Part 4 of our May, 2015 Loma Linda University Health Orthopedic Team visit to Nepal. On Saturday evening we had the opportunity to take a walk through Bhaktapur, a town just a few miles from our home base in Banepa. Up until the earthquake 2 weeks ago, Bhaktapur had the best preserved palace courtyards and old city center in Nepal, and is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO for its rich culture, temples, and wood, metal and stone artworks. As pictured in the banner image above, much of the damage can be attributed to the fact that most of the older structures were made of mud bricks without reinforcement.
On more than one occasion we witnessed large groups of people gathered to try and topple precarious buildings teetering on the brink of total collapse. The strategy was to tie a heavy rope to the top of an endangered structure then elicit members of the audience (including our own Dr Guillen with the green backpack on the left) to help pull it down.
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How deeply moving (and impressive) to see and read about the bravery and resourcefulness of the Nepalese in their attempts to pull down the precarious and dangerous structures. Looking at the disaster, with no heavy equipment in sight and probably not on it’s way for a very long time, it looks utterly hopeless….and then you write about and show us photos of what they ARE doing…tying ropes around buildings, the ultimate tug-of-war. That shows us the Nepalese people will, like Haitians, rebuild their communities one brick at a time. I hope the world will continue to care and help them.