By God's Grace

Look closely! What appears to be the ground floor was
actually the 2nd floor before the first earthquake hit and the
school building sat down one floor. Amazingly, no one was
present at the time.

When people ask, "How bad is the damage there", I don't have words to describe the power that reduced so much to rubble. My default however, is to describe the grace which God had on the people of Nepal. If it were any other day of the week or any other time of day it is not a stretch to say the death toll would have been far beyond 100,000.

Saturday is Nepal's day of rest, where kids are not in school and most businesses are closed. The quake was in early afternoon so the majority of those in the hardest hit districts were out farming. Even more, the power was out so very few kids were inside watching TV or using electric lights.

 

Multiplying Temporary Shelters

 These are some photos of the first design of temporary housing we have been building with families. The buildings are stout enough to be protective in monsoon, but can easily be recycled into the roof of a new permanent house.
A huge advantage of this design is how is easily villages can catch on and make it their own.

Multiplication- On the first major build, our team demonstrated shelter #1 for all to see. For #2 and 3, our team split up and worked along with residents. Before #2 and 3 were done, I looked up the hill and people were starting numbers 4 and 5 without our help. The hardest part of the build ended up being to slow the families down and talk through where to put the shelter. We needed to walk them through the process of giving forethought and make the decision their own.



This is what the temporary shelters look like before the family
personalizes it with ends, door, floor, etc.

1 month update: As I have gone back to this village I've seen that roughly 95%
of the families have people sleeping in these shelters. This is well above the average rate I've seen with identical shelters done in other projects. I believe there is a significance here. Ownership forms when people take part in the decision process and share in the labor involved. Otherwise, these shelters might have just been "One more thing I'm told I need, but I wouldn't spend a personal dime on the idea."

Millet Season

The work here is about so much more than just building houses. People are working at rebuilding their lives. There's a quick snap shot that makes the news, but a deeper story too. Looking at the deeper story can mean the difference of just doing relief or taking it further to community development.

Short Story: these women are processing recently harvested millet where their house used to stand.

Longer Story: These families primarily grow corn and wheat for subsistence and some income. Some millet is also grown to make beer, either used as a carb-heavy energy drink or to sell and generate income to buy vegetables. This is a common way by which hill families obtain vegetables. It's not a stretch to think that a family could end up with three times the nutritious vegetables for less effort if they were to plant vegetable gardens and skip the process of cultivating millet, producing beer, and competing on a market.

Opposed to what you might think, it is very hard for a farmer to accept a gardening approach. There are a lot of barriers to modifying the tradition which has made proper nutrition tough here. And nobody can really fault the villagers. Fathers have relied on this strategy for a thousand years. Helping a family grow their own vegetables is one project we can implement if the right combination of need and teachable attitude comes up.