Nepal will need your help tomorrow as well as today

As Nepal's devastating earthquakes fade from the news headlines, John Henzell writes that that is when the country will really need the help of its supporters in the UAE.

A Nepalese earthquake survivor salvages his belongings from damaged houses in Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu. (Harish Tyagi / EPA)

Even with the latest earthquake bringing fresh devastation to Nepal, the relentless news cycle makes it inevitable that the country’s plight will drop out of the headlines sooner rather than later. Dozens of other news stories will displace the disaster that hit a country already afflicted by the twin blights of poverty and corruption.

It’s little wonder that Nepal’s plight resonated so strongly in the UAE. Kathmandu is only a short flight away and many of those living in this country are repeat visitors, having discovered the infectious enthusiasm for life exhibited by nearly all Nepalis is even more attractive than the soaring peaks for which it is famous.

I felt it more than most. I’ve been going to Nepal on mountaineering expeditions and trekking trips since the 1980s and had friends climbing Everest when the quake hit. As someone from Christchurch, the New Zealand city still recovering from the devastating effects of more than 13,000 earthquakes in the last five years, I knew full well what a long haul Nepal had ahead of it.

My original plan had just been to make a donation, hoping to find a group already in the country that could have an immediate impact on the ground in remote villages while the large global charities were winding into action. Just as important was to do so without the money ending up in the pockets of some corrupt official in Nepal.

The solution came from the close connections between the outdoors community here and its counterpart in Nepal. A British couple who run a rafting company in central Nepal had local knowledge, access to 4x4s and workers, and were based close to remote villages where 95 per cent of the homes had been destroyed but which had so far failed to get any help from Kathmandu.

The best part was the personal connection, with one colleague having literally put his life in the hands of the business owner when they kayaked the rivers of Nepal. Every dirham donated would go where it should.

It quickly became apparent that many of my colleagues were also wrestling with the same dilemma about how to help a grass roots organisation and without feeding Nepal’s pervasive corruption. So instead of simply making a donation, a few of us paid for a meal at a Nepalese restaurant in Abu Dhabi and asked the couple of dozen people who attended to donate to the rafting company.

This was charity through momos, the dumplings familiar to anyone who has travelled in Nepal. As it happened, the Nepal Palace Restaurant was also donating all its proceeds for the first week after the quake, so our meal helped twice.

Thanks to the generosity of those who attended (and some substantial pledges from those who couldn’t make it), just under Dh10,000 was transferred to the rafting company in Nepal. To put that into the context of Nepal prices, this is a dozen times the cost of my five-week climbing expedition in the Solu Khumbu a quarter of a century ago.

Within days, supplies like tarps and food were being delivered to remote villages that had not received any contact from the outside world since the April 25 quake. It was only days later that NGOs began to arrive.

But we also knew at the time that tapping into people’s generosity when the earthquake is dominating the news was the easy bit. As the case of Christchurch showed, the real grind of recovery happens long after the news crews have moved on to the next story.

That’s when Nepal will really need its supporters in the UAE and across the globe. The message that emerged on how to help came independently from at least half a dozen of my friends: let’s all vow to visit Nepal in the post-monsoon season so that the tourist industry already blighted by the quakes won’t be hit twice by international visitors staying away.

Treks in areas that escaped the worst devastation will allow money to once again flow through into the economy for those with the enterprise and willingness to work. The flood of donations that followed the original earthquake is one thing, but it is this continued support that will help Nepal truly recover from this.