On the six-month anniversary of the Nepal earthquakes, Al Alcock, a Canadian Red Cross aid worker from Whitehorse, lists colourful memories of time spent with the disaster relief and recovery team, which continues its efforts there.
Six months after the Nepal earthquakes, I’m thinking of the people I met while working at the
Canadian Red Cross field hospital in the remote village of Dhunche. Here’s what sticks in my mind after four weeks working there.
Canadian Red Cross aid worker Al Alcock, left, and friends in Dhunche, Nepal
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Warm friendships, monsoons, tents flooded by rain, elevation sickness, and landslides thundering down the mountains at night.
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Cool breezes, warm evenings, and a new mother’s awe when a delegate gives her a hand knit baby toque.
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Resupply problems when the highway closes, laughing, crying, fatigue, sleep deprivation. Wonder at the smile of a child who has suffered so much. A vehicle trapped between two landslides, thoughtfulness, people you have never met who say thank you from their heart.
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Cold showers, using a squat toilet and getting used to it, eating fresh eggs, enjoying yak cheese, getting fresh goodies from the local bakery, working long hours, looking forward to your half day off only to see it disappear as another emergency hits and rouses the whole team who eagerly jumps into action.
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Dodging chickens and goats, listening to birds in the morning and the crickets at night, not missing mosquitos because they don’t reside at these altitudes, checking your shoes in the morning for creepy crawlers.
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Climbing 245 stairs from the market area to the hospital, getting up in the morning and looking north to the peaks of the majestic Himalayan mountains.
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Mass casualty training, broken bones, a local bank guard who smiles and greets you as a friend, Papoo the puppy who sleeps outside my tent most nights.
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Calling home, missing family, saying goodbye and then missing my new family, a banquet prepared by the Nepalese Red Cross staff before we depart, supporting one another through the tough times and laughing at silly jokes that only we understand, and most of all... being very fortunate to be part of a humanitarian effort to help alleviate suffering. That is the big prize. And, yes, I would go back.