Hong Kong helps Nepal: quake-damaged schools wait to rebuild
'When my family’s house was destroyed, I was sad. But what was even worse was when I saw that our school had been reduced to a pile of bricks,' headmaster tells Room to Read education charity's founder John Wood, as reality of recent Nepal earthquakes' impact hits home
The 62-year-old headmaster of the Shree Mandehunga Primary School was not the only one with tears in his eyes as he told our Room to Read delegation about the day the earthquake struck his village.
Charhare is a small farming settlement in the rural district of Nuwakot. On a normal day, it would be quite picturesque, with verdant hills above it and a cooling breeze blowing off the swift-flowing river below. But since Charghare is only 80 kilometres from the epicentre of the first of the earthquakes that struck Nepal this year , on April 25, today it looks anything but normal.
Four classrooms have crumbled to the ground. Four others are still standing, though major cracks in the load-bearing walls make them too dangerous for students to use. The only building still in use is the free-standing library building that Room to Read had constructed in 2013. Our local team proudly showed me the “Green Seal” government inspectors had placed on the outside wall as a sign that the building is safe for use.
The contrast between our approach (skilled engineers, high-quality construction materials, earthquake-resistant design and construction techniques) and the construction method that had been employed when building the other classrooms could not have been more stark. From the very beginning, our team designed Room to Read buildings to be ready for seismic shocks. And for the third time that day, we were visiting a community where the buildings Room to Read had constructed were not only still standing, but being used as temporary classrooms (as well as the centre for literacy and library activities).
The headmaster was clearly my kind of guy – what I call a GSD (Get S**t Done) leader. He expressed frustration that “many NGOs and government leaders visit us, but nothing ends up happening. If we had one classroom for every official delegation, our school would be 80 rooms by now.” Most of the parents and teachers laughed in sad confirmation.