation of earthquake-survivors excessively saddened all of us. Personally speaking, I was experiencing a kind of numbness, a weird state of senselessness and dizzy.

We, indeed, spent a week after Earthquake doing nothing, just counting our days with deep despair lying on the dusty ground, being wet from the drizzles and trying to comfort each other to minimize psychological havoc and weariness.

What could we do more than this at that horrible situation? There was no other way to subvert the loss and casualties. Only the thing we could do was to have patience and resilient spirit to patch up our hearts and to pull ourselves from the stresses. The reality was crystal-clear that everybody was suffering, but only the degree differed. As for the Earthquake and the power of the nature are concerned,nobody can avert the decree of Nature, and the mystery and misfortunes brought by the natural calamity are completely beyond our control or understanding.

Truly speaking, Suffering, whether near or far, has it’s impacts all around us! The same thing happened to me as well. Many friends who are very close to my heart contacted me from abroad, especially from United States and asked how I and the family was, then even asked if they could do something through us to help in Nepal for Earthquake victims. The amazing love, care and the growing concerns of the friends from near and far warmed my heart in a great way, and later, I, my brother Bashudev and the friends of our self-help group decided that worry wouldn’t do much. We thought that God left us alive to do something more for our country and communities.

Yes, we then made our minds up to do something, but from where and how should we start? Again, there lied a bizarre state of confusion. After a week later, we visited the different parts of Kathmandu especially, Ratnapark, the central Area of Kathmandu, and to our extreme astonishment, Kathmandu was calm and quiet, not like that of the past. This was the result of huge number of people who immediately left Kathmandu city and returned their nome towns/villages. However, we came to know about the youth’s initiative for humanitarian response, relief and rescue. Learning and knowing that young minds began to sow the embryos of humanity, we also got encouraged and driven to come out with helping hands.

It is believed that trial and tribulations are not permanent. Yes, this true statement united Nepali very quickly right after Earthquake. Sharing the tents in the communities helped people strengthen the friendliness relationship among neighbours. See, while people were sharing a single tent collectively, there was no caste, no ethnicity, no gender, no age-limits, no religion and no regional variation, the only things there presented was humanity and unity among each other. This was really a remarkable note to be highlighted after Earthquake.

Well, since Earthquake taught us a great lesson of humanity and altruism, various youth-led groups started volunteering for Earthquake victims to distribute relief and rehabilitation. And we were one of them!

While we were contacting our friends and circle of well-wishers as well as relatives to know how they were and how their condition was, we knew a sad news that the Sanjjiwani school, which is located in Dhulikhel Kabre where I had learned braille and studied up to grade 6, collapsed in Earthquake. We further were reported that the 18 blind and visually-impaired kids there in the school were staying in very difficult condition. Having known those distressing news, we intended to start our post-earthquake relief campaign right from that school by providing food, blankets, clothes and sanitation stuffs to the 18 visually-impaired students.

Actually, we, the group of friends who share the common sentiment of social works, had firmed a self-help venture few years back with the main objective of bridging the gap and empowering the persons living with disabilities and bringing them into the main stream of national development. Through this platform, we had been saving up some resources out of our own salaries/earnings. Hence, when earthquake shook Nepal and when we were ready to move with our helping hands, we used our already-saved own resources and funds instead of asking other to join our cause.

When we started distributing relief packages to the visually-impaired students in Sanjiwani school in Dhulikhel, some friends of mine and some NGOs approached us and requested for collaboration. Dale Davis, Sagar PrasainTilganga Eye hospital and many other supported our spontaneous relief campaign.

Despite our own suffering, we travelled many remotest places where we had never been before. We reached the various hard-hit places helping people, listening their stories, witnessing their situation and giving our helping hands to the best of our abilities!

The journey of life sometimes comes to be so difficult, inaccessible  and full of stresses, however, accepting the reality, compromising witht the circumstances and getting going ahead is what we all should learn and do by the hearts. Putting these things in practice, our post-earthquake relief and rehabilitation campaign got further momentum. Colaborating with Gwahali for Differently Able (GDAP), Blind Rocks and Engage Nepal, we targeted our relief work especially focusing to the persons with disabilities. We set up health camps in ore than 20 different places, distributed food, clothes and sanitation kits  in different 11 districts touching and comforting the lives of the thousands of earthquake victims.

In the second phase, we came up with the mission of building temporary homes and shelters for the most-affected families with disabilities in the earthquake hard-hit districts. Monsoon was about to start, and the situation of people who were staying in the tnets or under the open sky was getting much deteriorated. Considering the hardships, together with Gwahali team and Engage Nepal, taking the young volunteers to the spots, we began to build the shelters in Sindhupalchok district. Completing more than 30 shelters in Sindhupalchok, we never ceased to wrap up the rehabilitation campaign. As a result, by this time, we have constructed 65 shelters in Kabre, Sindhupalchok, Dhading, Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Nuwakot. More shelters were still on the way of construction.   for pace of tireless relief giving continued.

Along with shelter-construction, we witnessed that Earthquake made many persons physically-challenged that they were in the urgent need of assistive tools while on the other hand, we saw many persons with disabilities lost their assistive tools and devices such as wheelchairs, crutches and white canes in earthquake. Seeing those needs, we collected those assistive tools, for which, Help Nepal Network, provided us 120 white canes, Shiva-Shakti Sadhana centre and Lhakpa Phuti Trust as well as Sagar Prasain helped us purchase wheelchairs and crutches. Thus by collective efforts, so far, we have been able to distribute 66 while-chairs, 69 crutches, 351 white canes and 18 hand-sticks to the earthquake-affected persons with disabilities.

During our spontaneous relief and rehabilitation campaigns, we encountered different bitter circumstances. Once we were on the survey for shelter-construction in Sindhupalchok, we, the team of Bright Star Society, Gwahali, Engage Nepal and Robotic Association of Nepal were heading to Thulo-Pakhar. our vehicle got hit by a big truck, luckily, if our vehicle was not stopped by emergency break, we would have fallen off the cliff! Oh, getting new life from the accident, we sighed  with deep breath!

In this way, despite many challenges, we have been able to do something, just to contribute a little from our sides, more things are yet to be done. Still our post-earthquake campaigns are going on with persistence and innovative approach. Since Earthquake has made people largely dependent, but we now want to do such thing by which people can be independent and be able to stand on their own feet. For which we are now promoting local venture and entrepreneurship via the cross-disability model. Let’s see how much we can do to accomplish our goal! Together we can carry the greater load, can’t we? Together we can share and lighten the burden of social responsibilities. I believe that if we light a candle for somebody, it will eventually lighten our own path as well. So why not doing something good and meaningful for our society?

Rome was not built in a single day, was it? Japan would not have been today’s Japan if Japanese had not worked hard overcoming obstacles that they had to face in the past. With these outstanding examples of the world, I am pretty hopeful for the future of tomorrow’s Nepal, I see my country, a new Nepal is waiting for us! If we all keep working hard with vibrant courage and selfless spirit, this transition will not last long for sure!