Updates from Student Volunteers

Surendra A

1. Today Bhuwan and I visited Khokana for a quick assessment. We found that out of 900 households, 700 are either collapsed, partially collapsed or not suitable to live in. Mr Gangalal, in the green t-shirt in the photograph, was a good friend when I worked on an irrigation project in 2002. Gangalal would prefer CGI sheet rather than plastic sheets. However, whatever they receive from any donor, they collect centrally and distribute through a single gate system. They were found to be more transparent at village level, as they wrote up the list of materials received so far. We also met some of the government officials who were doing a needs assessment on site.
2. In the evening I visited one of the households victimised by this earthquake. The house is completely collapsed, and I handed over cash.

Hitesh K

One of the Deerwalk employees, Meenu K, had made a request for help some time back. She seemed very neat in her preparations, as she had made some local contacts and had a list of medicines, and today we decided to visit the place. Where we passed by, past old Bhaktapur, there was not a single house that stood tall, and the alley was shut. When we reached the place it was drizzling. We went to the first camp and started distributing medicines. The makeshift camp housed around 200 people and had one common kitchen. We distributed the medicines that had run out of stock in many places in the area around Bhaktapur. Since she was aware of that, we decided to buy them from Kathmandu Medical Hospital: ORS, Betadine, painkillers, cough syrups, sanitary pads and face masks. Even at the hospital pharmacy we could not find all the medicines that were on the list.

The two places where we distributed medicines thankfully had women working as nurses or community medical assistants. We have their contact numbers, and Meenu said she will follow up on a regular basis. One amazing sight was a boy jumping up and shouting 'Betadine aayo'. He had caught his toe between the door when the earthquake happened. The total cost of medicines distributed was Rs 56,995.44.

As discussed in the meeting yesterday, from now on we will distribute cash directly. Both the Facebook page and the blog of DWSWN have been updated.

RAM update

1. The four members of the team left and joined the group in Dhuskun. We got an update from Shyam Sonepa, who is in constant contact with the team, that they met up with the rest of the team members at the village. They have been well received by the villagers.
2. Niraj Gorkhali, ex Budhanilkantha and ex D2, donated 300 loaves of bread for distribution by DWSWN, and they have been sent to the villages of Dhuskun, Piskar, Tekanpur and Tauthali in Sindhupalchowk with Paul Maresca from Remote Area Medical (RAM) USA. A total of 15 medical professionals from RAM, in coordination with DWSWN, are currently in the hardest hit district for medical relief operations.

Plans for tomorrow

1. Record the missing videos for days 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11. The scripts are ready.
2. Surendra dai plans to leave for Dhading.
3. Manish M and his team want to visit Sindhupalchowk to offer condolences to a team member who lost his mother, and to assist a local school that was badly damaged.