If I were SUPER MAN- Nepal Earthquake

On April 25th I was on the way to Imadol, one of the earthquake affected villages in Lalitpur district, hoping to see my family. I witnessed houses falling, people crying, shouting and groaning all around me. This was shocking.  

Picture of a recently damaged house at  Imadol

I think I was as scared and traumatized as everyone else. I spent one night on the carrier of a truck without any contact with my friends and colleagues.  My facebook post on April 28,2015

This is the carrier of a truck, where I spent my night at Imadol, lalitpur

Then I came to know about the scarcity of blood in hospitals; this news reached me through a neighbor spending the night in a tent next to us. As a blood volunteer myself, I decided to go to a hospital; I asked for a ride on a Nepal Police Force Vehicle and reached Teaching Hospital to find friends from Bibeksheel Nepali helping in the management of patients and casualties. And thus began my post-earthquake volunteering journey at Bibeksheel Nepali.

Volunteering at Bibeskheel Nepali

First, I started by managing an overwhelming number of volunteers looking to help out in any way they could. Once the system started working well, I helped establish several departments- social media, helpline service, data analysis, inventory- to name a few. Working from Bibeksheel Nepali office

After one week of 24-7 involvement, I concluded that the office functions were set up, and decided to visit earthquake affected areas.
Along with the field relief team, I headed to Listikot VDC of Sindhupalchowk district, near the China border on May 9th, 2015 . Leaving for Listikot, Shindhupalchowk

At Barhabise, Shindhupalchowk

We reached up to Barhabishe VDC on the first evening.  I helped the villagers prepare dinner for our team of 57 on a Kitchen set up under the tent. 

Cutting Vegetables at Sindhupalchowk

We camped at Barhabise on the first night. 

Tents were set up on the terraced hills. Right at the foot of the hill, a screen was projected, onto the wall of an affected building; everyone was watching football on the makeshift projector screen. From the youngest of child to the oldest of men- everyone was peeping out from their tents, watching the game. And I thought to myself, “Damn, the Nepalis are a cool people!

Early in the morning the next day, we headed to a village uphill, called Listikot. It was very beautiful, but equally dangerous to venture at that time. We were challenged by big landslides on the way- huge rocks were falling almost everywhere from the tall, rocky hills. 

Continues Landslide in front of us 

It seemed almost impossible for us to go uphill. Our driver was a local resident, and even he refused to take the risk of going up. It took us great time and effort to convince him and continue with the journey. 

Driver was convinced by now, but we realized that we didn't even have helmets. It was a huge risk to take our volunteers there.  But we decided not to stop.

Zoom in and see carefully, You will see our trucks and volunteers

We collaborated with a local organization to help open the road with a bulldozer. But as soon as we cleared up road blockage of one landslide area and crossed over, another landslide blocked it, making it extremely difficult to create a safe trail. 

Our volunteers, trying to manage the situation

Our destination was a remote village on top of a hill near the China border but along the way, we observed that people living downhill (near the Votekoshi River) were not getting anything to eat up to that point of time.

Broken houses, made up of local stone and mud

One of the villagers told us that very few organizations arrived with very little relief material.  We met injured women, children, and elderly people unable to carry relief materials to their villages from the distribution point downtown. They were deprived of medical support, food, shelter and, clothing relief.

Villagers helping us to reach up hill

Some villagers were very supportive of our work but some even tried to loot all the relief materials that we were carrying. Some blocked the roads while others threatened our lives. We had to deal with the crisis with great courage and empathy.

Villagers blocking roads after threatening our life 

Finally, we reached uphill and found out that the situation was much worse than what we expected.

Nepalese MBBS students from Bangladesh distributing medicines. 

We tried our best to support them with medical, food, clothing and shelter relief as per our capacity.

While returning, one tire of our truck got punctured. It was at a very risky landslide area. 

We managed to changed the tire. And it started raining, which increased the danger of landslides; it was getting dark again. I remember one of my medical team member saying, "I usually love cloudy days, but this time in the middle of a jungle, I find them so scary." We didn't think we would make it back home safely.

After changing tire

We return to our office at 1 am on the 11 th of May after 10 hours of a very risky journey. 

While returning, my heart was filled with a little satisfaction, a little joy, huge pain of villagers, and a sense of victory over death. 
Whereas my mind was filled with many more lessons, struggles, and experiences. 
My whole body was exhausted but my face was filled with smiles like this. 

On the second big earthquake of the 12th of May, I was in a Psychological healing class organized by Bibeksheel Nepali. Just before the earthquake came I was asked to build on a story based on a given scenario. My scenario was If I were superman...
 My story was "If I were super man, I would fly to Listikot and stop the landslide". As I finished sharing this, within five minutes, another big earthquake came.  
 I thought that life had given me an opportunity to make my story true once again. Within 10 minutes, I reached TU Teaching hospital and started volunteering from there.  

Lastly, thank you everyone for supporting our mission to fulfill hunger and fight with death.  

Video of the Journey:-
Mission Listikot, Sindhupalchowk- Earthquake relief Nepal

More Details:-
Task Force's Work from Office
In Republica


This experience was published in Setopati:- 
In online media