Uttarakhand Relief Work Moved up to Rudraprayag from Srinagar. The road to Rudraprayag is full of slush for many kilometers on end – the whole mountainside just slided down into the river carrying everything along with it. It’s the interiors of the mountains that need real help – the places where the spotlights of the […]
Uttarakhand Relief Work We decided to walk to nearby villages and see the situation firsthand as we felt we should receive before setting up a camp. We made the mistake of taking the locals literally about how far the next spot was…. Close by meant hours, and a couple of kilometres meant 10 or more […]
Uttarakhand Relief Work 29 Jun 2013, Uttarakhand People from many parts of India and the World had been asking….. When are you going to Uttarakhand? Devotees knew that is there was a need Amma would respond. And Amma did respond and at the perfect time. It is only now that the roads have opened up […]
7 April 2011 It was the night of the seventh of April, and I had just fallen asleep in our tent. We were camping along with hundreds of other volunteers on the lawn of a local university, which had been transformed into the headquarters for the relief efforts in Ishinomaki. Half an hour before […]
6 April 2011 On the third day, we were asked to aid Otschi-Cho, in the prefecture of Iwate. An IVUSA staff member who is very experienced in disaster relief joined me and two other students. Just like Minami-Sanriku, Otsuchi-Cho seemed to have vanished. When we arrived at Otsuchi-Cho Town Assembly Hall, there were many volunteers […]
5 April, 2011 On the second day, the IVUSA representative, a staff member, two students and I paid a visit to a town called Minami-Sanriku. There, we picked up various required supplies, like soap, shampoo and toothbrushes. We also took 20 cases of vegetable juice and cough drops, as many of the volunteers had developed […]
On the fourth of April, we had returned to Ishinomaki. There were 51 volunteers this time—28 IVUSA (International Volunteer Student Association) members and 20 students from Kokushikan University Sports Medicine Department. After we arrived, we set up a large tent to use as our head office and one for cooking. Next to them, we set […]
I spent most of Friday, April 15th, in collecting all the needed items for the disaster relief work. We bought food, work gloves, and masks to protect against infection and potential radiation. We also had to buy a cheap tent and took a few thin sleeping bags from the Tokyo ashram, as that was all […]
Day Four: 31 March 2011 Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture The final day. Again we split up into two teams: clean-up and cooking. Outside its windy, raining and so cold. The cooking team sets up our kitchen tent in front of the supermarket near the residential area where many people stay in the upstairs level of houses. […]