After returning from our trip to Thailand I anticipated that we would have some things to catch up on but I had no idea we would be in overdrive. We leave on Monday for five days for the training of trainers to help improve labor and delivery, called Helping Babies Breath/Helping Mothers Survive. This is the same training that we went to back in May when we first arrived in Nepal. There was much to do in preparation.
We are working on a new proposal to provide equipment to a clinic in an underdeveloped area, Dakshinkali, that has a newly built clinic in which they provide low and no cost care to the village people. They also bring in volunteer specialists periodically and run health camps. It is an impressive organization and we are hopeful for this project to be approved. Everyone deserves basic healthcare and early diagnosis of health problems.
On Wednesday we received an email notifying us of a meeting of International NGO’s and some government officials regarding aid for the victims of the earthquake on November 3rd. Upon arrival at the location of the meeting we learned, after talking to several people and several trips up and down the stairs, that the meeting had been moved across town. The traffic was congested and it took us about half an hour to get to the Ministry of Women and Children. It is a restricted area and fortunately they accepted a soft copy of our passports as we had not anticipated needing them. We were quite late and there were only a few seats left among the 69 people who were in attendance. We had planned for our driver to accompany us but there was no parking and so we sat through an hour and ten minutes of people speaking in Nepali. I was able to understand a little as they threw in a few English words here and there. I recorded the meeting on my phone and Manoj translated some if it for us when we got home. The short story is that the people are still without shelter and as it is getting colder they are in great need of warm clothes, blankets, tarps and tents. The powers that be are trying to coordinate efforts so that the needed supplies reach the right people and so that efforts are not duplicated. We are working toward providing blankets but need a formal request from the government to initiate the project. We hope to get this going before we leave on Monday.
There were multiple other little inconveniences and problems that I won’t go into but they contributed to the feelings of discouragement and inadequacy we were experiencing. It is hard to understand how we can come from our week of uplifting, encouraging, motivating experiences in Bangkok and be thrown into the chaos of life in Nepal with the challenges and intricacies of humanitarian work and feel so low. There has been a lot of waiting on answers to questions and on people to respond with needed information this week. At least we had so much to do that we were busy while we waited and we could see that the adversary was working hard to thwart us.
On a brighter note, we got the Christmas decorations out of the closet and put up a little tree and a few other decorations to help us remember that it is the Christmas season and there is always hope and joy as we look to our Savior.
As a second bright note we walked in neighborhoods this week that were recently painted for Tihar.
And to close, there were many bright and beautiful orchids in Bangkok.
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