Aslam and myself left Walsall for the evening flight to
Delhi and so on to Kathmandu arriving on Friday with no delays at 2.30 pm local
time to be met by Raju Padel as promised. The Mararaja hotel is within 15
minutes of the airport and we were quickly installed overlooking the main
historical site.
The objectives of this mission were
-
Deliver a further £15K direct to Raju to enable
completion of our pledge to fund building of 1000 shelters . These shelters to
be constructed in corrugated iron or ‘tins’ which will be robust enough to
withstand the imminent monsoon rains. The combination of rain and high winds
would destroy the temporary shelter provided by tents.
-
To inspect the progress and quality of the
construction of these shelters. To verify numbers and check the spend and
receipts so far of funds already sent.
-
To understand the current situation and longer
term prospects for recovery and rebuilding of Nepal and make a judgment of what
could be the next step along this pathway.. whether we as two charities working
together have any follow up projects or how we might encourage others to step
in. Rebuilding communities takes time and after the initial rush following the
dramatic immediate coverage, the earthquake item soon comes off the front page
both of newspapers and the agenda of Governments.
-
Deliver some personal gifts such as shoe boxes
and sweets donated by children in Walsall and use some smaller cash donations
to project some hands on contact and report back to Walsall people.
-
Take the opportunity ,if time permits, to check
dental health of children in a school or orphanage.
We immediately set off to visit an area where shelters had
been constructed. This took some time down small roads.. but it is our
principle to support directly more remote areas which may well not get the help
received by more easily accessible areas. Two designs of shelters. One a half
circle of overlapping tins using bamboo struts internally for support and bolts
to secure and each end bricked up using recycled material from the adjacent
earthquake damaged buildings. The other was the use of tins to repair the roof
of buildings where the walls were still partly standing .. again supported by
bamboo struts and held in place by bolts and weighted down by heavy stones.
On a large entrance doorway were placed documents signed or
thumb printed declaring which families had received the 15000 rupees as
compensation for their loss of home. Also there was a memorial with photos of
the 6 who died here. Certainly the state of the collapsed buildings made it
diffuclt to imagine how anyone got out alive. We were assured that the tins
would last a great many years even up to 30 years ... there must be a high
quality of the zinc cover. An issue of tins consisted of 12 sheets 6 ft by 3
and the family could then construct their shelters using the recyxled wood on
site and the bamboo stakes.. with bolts fixing the sheets through the bolt
holes in the tins. This hard roofed shelter gave the security to allow cooking
etc to take place in wet conditions.
We returned to Kathmandu and slept well. There was a monsoon
style storm overnight with torrential rain and heavy wind.. it had not rained
for a number of weeks before and so looked as if the rains were coming . Very Early Saturday we went to visit the adjacent
world heritage site and IR went into the Hindu site where large numbers of
local people were entering with votive offerings along with the presence of
large numbers of residents monkeys.
We now set off by 9am
to return to a site visited by Aslam on his previous trip just a few days after
the initial earthquake... a long way down tracks , this time transferring to a
4 wheel drive vehicle as the rains had now caused the river crossings to be
quite deep... in fact we got stuck a few times requiring some use of the many
stones at the road side to improve road clearance for the vehicle. Here we
visited another very isolated area and their local school.. which had opened
specially to greet us. The sight of 200 or so children in line to give us flowers
was very moving. We distributed some clothes and children’s shoes and had the
pleasure of seeing these being immediately worn. IR gave his dental care talk
and we did the very quick dental examinations to check level of decay and gum
disease. No evidence of ‘baby bottle’ syndrome... ( use of sugary baby feeds
that results in totally decayed front baby teeth) but about 30% had early
caries in their back baby teeth which suggests a high sugary diet at the 3 year
old age group which slowed by age 5. There seemed a higher number than you
would expect of overcrowding in those with
adult teeth erupting. A number of adults had periodontal areas of
concern especially around their lower front teeth which looked like lack of good
brushing technique.
We then toured the small village and checked out the
corrugated iron ( tins) distribution and application.. we were able to confirm
that all the previously damaged houses had been repaired with these tins and
took photos both inside and out of these repaired buildings. Each family was allocated up to 12 sheets each
and the delivery details showed these had cost £38 per 12 sheets including
delivery and were of the best quality. After tea and freshly picked lychees we
carried on to visit a school currently open but the class rooms closed due to
roof damage... the classes take place in the playground.. The roof was constructed in reinforced
concrete and the metal wires were bulging into the ceiling in each of the 9
classrooms and so the Government had forbidden use of these rooms.. There was a
suggestion that these ceilings could be replaced by our supplied tins but we
came to a view that as this was a Government owned building, this project could
be fraught with barriers to reach agreement and so we opted out of this suggested
project.
We returned to Kathmandu and noted many tented fields of
refugee camps in parks in the city... watched a funeral procession go by... the
body on a truck covered in flowers going for open air cremation .
Sunday was to have been a day handing out more tins in
another part of Dhading province... however out host rang in with the bad news
that his nephew aged 23 had been involved in a serious car accident overnight
and was in the accident hospital... so we arranged ourselves a visit to a local
orphanage school run by a local hindu charity where we gave the children the
sweets and shoe boxes given from Walsall and decided to buy in locally a large
quantity of excercise books for use by the school... around 750 plus a pile of
footballs and badmington rackets . These were most gratefully received by the
school. We also delivered the dental advice talk and returned to the hotel to
seek more news about out host’s nephew.. Unfortunately he had died despite
trying to get him to India via an air ambulance .. However our host did come
over later with copies of all the receipts for the tins we had bought via our
charities and promised to send over pictures of the continued distribution of
the tins as the monsoons had started.
Conclusions
-
Confirmed that the shelters are being erected
and satisfied that the audit trails have been viewed. Evidence that Raju is
delivering as promised despite having a great many other commitments. ( he runs
2 TV stations, owns a chain of petrol stations, has a property empire and supplies
most of the bottled water brands in Nepal)
-
Evidence that there are proposed Government
controls... all money donations to be channelled through their Bank, increased
tax on imported tins, barriers of access for foreigners to run independently a
charity in Nepal... the usual issues when dealing with Government bureaucracy
...
-
The price of items and skilled labour was
increasing as a great deal of rebuilding work is needed. There were hardly any
tourists around and that is a vital part of their economy... all the sites were
reopened that week with some areas of historical sites fenced off and most of
the trekking trails have reopened. We shall see how many bookings occur for the
main tourist period from august. .. there will be many landslides during the
rainy season as the stepped valleys are very steep and have been damaged by the
earthquake as have the foundations of many roads... news of these will maybe
put off the visitors. However Nepal is a very colourful and beautiful place..
people wear bright coloured clothes and are very friendly.. we wish them well.
We felt that we had achieved our aims in going.. despite the issue that not all
the tins had been distributed yet... however the evidence shows that Raju, out
host, is genuine in his endeavours and
we trust him.
-
Aslam decided his favourite fruit was mangoes
and ordered up a crate to take home... this proved to be around 20 kgs box and
had some visions of a burst box of mangoes scattered over the suitcase carousel
at the airport.. however all was well and we returned by 6pm on the Monday with
no delays...
-
Mohammed Aslam and Ian Robertson
-
Midlands International Aid Trust and Oak tree
Trust
