North Witney Community Church

I am not sure when we last wrote to you all, probably when we arrived back from Mongolia, to say that we and everyone we knew were well. We still are and we are having a very interesting time. Despite the death and destruction there are some amazing things happening.

One of our friends has been visiting an injured child in hospital (a lot of our friends are doing this as the hospitals here are full of casualties). Her mother was missing and it was over a week later that the Mum came into the hospital after having walked for three days after being cut off by landslides etc.

A lady was in hospital with memory loss and being visited by Fibian. She knew the name of her town but not much else but she was reunited with her relatives after being shown on TV.

This is a picture of part of Beichuan city.

Earthquake

Some people who we had just met once on a previous Sunday were in Wenchuan in their apartment at the time – 2.30 pm. The dust from the landslides was so thick that it was completely dark and they thought that the apartment had possibly been buried. It had not. They spent the night in the sports field and every time there was a tremor they could hear the rocks falling in the dark. They taught at a school there and out of 6,000 children in the school only 2 died. But in other places the schools collapsed.

From last Thursday Hazel started working in a local organisation that has been sending out relief supplies and teams to the area. They have been complementing the massive response by the government. There are lots of volunteers, both locals and foreigners living in different parts of China that have come to help. So a little medical project has within a few days geared up to be sending 10 to 20 vehicles and teams and supplies each day! Almost 2 weeks have gone now and the organisational structure is beginning to settle and function better. There must be 20 to 30 people working on planning/stores/logistics/administration/operations most of whom were doing some other job somewhere else in Chengdu or China a week ago. Plus 50 or so volunteers in field teams each day. Team building by immersion!

So Hazel is helping to process the feedback from the field teams so that the next teams can take the right stuff to the right place. I have been getting gradually more involved as the organisation begins to think about addressing the longer-term development needs of the affected areas. Today the KunDe team were asked to take on the responsibility of coordinating this group’s longer-term response.

The affected area is only about 2 hours drive from Chengdu. So there is a large population of volunteers very close. There are teams of local people who are making regular visits to the same village or town, building relationships with them as they provide supplies and listen/counsel. Some of them want to make this a long-term relationship. We are thinking through how we can work through these groups to provide support to communities for re-habilitation; basic health and hygiene, temporary schooling, restoring businesses, training in new skills. Most of the reconstruction we expect the government to take responsibility for.

Is that clear? No, and we are not sure how it will work either! About 500 volunteers have already been given a basic training in counselling and a group will have a training this week on disaster response. I will give a short session in that about moving on from relief to talking with communities about how they will rebuild their community. For those interested there will be more training later. ‘Restoration physically, mentally and spiritually through local volunteers’. The vision is still growing and that sounds a good phrase. Doing this in this way is new for all of us.

My Mongolia work is complete, reports and all. I am expecting to receive a contract to do about 4 weeks of work in India starting next week! I made this commitment before the earthquake. Still waiting to hear the final confirmation. Hazel will stay here.

End of the page. Time to stop.

Love to you all, Keith and Hazel

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