A Nepalese child in the earthquake rubble. (Photo from OLE Nepal’s Indiegogo fundraising page)
Editor’s note: An April 30 letter to the editor from Diana Smith noted that her son Adrian is in Nepal and is collecting PayPal donations for supplies that will be transported to rural villages. On May 3 she noted that readers can also donate via check if they prefer not to use PayPal. Direct contributions to Adrian are not tax-deductible, but 100 percent of the gift goes to help the villagers; there are no administrative fees. Adrian and his friends will be carrying the supplies through the mountains to the villages because the roads are blocked. You can make out a check to Adrian Smith and mail it c/o Diana Smith, P.O. Box 6294, Lincoln, MA 01773. The memo can say “Earthquake Relief.”
By Alice C. Waugh
Only a few months after Rakesh Karmacharya and his family began calling Lincoln home, much of their homeland lies in rubble after the devastating earthquake in Nepal.
Karmacharya and his wife Monica grew up in Nepal but didn’t meet until both were in college in Boston and have lived in the U.S. ever since. After also attending college here, Rakesh’s brother Rabi returned to Nepal to work with rural schools through OLE Nepal (Open Learning Exchange Nepal),which develops educational materials that can be used on the simple One Laptop Per Child computers and trains teachers to integrate technology in classrooms. OLE Nepal is raising funds to help meet the educational and emotional needs of children who have been displaced and traumatized by the April 25 quake via this Indiegogo page.
“With a lot of funds and focus going to immediate relief—which, understandably should be the first priority—we wanted put our efforts in the rehabilitation and rebuilding efforts. We are planning to provide education and counseling to children while they wait for their schools and homes to be reconstructed,” Rabi wrote in an email to friends and family.
Rakesh and Monica’s extended family in Nepal is safe, though her sister’s house has significant cracks, Rakesh reported. Rabi was visiting a remote school and was on his way home to the Kathmandu Valley when the earthquake struck. The airport was closed and the only road leading out of the valley was blocked by landslides, so it took him several days to get back. While most of the initial damage reports have come from Kathmandu, Rabi said the devastation is going to be much greater in the remote villages, where most of the houses are made of mud and are much less sturdy, according to Rakesh.
Three of the town centers in the Kathmandu Valley have elegant durbar squares (palace squares) with many temples and stupas (mound-like or hemispherical structures containing Buddhist relics) that are centuries old, Rakesh noted. “Even though the monuments and temples are very old, they are very ‘lived in’ spaces. As children, we used to run up and down the temples, ride on the different animal statues in front of the temples, while farmers would be selling vegetables in the durbar square. Many of these temples in the durbar squares are now in rubble after the earthquake.” Monica grew up in the heart of Kathmandu right next to the Dharahara Tower built in the early 1800s, which was also destroyed in the earthquake, he added.