A Ski for Lighter in Nepal

Editor's note: Veteran SFL guide and sort-of retired educator Joan Holcombe was on her second trip to Nepal as a teacher this spring when a powerful earthquake devastated that country. Joan brought the SFL volunteer spirit straight to the people of the village where she was teaching, ignoring calls for her to leave for the safety and comfort of Home. I asked her to tell us a bit of the story of her time there helping the villagers begin to rebuild. While she did that, in true Joan fashion, she devotes most of her vivid account to the continuing challenges facing the shaken but determined people of the village that she came to know so well.

It was the longest 53 seconds of my life, and will remain with me forever. I was on top of a high, steep ridge, 40 miles east of Kathmandu, Nepal, with my sister and another teacher-colleague from the U.S., when the earth heaved deeply beneath our feet, accompanied by a freight-train roar. April 25 changed life dramatically for so many people in this tiny country.

We three American retired educators had returned one week earlier to the village of Koshidekha, Nepal for our second volunteer stint, where we had planned to teach English and work with faculty on new ways of teaching. Following the earthquake, against all advice from the home front, we decided to remain in the shattered village to help any way we could. We stayed for a full month. There was much to do as the fear and panic gradually moved into survival mode.

Our first order of business was caring for the children. With the school officially closed, we offered to open the doors and provide a safe place and a tiny bit of normalcy. We invited children to join us for informal daily classes while parents faced digging out homes and making their way out of shock. In the afternoons, a few teachers came to the school grounds to share their sad stories with us. When international aid finally began to trickle in after at least ten days, we assisted in distributing food, tents, and clothes, helping the international volunteers and the organizing local leaders. Medical services are normally limited in this village. Following the earthquake, however, our three regional health care assistants (no doctors for many miles around) treated minor injuries and sent out those in dire need to a regional hospital three hours or 50km away. Given the dire state of the roads, we imagine the pain suffered by those who were transported with broken bones and serious injury. Five died in our village as a result of the first quake, and many were injured. Much of their livestock, critical to their livelihood and nutrition, were buried and killed in the collapsing of their homes.

Our village of Koshidekha, like so many, has been essentially reduced to rubble. One hundred percent of the people of our town remain still unable to live in their homes. To add to the trauma, the region endured continual, random aftershocks each day and night, plus a second large earthquake on May 10. Our nerves were edgy and bare. With no electricity throughout the region, limited water supplies hauled from a few of the remaining community wells, carefully rationed food supplies (rice, potatoes, lentils, oil, and salt), we waited and watched for aid to come. We tried to sleep for our first nights under tarp tents with 28 others, cheek to jowl, until we were able to move into an unscathed part of the school grounds. As we walked the hillsides after our school sessions each day, we found all villagers setting up their makeshift tents and starting to salvage tin to build more enduring shelters to hold them through the impending monsoon rains.

Today people are tired and traumatized. Having endured two major earthquakes, over 300 continuing aftershocks, and now, the monsoon rains for the next three months, they must continue their lives as farmers and workers. The people of the villages are facing a long and arduous recovery.

These hard-working villagers, dedicated to the traditional ways of Buddhist and Hindu beliefs, remain subsistence farmers living on terraced, steep hillsides and use the most basic tools, growing whatever food for their families and feed for their animals they can. Mothers carry water home each day from small community wells. Children and older men help the women farm the fields with oxen pulling simple wooden plows. Electricity is always sparse. Toilets are squat-holes in the ground outside homes. The sickle is the main tool; it dices the potatoes and skins the cucumber, trims bamboo, constructs homes, and slaughters the chicken or goat.

Costs for rebuilding are daunting. Most people have no income, savings, or earning power. Many of the men of working age head for Kathmandu or a foreign country to support their families. With few financial resources, no insurance, and a limited work force, there is great difficulty in purchasing and bringing building materials and equipment to the region, clearing debris, and rebuilding.

We three American women went to Nepal under the auspices of two organizations: HealthCare Nepal (HCN), and the Nepal Children's Aid Center of Kathmandu. Both groups help children to stay in school. HealthCare Nepal (501(c)3) gives 98% of its funds to its regular services, providing health care in rural schools and communities, including water collection systems, toilets, and volunteer medical and dental clinics; now it is giving 100% of the donations for earthquake recovery to provide emergency support. Together, these two organizations are working hand in hand with local leaders and villagers to bring food relief drops as well as school texts, clothes, and supplies for all children whose homes were destroyed. They will also rebuild damaged school buildings. Not a penny has been wasted.

This village faces an uncertain future. If you wish to help, please let me know or directly contact HealthCareNepal.org. All contributions are welcomed! If you give my name, all your funds go directly to Koshidekha.