These
are dangerous and timorous and desperate times
I have
returned to the Island from Nepal and I have been wandering about a bit in a
daze.
I have
been a bit clumsy and forgetful and have not been quite myself.
I lost
something over there.
Perhaps
I left a little of me behind.
I
think I did.
I
suspect some of my heart.
Many
tears as well.
I wept
a fair bit.
I feel
no shame at weeping.
None
at all.
I saw
suffering of the like I had never seen before and witnessed fear that was as
cruel and cold as it was unfair.
For
the life of me I cannot understand why nature would unleash such terror upon a
country that already has so very little.
Where
is the justice in that?
The
anguish and agony I felt at seeing our schools all broken and beaten up is
impossible to put into words. Nor either is the hollow dread in little
children’s eyes.
They
don’t understand why the earth quakes and building fall down and people get
crushed and die.
How
can one describe such a darkness?
There
were no tears for me.
That
would be a waste.
When I
flew back to Singapore from Nepal last Sunday I was dirty and dusty and smelly.
I had a hotel room booked near the Snowland School but I spent much of my time
sleeping outdoors with the children.
Much
of the population of Kathmandu slept outdoors since the first earthquake and
again since the second earthquake.
Nothing
could crush or fall on you outside.
It was
safer there.
On the
Wednesday after the second earthquake I was badly shaken and my back and my
head ached and I craved a shower and mattress so I returned to the hotel.
The
water for my shower was a trickle of tepid brown water that washed some of the
grime from me but no matter how hard I scrubbed my skin still prickled with
fear and concern.
Despite
my exhaustion I tossed and turned with vexation.
I had
grown used to the frequent after-shocks however there was quite a big one
sometime around 3.00 am that made me open my eyes and I watched in a dream-like
state as a crack appeared in the ceiling of one corner of the room then raced
it’s way to the other side of the room.
The
bricks of the building shuddered and jarred and they creaked and groaned and I
dragged myself to the lawn outside. I lay awake there – huddled in my blanket -
until the sun poked its dawn rays into my weary eyes.
It is
strange now sleeping in my own bed.
I feel
discomfort at the comfort.
There
is a lingering sense of guilt being here too that washes over the sense of relief
I feel that the earth is not shaking. There is also a rage within me that
no-one seems to really understand or for that matter care.
I get
that news is news and headlines only last for a couple of days.
Big
earthquakes only make the front pages of newspapers for a few days before the
birth of Royal babies and elections and atrocities in other far away places
push such events into the back pages and then they quickly disappear
altogether.
It
doesn’t dilute my dismay though.
We
people care about what the media tell us to care about and with the here and
now of the Internet our emotions flash and burn bright and quickly.
So I
carry my own grief silently.
I have
heard it said that grief does not change a person.
It reveals them.
I am not sure yet that this is the case and I do not really
care either.
This whole concept of human capacity and empathy for grief is
mystifying. I don’t think we people are programed for adequate emotional
responses once the dead exceed more than a few dozen in number.
I see but can’t comprehend the blank looks in people’s eyes as
they tell me how terrible things must be ‘over there’ before they move onto
complain that their coffee is cold.
I get it but I want to fucking kill them.
It doesn't just level off either.
It rapidly just gives up.
100 dead.
10,000 dead.
A half a million people homeless.
There is somehow this resetting at zero for
the majority of us.
Few people outside of Nepal really give a fuck
about the Nepalese.
Why would they?
They are not a part of most people’s lives.
Nor are they affected.
They were just images on the television screen
that are no longer there.
I understand this but it still saddens me.
It riles and it angers me.
I know it shouldn’t and I don’t wish it to
distract me.
And I do not wish my grief to overwhelm me.
I am
not the one who has suffered and there is much that needs to be done.
When I
left Nepal to return to the Island I was waiting in the lounge for my flight to
be called.
There
were not many people there for the lounge at the Tribhuvan International
airport is hidden atop some cunningly placed staircases behind an obscure
doorway.
I
don’t know why.
