“What Nepal needs is for us not to forget Nepal in the coming months and years.”
So said Canmore resident Wally Berg on his return from a recent visit to the earthquake-devastated county.
The situation in the aftermath of the April 25 earthquake is not grim he said, but the need for outside help still exists.
“Nepalese people are resilient and they don’t feel sorry for themselves,” Berg said. “Rebuilding is well underway in the areas affected with earthquake damage, but it will take months and then years to complete this work.”
The main purpose of his visit was to connect with friends and colleagues, and to assist with projects of Canmore-based NGO, CORE International, on whose board he sits. Serving those who are excluded from the programs of bigger organizations, CORE provides aid such as micro-loans for women to establish their own vegetable stands or sewing businesses, and pay for their children’s school fees.
“Thankfully, my friends – expats and Sherpas and the community of people we work with - are all OK,” Berg said.
Berg has visited Nepal some 40 times over the past three decades, and his friends include a number of Sherpa working for his trekking and climbing guiding business. Over the course of 11 climbing and research expeditions to Everest – seven as expedition leader - Berg has summited four times.
With 11 of Nepal’s 75 districts seriously damaged, CORE volunteers and staff were providing relief to one of those affected areas.
“People aren’t going to forget about the Sherpas,” Berg said. “We have identified the village of Dolakha as one that fits CORE’s criteria of being in serious need, but at risk for being excluded from receiving assistance from others.”
Dolakha is accessible via the main road – all of Nepal’s roads remain open – running from Kathmandu to the Tibetan border in a four-hour trip, following the route that trekkers used to walk to Everest Base Camp. Most now fly to Lukla and begin their trek there.
“Knowledge people have of Dolakha is limited,” Berg said. “The area is totally devastated, literally every house is down.”
The region’s inhabitants are a Nepalese Buddhist Himalayan ethnic group called Thamgye. They have their own language and all use the surname Thamgye, just as Sherpas all use the surname Sherpa. In Kathmandu Berg joined CORE co-founder Frances Klatzel, a Canadian living there, to purchase supplies that enable families to care for themselves. By shopping at a local retailer (at wholesale prices) using CORE funds from Canada, they contribute to the local economy, even purchasing plastic pails manufactured locally from recycled plastic.
Volunteers and staff spent hours assembling 3,000 individual hygiene and sanitation kits to help prevent the spread of disease, comprised of soap, towels, toothpaste, shovels and plastic buckets and other rain gathering materials, all delivered by a Nepalese driver and truck.
Working in partnership with the local Fashelung Community Service (FSS) group, CORE is also helping ensure pregnant women have access to adequate health care. Water pipes are being provided to help people resettle after being forced from their previous homesteads as ongoing earthquakes cause landslides.
They helped supply aluminum for roofs, which is being used in conjunction with materials laying around. Living outdoors this time of year is not as brutal as it would be in colder months, Berg said, adding farms are producing vegetables. With the monsoon underway, moving people off the ground – and out of much appreciated relief tents - was a priority.
“People in Nepal live in extended families,” Berg explained. “They appreciate the dignity of getting out of the relief tents. They want to be up, off the ground, with good ventilation, keeping dry and with their family. And it’s happening. I don’t want to say it’s perfect, but it’s working.”
In addition to individual donations, Berg said CORE is grateful for the generosity of the Canmore Rotary Club which recently donated $5000, an amount that will go a long way in Nepal.
“The good it does is tangible and ongoing,” he said.
Overall, the timing of the April earthquake, which killed 8500, was fortuitous, he said. Predictions of a “big one” have been ongoing since an earthquake in 1934 killed 11,000 people.
“If you look at the calendar year for people in the Kathmandu Valley, you could hardly have picked a better day. It happened on a Saturday, which is like a Sunday here, only even more so. It’s not a business day and no kids were in schools. People were outside. The earthquake was as big as projected, but happened under fortuitous circumstances.”
Many buildings proved more resilient than expected. One of three earthquakes registering higher than seven on the Richter scale, the April quake was followed by 304 aftershocks.
“The area is still settling down,” Berg said. One of those aftershocks occurred while Berg was there, although he slept through it. He does recall watching buildings sway during an earthquake there in 1988.
Throughout the April quake, phones in Kathmandu, including land lines, continued working. Kathmandu’s airport, a south Asian hub for international travel, remained operational except for a few hours when an excessive number of incoming relief aircraft halted service. In the populated Kathmandu valley, not one bridge collapsed.
“You fly into Kathmandu and you don’t see a grim scene,” Berg said. “The roads are in very good shape. In the city they were actually cleaner than they usually are. Everyone is picking stuff up. Kathmandu’s streets are still classically choked with traffic, people are riding their motorbikes and driving their cars. Fuel is cheaper than it was before the earthquakes.”
While there, Berg stayed at his favourite Hotel Yak and Yeti, where all services were fully functional - except the swimming pool.
While in some villages nearly every building collapsed, just three of Nepal’s major trekking routes were affected, and only one of the country’s eight UNESCO World Heritage sites is closed.
Contrary to anyone imaging only suffering and despair, the Nepalese exude strength and resilience, he said.
“People can travel to Nepal,” Berg said. “Tourism is something the Sherpas and all Nepalese people want and need to happen. Nepalese people need us, but they continue to inspire and indeed to teach us with their resilience and dignity.”
