WANTING TO BE HERO BY RIZ DAHAL

What we do is so mundane sometimes, packing, stapling, making paper bags, counting inventory, writing down a numbers and whether it's female or family, flattening out boxes and sometimes just packing the kits in a sack, we get a lot of time to think...well when it's quiet anyways.

So many people have taken our kits and our main concern it that it's reaching places it needs to go to and we really have to try and make sure that there is no duplication in efforts or people aren't being lazy and dumping their relief items. So I started thinking about some group who took our kits on the first week after the earthquake and wondered what motivated them to start and what were their reasons to stop. Maybe they were already going there with other reliefs, maybe they felt compelled as human beings to go out there and help, maybe they just wanted to contribute what they could because it was obligatory or maybe they wanted to play hero. But whatever their reason was, they were helping.

Being unemployed when this happened gave me this opportunity to do what I can in a way I can. If this was a workforce, our office is very much a back office where we never get to meet our clients, so we rely very much on volunteers and teams who are going out there distributing to give us the correct information. We don't have stories to share; of bravery, of sorrow, and everything else the victims and volunteers are experiencing right now. We are just a group of friends who realized we don't have any disaster relief knowledge, so with the help of few meetings and a quick email to my friend who studied public health in disasters decided to procure and pack, hoping maybe we will prevent the spread of some disease.

So yeah, part of our reason was probably also to be a hero, maybe not the ones who are directly involved with the displaced survivors but maybe a subtle hero.

It will be three weeks tomorrow since that day, the day we will never ever forget in our lives but my true heroes are those that's helping me subtly, the guys who take me to and fro every morning and evening, guys who make us tea when we really want it (and milky coffee of course), Be Raj, because it was bit too hard without him for few days, Ayasha who does everything there, always helpful and never complains, all the volunteers who don't complain about our tasks and dedicate fully, the guy and the girl who makes the volunteers do their tasks sometimes by shouting at them ;), those who procure everything so all we need to do is demand, and those who make us chuckle and laugh throughout the day so we forget for a while what a terrible time we are all going through.. thank you all for creating such a positive energy in the volunteer-space and subtly providing all of us with such a good support system. And lastly, everyone who has supported us financially, we would have had no money to continue after last week without your support. So even though none of us will be featured in any magazines or papers, you are all my post-disaster heroes..