There and Back Again

June 20 marked the end of our unanticipated stateside sabbatical and the beginning of the next, though fairly familiar, step of our Peace Corps service. As we had done twenty-one months previous, we packed our bags, said our goodbyes, and boarded a series of planes that would eventually deliver us to Nepal. As we passed through the clouds, down the airplane stairs, and into the absurdly inadequate Kathmandu International Airport, tipsy from the free booze and attentive service of Thai Airways, the familiar jitters returned. We were back.

We stayed at a fine resort, which sported a fitness center, ping-pong table, and even a giant chessboard. Also monkeys.

After a relaxing afternoon by the pool, we were kept busy for the next three days with housing presentations, policy explanations, programming discussions, and committee meetings. It was the first time in at least a decade that three groups of Nepal volunteers had been together, and it was interesting to observe the prevailing differences in attitude, ideas, and energy amongst the groups: those of us with twenty-plus months of experience seemed more pragmatic, resolved, and jaded; the freshest, two-month old trainees were eager, inspired, and occasionally naïve; and those nine months into their service tended to fall somewhere in between. I just hope that our group’s pessimism didn’t quash the others’ energy.

On our fourth day, Peace Corps arranged for a post-quake visit to our training communities. Our country director and his wife traveled with nine of my group to Sindhupalchok, the district most affected by the earthquake. I was extremely keen to reunite with my host family, who had lost their home and seemed to be struggling. I’d called them the day before and asked what I might bring them. After a lot of prodding, my host mother finally conceded, “Sugar, we’re out of sugar. And maybe some oil.” I had seen pictures, read stories, and heard accounts of the devastation, but to see my community with my own eyes was another thing entirely.

The damage worsened as we traveled further from Kathmandu. On the city’s outskirts, the chimney of every brick factory was broken. We passed over narrow stretches of road where landslides had been cleared, through the shells of former bazaars, and past hundreds of tents and temporary housing.

Some three and half hours later, we arrived at the entrance of Chautara. There, the police informed us that the bus couldn’t enter the bazaar. We would have to disembark at the outlying bus park, about an hour and a half’s walk from my village of Mahjgaun.

The path from the bus park was in places obstructed by debris. A thick layer of dust coated the paved road leading through town. Swaths of the bazaar were gone. In some cases, the building foundations and supports had evidently toppled; in others, the land beneath had simply given way. Most of the surviving storefronts were closed.

The bazaar was alive—not with the bustle of everyday life, but with the work of recovery. Teams of people were removing rubble from the wreckage and conveying it away. Where once there were no foreigners, now many walked about wearing t-shirts with the names of various organizations. The armed police, out in greater force than usual, patrolled the disaster zone.

Short on time, another volunteer and I hurried down the hill to our village. Where the line of teashops and general stores had been, now nothing stood. I nearly walked past the house that had once been my classroom, so unrecognizable was the scene.

Those I met greeted me with weary smiles and mixed emotions. Our conversations were short. “You came back,” and then “Everything’s gone.” I was sorry, sad, uncomfortable, and especially late. Apologetically, I moved on down the hill. I was no longer so sure about how this was going to go.

As I approached my home, I found my host father squatting in the shade. I bowed my head into his hands in respectful familial greeting. “You’re late,” he said aloofly, still squatting and looking into the distance. “Come, your mother is waiting.”

We made our way down, past the ruins of their house, to a row of low tin-roofed wooden shacks and a couple of white canvas tents. My host mother, after greeting me with the embrace of someone unaccustomed to physical salutations, gestured me into their hovel of a home.

Once inside, I presented the gifts I’d brought: the requested oil and sugar, along with some fruit and vegetables, peanuts, cashews, spices, mosquito coils, liquid soap, water sterilization drops, and an inflatable, water-proof solar lantern that a friend had gotten donated. “Why did you go to so much trouble?” my host mom lamented. “This must have been so heavy.” Then they sat me down for a meal of daal bhaat (with not one but three eggs. No one ever eats that many eggs here).

As I ate, we caught up on life. We recounted where we’d been when the earthquake happened, and what it’d been like. My host mother, it turns out, had been inside the house during the earthquake. Most of the room had collapsed around her, but my host father, who had been sitting just up the road, had been able to remove enough rubble to pull her out.

It also so happens that, although my host mother reported that all our livestock had perished, our goats and buffalo were alive and well (interestingly, several other volunteers had received similar misinformation from their host families). My family’s fields had not been damaged, and they were in the process of planting their rice paddies. A Canadian organization had given them two large, sturdy tents, and my host father had scrounged up enough wood to build the shack in which we now sat. They felt prepared, they said, to face the incessant monsoon rains.

They thanked me for the note and money I had sent via a neighbor prior to our evacuation. From a corner of the house, my host mother brought forth the photo album that the year’s previous volunteer had assembled for them, as well as the one I had given when I had moved out. She flipped through the pages, smiling and recounting the events that each photo showed.

The hour we spent together was joyous and too quickly past. Despite their shortage of food and my insistent refusal, my host mom still managed to send me off with a bag of roasted corn, fried dough, dried coconut, and some other treats. As ever, she worried that I wouldn’t get enough to eat. On my way out, we stopped for a moment at the former site of their home, where I lived for three months. Now, the only standing structure was the door to the latrine.

Back on the bus, we shared our joys and concerns from our respective visits. Although many felt some initial trepidation, everyone was happy that they had decided to come. We had seen the gravity of our families’ hardships, but it seemed to have been cathartic for all of us, both families and volunteers, to have spent some time together.