I
shuffled to my normal corner spot near the smoking room and I immediately
noticed a very large Anglo Saxon guy hunched over in a corner on his own.
I
could tell he was an American by both his hand luggage and his teeth.
The
former was emblazoned with the stars and stripes and the latter were straight
and big and dazzling white.
Both
are the American way.
I
dumped my dirty bag and retreated immediately for a cigarette and when I
returned I noticed that the big American guy was quietly sobbing.
I
wandered over.
How
could I not?
“Are you OK?” I enquired.
I
patted him cautiously on the back.
This
was something that was now familiar to me, as I had been doing this for a
fortnight.
Patting
gently on the back.
It was
a stupid question I know - as he was obviously not.
OK.
The
poor guy was ashen white and his eyes were bloodshot red with sorrow and
fatigue. He appeared to be about the same age as me.
He
wiped his eyes and sighed and told me his name.
I
won’t repeat it here.
He told
me that he came from a small rural town in the mid-western part of the United
States and this was his first ever trip he had made overseas.
He was
a few years older than me.
He had
come to Nepal to find his daughter.
She
was about the same age as my daughter.
Both
our daughters were on great adventures travelling the world.
My
daughter was on her way to Nepal before the first earthquake struck.
My
Totty.
She
was in Cambodia.
His
daughter was in Nepal that fateful day.
Like
my daughter, the American guy’s daughter had travelled with her best friend
through Asia, and the highlight of her trip was always going to be Nepal.
To see
the great mountains of the world.
At his
wife’s request his daughter had messaged home every single day she had been
away. She was their only child and his wife was very worried that she was so
far away from home.
So too
was he.
Every
Sunday they would talk on Skype and he said they had never seen her so happy.
She
told her Dad that she felt so free and that she never knew that the world was
such a big and exciting place.
He
told me that the last message they got from her was telling them that she and
her best friend had arrived in a mountain village called Langtang and they were
going to go on a trek to see some of the tallest mountains in the world.
He
said they sounded very happy.
I felt
something clutch my heart when he said the word ‘Langtang’.
My good
friend Dil - who is a mountain guide - walked up to the Langtang valley one
week after the first earthquake and he said there was almost nothing left. He
told me that he talked to a local villager who was one of the very few
survivors up there who was returning from a faraway pass when the earthquake
struck. The villager told Dil that he felt the earth shake and move and shift
and then an avalanche of ice and rock that blocked out the sky fell from the
mountains and swallowed everything up.
No one
in the valley survived.
This
happened from Langtang all the way to the base of Mount Everest.
More
than one hundred villages have been consumed.
The
American guy did not know any of this before he arrived in Nepal or even after
he arrived.
All he
knew was that there had been an earthquake in the country and his daughter had
disappeared.
He
booked his flights for Kathmandu while his wife and the family of his
daughter’s friend sold everything they had to try and raise funds to arrange
for search and rescue missions. When he arrived in the chaos of Kathmandu it
took the American guy several days to find someone who could take him north
through the broken roads to what was left of Langtang.
It was
immediately apparent that no one was alive.
He
lingered and searched nevertheless.
Now he
was going home.
I
didn’t know what to say but I stayed with him until his flight was called.
His
flight left before mine.
His
tale could easily have been mine as both my daughter and my son were to meet me
in Nepal.
They
wanted to trek.
They
have been there before.
They
will return once again.
So of
course too will I.
I will
never stop returning.
There
are many broken buildings in Nepal and the land has been ravaged and torn from
not one earthquake but two.
There
may be more.
Life
goes on though.
It is
hot and dusty there now and there is a shortage of clean drinking water and
shelter and there is great suffering.
There
has always been much suffering in Nepal.
It is
a land of endurance and the people are born tough.
They
are survivors.
The
monsoons are coming though and the dust will turn to mud and the mosquitoes
will arrive and the roads to the mountains will become impassable.
Much work
needs to be done.
We
need to grit our teeth, pull together and get on with it.
Before the rains arrive.
Before the rains arrive.
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