On Friday I went over to a friend's house for his 2 year old son's birthday party. While I was there they told me that there was an earthquake to our south that had destroyed about ten thousand homes. Some people said they could feel it here but I was out playing basketball so I didn't notice it. So while I was there he got a phone call asking if we could bring some food, water, and medical supplies down and possibly help with disaster relief. So my nice slow weekend was pretty much gone with that phone call. I left from the party, threw some things in a bag and then thirty minutes later we were picking up supplies from around town. We got about 900 pounds of rice, twenty boxes of bottle water, a large box filled with medical supplies, 100 pounds of fruit and several boxes of dried noodles to take out there. I was a little worried that our truck wasn't going to make it on some of the mountain roads but it held up just fine. It was about a six hour drive down to the city where everything happened. The trip went by pretty fast and there is amazing scenery all along the drive. One thing that stood out was that there was hardly any damage along the drive down. Even once we got to the city we spent the night in there didn't seem to be very much damage. There were a few concrete walls that had fallen down but a lot of that could have just been from weathering and being old.
The next morning we got up early and took off to meet a gov't contact that was going to take us around to the area that was hardest hit. The area that we were in is very closed off. Anytime a westerner goes out there he must be accompanied by a gov't guide and they basically are there to 'make sure you do what you say you are going to do and nothing else.' Some of the guys we met up with knew this guy so he offered to take us out. I think our guy that we met up with is in charge of all of the schools in that region and so he told us that he would take us to some schools that were in the areas that were hardest hit and we could give them some supplies. He took us around to about three different schools and in all of the towns there were some homes that were cracked and damaged but there was nothing like the '10,000 homes destroyed' that was advertised. Most all of the homes out in this area are made of mud brick and straw and it is no surprise that some of them would have fallen down. Most every place that we went our gov't guide basically would say, "Look at this area. Look how poor these people are. They survived the earthquake but they still need food and we can make sure and distribute it better than you can." So most of the places we went we would have to leave food because we didn't want the man to lose face and not help us anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about giving poor kids food for the winter and things like that but not when there are people who have nothing because of an earthquake that happened just down the road. We gave most of our food away to the schools, which was fine, but we saved a lot of the water, medical supplies and the things like noodles that could be eaten right away.
So for most of the afternoon we wondered if either: 1. We were getting the governmental runaround and not getting to see the area that was hardest hit (which was very likely), or 2. The media out here had blown things way out of proportion (which was also very likely). So at about 3:30 we took the guy back to his office and we made a call to go out without him and see if we could find some things on our own. We took off to the area that we thought the epicenter was at and we soon saw where all of the damage was. We started getting closer to another village and almost all of the homes had walls that had collapsed and were totally destroyed. I don't know if there were 10,000 houses that were destroyed but almost all of them in this small village were gone. The military had established a camp out there where they were organizing relief work and we went in and met with all of the officials there. They were very welcoming of us and I'm sure they did a good job distributing all of the supplies that we brought. We wanted to go out to some of the more remote villages that were hit because we had three trucks with us, but they wouldn't let us go out there; however they did allow us to take a tour of the village that we were in. We had a chance to walk around and talk to a few people and it was heartbreaking to see people who had lost everything. We had an opportunity to go and talk to a few people and they wanted us to take pictures and they all told us about what they had lost. We also had an opportunity to meet with some of the high up gov't officials in that area and make some new contacts out there. Hopefully this area will open up more in the future. People are still trying to figure out a game plan for helping the people who are living in this area.
So after all of that we took off and headed back home. I think we got home at around 2:30am and then were up and running again the next morning. It made for a long weekend but it was really good. This week there has been some visitors come from the states so I have been busy trying to get them set up and taking them around town. My roommate also got here on Monday night and we've been doing some things together. I was supposed to take him out to a village for his first week but we are putting that off until the beginning of next week. I'm sure that will be an 'interesting' experience for him.
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