Relief Goods Arrive in Palate Village
We provided 45 families, consisting of more than 175 family members, with urgently needed relief goods including clothing, food items, and roofing material. Although three weeks had passed since the devastating earthquake, this was the first time they received all the urgently needed help. We were happy to be the first to arrive and distribute the very badly needed aid such as rice, lentils, oil, soap, biscuits, clothing, and zinc sheets for roofing for their temporary shelters.
Palate is a small village about 7 km off the main road to Panchkal. The road to get there is not only one of the most difficult roads that I had traveled so far, it is also a very dangerous road. Yet if I were to help the people, I needed to get there with our supply trucks. At the request of Cap. Pradip, we organized this relief trip to help the people of Palate who have lost homes and most of their belongings to the earthquake.
We made a list of the most essential items for the families. Two monks and I got busy organizing the trucks and getting them loaded up with rice, lentils, oil, soap biscuits, clothing, and zinc sheets for roofing. In this particular village, all the houses had been damaged and some completely destroyed by the earthquake. People are poor farmers. They have being waiting for the aid to arrive for three weeks.
Next day early morning we left Kathmandu Valley and headed to the mountain region of Panchkal. As we got to the bottom of the dirt road, we needed to change trucks. Our trucks were not able to climb the steep hills on the unpaved dirt road with deep potholes. We transferred all our goods onto a four wheel drive mountain truck. Those trucks are built especially for these mountains. Rain or shine they will always get to any village on the mountaintop.
We were happy to help one more village and the people of Palate were very happy to receive the aid they had been eagerly waiting for three weeks to receive. My gratitude to everybody who played a role in doing this noble deed.
