Aid worker: “Still a lot of work to do”
by Kara Waddell
CHENGDU – My morning started around 5 a.m. with a realization that my bed shaking. I reached for a flashlight provided by the hotel just in case… it was a mild aftershock lasting maybe 20 seconds. I stirred, checked mobile messages and e-mails from the night and packed my backpack for the day.
After turning in around midnight last night, I was still answering my mobile under my pillow. The Director of Children’s Hope International (CHI) and a representative from the China Social Work Association called. OB China had secured a donation of infant formula valued at nearly $200,000 USD and they were going into Dujiangyan to deliver some of it to a facility housing mothers and children.
Tomorrow morning we will most likely join the China Red Cross and CHI to focus distribution of our relief efforts on infants and young children and assess their needs.
We’re also networking to find the foster homes (similar to a privately-run orphanage) as well as government-run orphanages to check on the children’s status. I heard last night that rescuers had reached an orphanage in Wenchuan where there were 36 children, 20 of whom are under 2 years old. They say that 75 percent of people in this area have lost their lives, and we have not yet heard about the status of the children at the orphanage.
They estimate death totals are at 50,000 now. The figure took my breath away after a long day of organizing relief and supplies.
Everyday people are doing extraordinary things here in response to the crisis. Having lived in China for many years, relationships matter. For those you know, you do everything you can to help your friends and they do the same for you. But generally, you don’t go the extra mile for a stranger.
This is not what is happening now in China. The scale of the disaster has seemed to tap into everyone’s heart. Strangers are helping strangers. Everyone is going the extra mile. One man interrupted my TV interview to give me a bowl of hot noodles because he thought I looked tired.
Thousands of Chengdu citizens are buying water, supplies, food and blankets, and stockpiling them at huge drop off areas for the Red Cross to deliver. It’s something I’ve never seen before in China and it has brought tears to my eyes several times today.
50,000 lives gone, 3.5 million homes destroyed… there is a lot of work to do…
Entries (RSS)
May 17th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Kara, I am so moved by your work and the things you are going through there.
We here in San Jose, Ca. can only watch tv news and the online news to try to
keep up. How did you come to be there? Are you a missionery or work for
operation blessing? Keep getting your sleep when you can and know that there
are people here praying for the Chinese people as well as the aid workers
like you. May the Lord keep you safe and strong enough to handle this crisis.
Betty Dickey
May 17th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I am praying for you.
Job 23:10 God says “Everything that happens to you matters to Me.” I pay attention to you.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I have never seen such mobilization of the Chinese Government. The Prime Minister has announced TIME=Lives and everybody is pitching in. The first few hours, Chinese Paratroopers were in the area. Now they expect 150,000 Chinese troops and the world is coming to help. The school where I teach and all the schools in China are taking up donations. . This is a very Nationalistic country. This is the anthithesis of Burma. Guangxi, where I live, was spared