Randy Baker hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep since April 25, but as he’s discovered, that’s what happens when there’s an earthquake in Nepal and you run a nonprofit organization.
The Longmont resident is co-founder of Health & Ed 4 Nepal, an NGO formed in 2009 to help the people of Kumari, a remote mountain community in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal, which is closer to the epicenter of April’s massive quake than the nation’s capital of Kathmandu. The people of Kumari are of the Tamang Tribe, which, despite being an ancient tribe thought to be the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, is considered the lowest social status in the country. As such, the Kumari people often receive little to no aid from the Nepali government.
Baker and fellow Longmont resident and friend Bob Nielson developed Health & Ed 4 Nepal after meeting a Kumari native named Jagat Lama who led the Coloradans on a group trek through Nepal in April 2006. Lama told the trekkers that his father died from internal injuries after a fall in the hills of Kumari because a medical facility was too far away — a nine hour walk. According to Lama’s story, his father’s final wish was that his son would help the Kumari people get better medical care and education.
“He later told us that he’d told that story to hundreds and hundreds of people while trekking, but my friend Bob [Nielson] and I listened and things started to happen,” Baker says.
While the journey to make Health & Ed 4 Nepal a reality has not been without its difficulties, the group set out to make Lama’s dream — and his father’s final wish — a reality. They set up a five year plan to bring the people of Kumari a medical clinic with trained staff, and to improve school facilities and educational opportunities — all of which they have accomplished. In addition, Health & Ed 4 Nepal helped bring electricity to the community for the first time, created a clean water system for the clinic and school and facilitated the construction of the first drivable road into the community.
The group had plans to start a micro credit program this summer that would help the Sukman Memorial Polyclinic, which opened in Kumari in March 2013, become a self-sustaining facility.
But then the earthquake hit.
Baker admits they never planned to provide disaster relief as an organization.
“The earth shook and then there was work. So you’re in it, right?” Baker says. “We had done most of our [previous] work through a sister organization in Kumari called Health and Education for Nepal. [If you’re] in America, you can’t go out and pound nails, you can’t go drive people [medical supplies]. Basically, what you can do is raise funds and we work through their organization [in Nepal]. The people of that organization, last Saturday night they are standing in the street. It’s raining on them. They have no food. Their homes have been destroyed. We can have the point of view all we went that we are going to rebuild, and we’ll save our money now and then use it later to rebuild, but if your friend and brother are standing there wet and hungry, you gotta do something right now. So it moved our hearts.”
For the time being, the organization has shifted its focus to help the Kumari community get through the nation’s most devastating disaster in nearly a century.
Just days after the earthquake, Baker says they were able to wire $25,000 to the village for Jagat Lama to purchase food, medicine, tents and blankets. However, in national disaster situations such as the one Nepal is experiencing, banking operations can become sluggish or shut down completely. Baker was unable to confirm whether Lama had been able to access this money by press time.
On Friday, May 2, a threeperson medical team from the U.S. set out for Kumari. Once they arrived in Kathmandu (where the country’s only international airport is located), they loaded a truck with medical supplies, water purifiers, solar equipment, tents, blankets and food purchased in Delhi, India. The folks at Health & Ed 4 Nepal called it “Operation Hope,” because it was the first aid to arrive in Kumari since the quake.
Baker says it’s situations like these that keep him awake at night.
“I’ve been concerned all day to hear if the truck caravan made it from Kathmandu to Kumari,” Baker says while on the phone with Boulder Weekly. “They’re targets. If you could drive [a truck full of food] through three communities with no food … that’s a dangerous situation.”
Later that day Baker received confirmation that the supply truck reached Kumari. Now safely in their destination, the medical team will begin to assess the damage done to the clinic and report back to Baker about the situation.
Another part of Health & Ed 4 Nepal’s realigned focus involves the work of University of Northern Colorado student Megan Cain. Cain, who is working toward her master’s degree in public health, spent last summer in Nepal working with sexually exploited women and children. While she hasn’t been to Kumari yet, Cain says many of the women and girls she worked with came from the district Kumari is located in and as such, she has been in communication with the village for the better part of a year, developing a preventative program to help keep women out of the sex industry — but the earthquake changed her course.
“The post-disaster setting is completely different than what I was looking at doing with women’s health education, that kind of long-term development stuff, whereas their needs now are incredibly urgent,” Cain says. “They’ve had an issue with exposure —100 percent of the buildings are damaged and the clinic is very, very damaged. A lot of it is to do with shelter, food and access to clean water, and I’m sure injuries are popping up. So before we can really do any of the long-term health education, we need to address the basic living conditions in the Kumari.”
Cain will fly to Delhi, India on May 13, where she will spend a few days checking out supplies that she can take into Kathmandu on May 21. When she finally arrives in Kumari, she, much like the medical team before her, will make a “needs assessment.”
“[Health & Ed 4 Nepal has] collected a lot of funds, but because resources are limited we need to know what is most urgent and what is the priority,” Cain says. “So this assessment is a way to see where those funds need to go to make them the most effective.”
Cain will spend two months in Kumari.
Baker says that help has come from the most unexpected places — from out-of-state medical professionals to donors from outside the U.S. to local architects who specialize in disaster relief.
“It’s tragic, yet what I’ve experienced is the outpouring of help. People who have stopped me and handed me money…” Baker says, audibly emotional at the thought. “I can’t say thank you enough — it feels insufficient to say thank you so I say, ‘You’re in pretty good company.’”
Donations support the clinic staff so they can continue to provide healthcare, and to set up funds for long-term relief for the Kumari people and for the clinic.
“Our philosophy has been [that] we’re going to marshal all the support now when this is in everybody’s mind and hearts and we’re gonna take that and go back in six months and rebuild people’s homes. We’re gonna go back, and we’re gonna be there a year from now, and we’re gonna rebuild the clinic. We’re gonna be there whether it’s six months from now or six years from now. When people have forgotten everything from the earthquake, we won’t.”
Visit www.healthanded4nepal.org to read more about the foundation and to donate to their disaster relief efforts.
