After seven Nepali women got to the top of Mt Everest in 2008 and finished climbing the seven highest peaks in seven continents last year, they thought they had run out of challenges.
But when Nepal was hit by an earthquake on 25 April, The Seven Summits Women Team immediately put their knowledge of mountains and experience in managing logistics in remote areas to good use for relief and rehabilitation work.
The WFP's Richard Ragan and member of the Seven Summits Women's Team, Chunu Shrestha, at the Remote Operations Base warehouse in Charikot on Saturday. Photo: Kunda Dixit
Asha Kumari Singh is from Mahottari district in the plains, but knows Rasuwa district intimately ever since she spent two months here in 2007 for a mountaineering training course on Langtang Glacier. So, when the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) asked if she would like to be a field officer in Rasuwa for relief distribution, she readily agreed.
“I may be from the Tarai, but I am at home here and have many friends,” Singh said just after returning from delivering food and roofing sheets to the devastated village of Gatlang on Monday. “But my parents are more worried about my safety now, than when I was climbing Mt Everest,” she laughed.
Another mountaineer from the team, Chunu Shrestha, is based at WFP’s Remote Operations Base in Charikot where she helps assess the need in remote villages of Sindhupalchok so supplies can be dispatched by helicopter, road, or porter.
“It’s not just about loading a helicopter and sending it off,” Shrestha told us in Charikot on Saturday, “you have to know the specific need in every village. Some villagers are disappointed when you bring them sanitation kits, they want food. Others don’t need food, they want tin roofs.”
Other team members Shailee Basnet and Maya Gurung who have been working in Maya’s home village of Bhotenamlang of Sindhupalchok to distribute emergency relief, rehabilitate schools buildings and get classes going again. Another team members, Sushma Maskey is coordinating from the WFP office in Kathmandu.
Mountaineers Pema Diki Sherpa and Nim Doma Sherpa about to go off on another relief delivery mission in their home district of Dolakha last week. Photo: Jana AsenbrennerovaTwo other team members, Pema Diki Sherpa and Nim Doma Sherpa have been assigned to supervise WFP logistics in their home district of Dolakha. The homes of their families in Simigaon has been destroyed, as have the school and monastery. But when we met them last week both were acutely aware that the need was greater in other villages, and they were ready to take emergency supplies to the village of Lapilang.
“Climbing the seven peaks and making Nepal known all over the world gave us a sense of personal fulfillment,” said Pema Diki, “but helping in earthquake relief is a different kind of satisfaction, it is like we are helping soothe our motherland when she is in pain.”
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