Nepal earthquakes: the London restaurants key to the relief effort

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/pasa-puchah-guthi-nepal-earthquakes-relief-london

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It is a melancholy thought that one does not often discover where an expat community mainly lives until there is a disaster in the original country. London’s Little Nepal is Plumstead, in the south-east of the capital, but Ojesh Singh, 34, Tribeni Gurung, 24, and Sachetan Tuladhar, 48, who are part of the earthquake relief group Pasa Puchah Guthi, meet in the Nepalese Tandoori restaurant on Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

Related: How can we ensure every penny of aid is accounted for in Nepal?

“We chose restaurants for our collection points because they often have storage areas and are open in the evenings,” Singh explains. He is an engineer in Slough for his day job, and approaches problems logistically, though not at all coldly. The first earthquake hit Kathmandu on 25 April, killing 9,000 people and injuring another 19,000.

“The first thing I felt, straight away,” Singh says, “was that I am so helpless. I can’t do anything. It was so painful. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.” They still cannot really eat, any of them; delicious little momos, Nepalese dumplings, go cold on the table until I eat them. None of them are sleeping much, either, but they have found a focus that makes it possible to function, by collecting practical things – clothes, medicine, blankets, tents, corrugated sheeting, things that people need – and having them delivered to a network of restaurants across London. The effort is nationwide and they are expecting a huge consignment soon from Sheffield.

Tuladhar is a research scientist in the physics department at Imperial College London, and has a gift for seeing things in the best possible light. “We were lucky that it hit on Saturday, because not everybody was in an office, the schools were closed. We were lucky that it didn’t happen at night, when everyone would have been inside. It’s amazing how good the communications are. Facebook always works. We can find out exactly what people need,” he says. Indeed, they show me a Facebook group, constantly updating, where 31 pregnant women in need of food can be brought to the attention of the Nepalese diaspora in Nebraska where, Tuladhar explains, “they accumulated a lot of money and didn’t know where to send it”. It isn’t always so neat. The appeal for clothes, for instance, as Singh explains: “People think whatever they have should be given. That’s not necessarily what we need. A warm coat is what you need when you have no home, not a dress.”

The mood at Nepalese Tandoori is very much like that at a wake – they are warm and ready to laugh, not in a forced way, but with that amazing human adaptability to crisis, where the sadness just waits. “We’re Newar,” Singh says, “the ethnic group from the Kathmandu valley.” Tuladhar cuts in: “The two temples which have been reduced to rubble, we used to play there.” Singh continues: “The human loss is always there, but at the same time, we feel like part of us has been lost. It’s like losing your identity, losing your childhood.”

Gurung, who works in social policy for a charity, is quiet: she grew up in the UK, not Nepal, but has a large extended family there and is constantly preoccupied. She says: “Even when I’m at work, I’m thinking about the earthquake. All I do is check who’s ok.”

The second earthquake, which hit on Tuesday and was felt as far apart as New Dehli and Dhaka, has been a dreadful blow to the clearup operation. Singh says: “There are so many young people who are instrumental in distributing relief, and their confidence is so low.” He was planning to go out with his wife, a psychiatrist, and their three-year-old son to see her parents; everyone is telling them now that the situation has no place for children.

“We’re a burden to our families there, because they’re all living in one room, sharing basic things,” Gurung says. “They can’t say come, they can’t say don’t come. On both sides, we’re all in limbo.” However, Singh interjects, “I feel like a soldier. You can say it will be hard, but if soldiers, if policemen didn’t do what they do …” he trails off. “Sometimes emotional people are not so helpful,” Tuladhar says with a tactless smile, and everybody laughs.

Related: Nepal's quake-shattered villages: 'there’s nothing to stay for now'

The creaking government of Nepal has come in for criticism since the earthquakes; it has not been able to raise £400,000 for the relief effort. “I personally have raised £2,000,” Tuladhar says, in frustration. The government began by appropriating money intended for the earthquake victims, which has not necessarily been its most direct route to the people who need it. “At the same time,” Singh says, “all these big organisations, DEC, the Red Cross, they’re talking about the £49m they’ve raised, but we can’t see it. We understand that they are planning for the long term, but if you don’t save people now, there is no long term. For the father carrying a baby, what does he need, right now? A blanket. That is what our organisation has been good at. But however much we do, we can’t do it forever. Government has to get involved.”