We Help at Last!

After Nepal’s April and May earthquakes, I longed to help our pre-novices and scholastics get out for relief and reconstruction work.  However college classes and exams pinned us down.  Finally in January I was able to break away with five young men to get to Tipling to help build the Jesuit residence there. The Church at Majet. Fr.Norbert and Deepak.

We were off the day after their last term examination, finding our way across town on early local buses, to pack into a Toyota van for a three hour race to Dhading Besi, the headquarters of Dhading District.  I was happy to unwind and clean up a little before we boarded a pickup for another of five hours of torture, climbing through hills on a rough and dusty track.  Clothes and skin became evenly tanned.  After that ordeal, sleep was easy in a ramshackle lodge at the road head shantytown.  Hot food and a conversation with a dozen French agricultural engineering students helped.  They had given up their Christmas holidays to help in a village. 

Children at Mass.        As day dawned we were off on foot for an eleven hour day, climbing rocky trails paved with more dust.    Mule trains competed with us for trail space, and always won.  Dusk brought us to the top of the last grueling climb at Tipling, perched on a ridge about 2,100 m above sea level.  Our two Tipling heros, Fathers Anil Beck and Norbert D’Souza, welcomed us to their once cozy residence. One wall of that rented house is gone, but the attached kitchen still serves as a warm haven.  Their living space is a drafty hut of plastic and bamboo.  The residence chapel is gone, so daily 7:00 P.M. Mass is on the stone patio, with plastic foam mats over the stones and a roof of plastic sheets – the hardy parishioners seem content with this! 

Norbert and three of us stayed farther up the hill on the Jesuit residence construction site, in a large and very comfortable tent.  Three of the youngsters are from the village so could stay at home.  Again, sleep was not a problem, though Norbert was restless, worried about possible snow during the night – perhaps too much for our tent!Finished kitchen walls await a roof.

After an early rice meal at the residence we started work, helping Norbert and his crew complete the new kitchen-dining cottage walls, and building a retaining wall.  Houses there are generally built of piled rock with no mortar.  The wooden roof beams sit on these loose walls, the roofs covered with heavy slate – no match for an earthquake worth its salt!  But there is nothing else to build with.  Our engineer guide suggested using earth-filled bags for walls, with wooden roof trusses and corrugated iron roofing sheets.  Carrying construction material on mule-back up that hill is out of the question.  Five days of labour saw us complete the kitchen walls and a retaining wall.  Day six was free.  Norbert had organized a picnic for the parish youngsters, so the five pre-novices joined.  I slept for the day!

I was able to visit families in the evenings, and walk to adjoining villages where the people have built chapels.  These long-suffering farmers have strong faith and don’t mind hardship.  They herd cattle, now housed on the village fields.  In warmer weather the cattle and herders move up the mountain to heights of over 3,000 m. Life in simple huts is not a problem for them. 

Lakhnu at dusk.                 Our six village days completed, we retraced our steps.  It was a holiday, so the mules were not on the trail.  After another night at the road head, we made our way back to Kathmandu, and welcome hot water baths.    

What will the future bring?  Eventually that jeep track will reach the village.  Now some villagers have moved to Kathmandu where we continue pastoral ministry for them.  Others go to Malaysia and the Middle East for temporary work.  We hope that we can continue to serve students in the local high school, provide some health support, and above all help these rough and sometimes violent people learn to live together enjoying Jesus’ commandment to love.  Would that we could replicate this ministry in other villages!  We leave that step in God’s hands for now. 

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Photos courtesy of Bill Robins, SJ

Bill Robins, SJ, is a Canadian Jesuit who lived at Godavari, our original school at the south-east edge of the Kathmandu Valley. He lived in a community of six Jesuits and taught 11 and 12 English until his return to Canada in 2021.

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