Day 6 & 7: Nepal, Kathmandu Earthquake 2015: South African Rescue Mission

Monday day 6 brought about the effects of been exposed to all sorts of foreign bugs that plague a disaster region and even though we might think that we are superheroes, our stomachs seem to have forgotten that small fact!! Man down severe vomiting and diarrhea hit most of the rescue team. Now not much imagination is needed when I describe the following events. I was sleeping right down the end of the hall so I had quite a run to get to the outside loo. Taking into account these are not the sitting kind of toilets rather the squatting kind it became a balancing act to co-ordinate vomiting into the hole and to ....well poop. In such instances it became increasingly important to have great aim, hold your breath and hope for the best as sphincter controlled failed. Listening to the boys describing their own antics and methods to prevent redecorating the walls, had us all in stitches bearing in mind that we had to limit any forceful movement or face an accident, I will spare you the graphics, lets just say it was a very shitty experience.

Most of us were man down for 24 hours sleeping the entire day and totally unaware of any drama happening around us not even feeling the aftershocks. The rest of the team carried on with their amazing work while we were in a delirious daze.

Thinking we had picked something up from the mountains we looked no further, but we all started a course of antibiotics, bearing in mind that us rescue workers are the worst patients ever!! The next 2 days revealed a different story as some of the medical team too started to drop like flies. We discovered that the "bottled" water were were getting was in fact water from the tap outside the ladies toilets. Eish!!

The team set up a primary health care clinic under a tree on the outskirts of Kathmandu in the surrounding mountainous areas.

Paramedic and Rescue team member Benedict enjoying some special time with this little tot!

the guys had such a special time playing and interacting with all the kiddies in this village

and some time for soccer!!

chores still needed to be done earthquake or no earthquake!

some of the amazing photos taken by our media

Malaka and Benedict outside the hospital spending time with the kiddies

while others were out and about the surgical teams continued to perform complicated surgeries.

Back at our base camp the South African Couple and their Australian friends where being interviewed

The media room and our bedroom!!

The rescued South African couple and their close friends the sisters from Australia. What an amazing group of young people. It was incredible to hear of their harrowing ordeal as they survived the earthquake while out in the open, hiking in the valley.

love this shot below of the media covering the story of the rescued hikers.

On Monday night some of the guys went out on the town!!

The guys had a lot of fun. This was the bunch that was still well however the bug hit within 24 hours on their way back to South Africa!

on Tuesday afternoon I felt better and took the team to go and buy some supplies. I had bought supplies several times so by now had a handle on the currency and prices. the wads of money were held together by a huge staple and we had to use plyers to remove it!!

there are hundred of little shops along the walk ways and we stopped at several to buy supplies

we then stopped off at one of the larger apartment stores

we found these two brothers, the one had broken his arm playing soccer and he spoke fantastic English. He told me about how his brother, mother and granny had escaped the earthquake.

we had come to this veggie market several times and the fruit and veggies were of a really good quality and the prices reasonable

this beautiful little girl really captured my heart

just loved all the bright colours

Then it was back on the road again. We were off to buy some medical supplies

while we were off shopping others were busy at the hospitals

Some of the doctors were leaving with half of the rescue team later that day so lots of loose ends being tied up.

Some of the medical team set up primary health care clinics

back at the base camp many of the guys were busy packing up excited to be on their way home. Some last minute interviews were also taking place.

some random pics

The Rescue Team 1 - such a privilege to have served with them all

after the first group had left I found the Little Angels garden and took my camera along to capture these and even got to photograph a bumble bee!!

after all we had been through it was really great to be able to sit and and take in the beautiful scented flowers, listen and watch the birds and just take some time out of all this craziness, death and destruction and be thankful for all we have back home.

Adventure with a purpose!™

The Team Zodwa Project ™

Photo Credits: Copyright Kim Williams / Adventurekim.com, GOTG, South African press, Team 1 & Team 2
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Warmest