From Brian Smith
I like when our team members send out their views from our missions, through their eyes and photos. We returned from our latest mission at 3:30am. Coleen did a fantastic job describing it. I was unfortunately in the same vehicle as Coleen, Komal and Eric. I was pretty sure that we were going to die for the first three hours of our trip as our driver insisted on making 70kpm passes on blind corners with oncoming trucks and giant drop offs on both sides, on top of him having a bit too much to drink on both ends of the drive...
Coleen Rishovd stated...
How do I begin to explain the last 40 hours? I will start with our driver... We left the house with two hired Sumos and their drivers, a couple of tents sent over the day before from a new organization which will remain unnamed (I haven't mentioned them before in prior posts) and all our team and gear for the trip! Sooo, I need you to picture this...think road to Hana, with all its switchbacks and dangers, plus being in the mountains, with cliffs and landslides, and our driver who refused to drive slower than 70 kilometers per hour! After three hours of us asking, then pleading, then yelling, I asked Komal to translate for me..."if you do not slow down, first I will vomit all over your vehicle, then I will throw you out and drive this thing myself!!" I don't know if he translated those exact words, but the driver did get better after that. The trip to Salyantar took us 9 hrs, with the last three being very slow, on nasty potholed dirt roads. When we arrived, we had a little light left and it was beginning to rain. I saw our driver run off into the village. We quickly opened up the first tent and began to set up. The villagers were a great help, and as we finished, the sky opened up in earnest and within fifteen minutes of completion we realized we had a huge problem...the tent was not waterproof!! It was raining inside the tent! There would be no safety for mothers and newborn babies in this type of environment. So after a team meeting, some hurried phone calls to this organization, and a wonderful dinner of dalbaat, we decided to head back out of the mountains...and then our driver showed up...drunk as a skunk! Needless to say, we were not happy campers, especially after our surprise earlier that night with the defective tents. Long story longer we took the keys from our driver and Curtis drove us out of there. We left at 9 pm in the rain, and arrived back to Kathmandu at 3:30 am.
What a trip! Aside from the lessons our team leaders learned and follow-up meetings they have planned for today with the new organization, I do want to share some things and thoughts that I had while on this short trip...
The outlying areas are decimated. I couldn't help but weep whenever we passed village after village; entire groups of homes and shops are simply piles of rubble. On the slow gravel roads, I was able to look into the eyes of so many beautiful people...they portray weariness, loss, complete hopelessness. The amount of work that needs to be done to rebuild destroyed homes is going to take a very long time, but what about their lives? The shattered hearts of those who have lost everything, not just their homes but their son, their husband, their grandma, their little baby girl? One gentleman I spoke with lost 5 members of his family, two of them children. He was so broken, still trying to begin to cope with the loss his mind would not accept, but what is now his nightmarish reality. And this is spread across this entire nation...family after family, village after village.