My first full day in Kathmandu has been an incredible roller
coaster. Beginning with the assembly of the final two tents for the orphans in
our ServLife homes. The older boys rallied around to help clear and level the
ground for the tents. The tents went up quickly and many people from the
neighborhood came to see and ask where these tents came from. The need for good
shelter is so great here.
Then it came time to talk about other needs. ServLife
Director of A.S. Nepal, Udaya, invited Pastor Padam to come share with me. He
has been helping Udaya distribute food to families in Kathmandu and in nearby
rural areas where aid has not yet reached. Pastor Padam shared with me pictures
of his family’s church before and after the earthquake. It collapsed totally
during the first quake on April 25. Sixteen people died inside the church under
the weight of the concrete roof. One small boy died at the hospital from injuries
sustained from a piece of steel rebar. Padam, Udaya and I discussed the
hundreds of families still not reached with basic food supplies and considered
a plan to visit there next week delivering food to 150 families.
Then came Bhaktapur. During lunch with ServLife Himalayan
Development Director, Lazarus Thulung, he suggested I meet a pastor supported
through his ministry whose congregation is in the Bhaktapur region of
Kathmandu. There the scope of this disaster began to make its impact on me. I
was again reminded of the capricious and random nature of disasters. Until Bhaktapur
the damage in Kathmandu did not seem as catastrophic as had been reported. But
as I walked the narrow winding streets and passed the many temples and
monuments of this area I realized no reporting could capture the horror of what
happened here.
More than 500 people died in Bhaktapur alone. Buildings
severely damaged by the quakes hung perilously over the streets propped up by
large wooden timbers. I couldn’t help but think that in the United States not a
single person would be allowed in this area and nearly every building would be
torn down. Yet here we were walking between the support beams, part of a crowd
of people, passing shops that are open for business. And tucked away all around
the area are tent cities, and parks covered in makeshift tarp structures that
do nothing to keep out the rains when they come. And with monsoon season only a
month away, come they will. Five thousand people in Bhaktapur are living
outside. Pastor Ram, who led the way through this ancient city, introduced us to a family that belongs to
his church. Their house was utterly destroyed, as were the homes of thirty-one
other church members from a congregation of just about one hundred.
The immediate need for better temporary housing is pressing.
The process of getting approval to rebuild permanently will take a very long
time. Perhaps years! So the people of Bhaktapur are looking for help building
temporary metal buildings at a cost of $500 per building. The church has raised
about a thousand to begin building a temporary replacement for their building,
but need about two thousand more to complete the job.
The immensity of this disaster in Nepal is beginning to take
shape in my awareness and is full of the faces of people I met today. Tomorrow
I head to the rural areas where I’m told the real devastation occurred. The
plan is to sleep in a makeshift village that has moved because what is left of
their original village sits precariously under a gigantic boulder loosened by
the quakes and ready to tumble down at any moment. I will join the new tent
village for the night where there is no electricity, no bathrooms and no
running water. And no way of knowing when all the help they need will reach
them.
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