Nepal
Immediately after the severe earthquake in Nepal in 2015, we provided emergency aid in the remote mountain village of Judeegaun. Cap Anamur provided the earthquake victims with medical care and distributed relief supplies.
The earthquake destroys an entire region
In April, thousands of Nepalese lost everything within a few minutes: their homes, their belongings or, even worse, relatives and friends. Around 8,800 people did not survive the severe earthquake. And even seven months later, a large part of the desperately poor population still lacks a solid roof over their heads. The Cap Anamur emergency aid team arrived in the Himalayan state just four days after the quake: While our nurses cared for the sick and injured in the remote mountain village of Judeegaun in an ambulance they had set up themselves, our crisis-experienced logistician Jürgen Maul brought in the first relief supplies and food.
Cap Anamur provides reconstruction aid
“Help with reconstruction – that’s what people need most urgently after the acute phase. Because more than 95 percent of the houses in Judeegaun were in ruins,” reports Maul, who has been involved with Cap Anamur for eight years. “But before we could start rebuilding the school, we had to clear the road up to the mountain village of rubble and repair the potholes so that we could bring in the numerous lorry loads of stones, cement and steel. The logistics were already a major challenge, but the monsoon rain made it even more difficult.”
A new school for Judeegaun
But our 22-strong local construction team was not discouraged by this: The 300 or so children in the village were to have a new, earthquake-proof school as soon as possible. Steel-concrete pillars 15 and 30 centimetres wide, which are built into the wall every three metres and embedded 120 centimetres deep into the ground, provide extra stability. A nice and intended side effect of this project: the construction workers, who also lost their homes in the earthquake, earn the money to rebuild their homes with the help of this work. “The people in Judeegaun were incredibly proud and grateful that we stood by them during this difficult time,” reports nurse Anabela Valentin. “We pitched our tent in the village and had an intense time together. We will certainly remember these people.”