Help to end the suffering in Nepal – with £1 each
AS WE all look back upon another successful year of gathering together to celebrate our freedom and remember the struggles faced by those who had to live under the rule of occupying forces it can seem easy to empathise with the hardship faced by human beings in times of extreme trouble. We can speak – without ever really knowing – of the cruelty of limited access to basic food and water, the intolerable pain of restricted freedom of movement and the darkness brought about by imposed curfews, imagining the lives our grandparents suffered through as if they were in some way comparable to the privileged ones we live today.
We can all stand together and enjoy our privileged lives because for us that pain and suffering is no longer a reality, we have long since been granted our freedom from terror.
Right now, however, the people of Nepal are suffering these very same miseries at the hands of a different form of all-controlling force. Since the earthquake that brought the country to its knees just two weeks ago, the entire population – some 27 million people – have fought to live without some of the most basic requirements of life, fighting to survive in a country which already gives them so little. As one of the world's poorest populations, these people are used to living with restricted access to a great many things, food, shelter, medicine and the most basic of sanitation, yet you will never find a friendlier, happier or more gracious people upon this earth. Now even the tentative life that they have carved out for themselves has been cruelly ripped from their grasp and the villages, towns and cities that they have built over many hundreds of years lay ruined in piles on the ground. Piles under which many of their loved ones lay dead.
As anyone who has watched the news in recent weeks will know, the situation in the country is dire. With no infrastructure capable of dealing with the devastation, no money to support a homeless population and no chance to rebuild without outside help, this earthquake will continue to destroy the lives of these incredible people long after the ground stops shaking.
In 2013, I spent three months in Nepal trekking through the mountains of the Himalayas, rafting down endless rivers and living within the crowded towns and cities of this most spectacular of countries, its stunning landscapes and gentle people helping to change me in ways I could never have imagined. I had hoped to return again this year to gain another fix of clarity but given its plight that now seems selfish. Instead I feel it is rather my turn to repay the country for its hospitality by sending as much money to aid its recovery as I can raise.
So this Saturday – 16 May – I intend to walk around this most privileged of islands twice, non-stop, doubling the length of the Saffrey Champness Rotary walk many of you will have already accomplished. With a total length of roughly 80 miles I will be covering a distance equal to that of Guernsey to Weymouth.
All that I would ask from anyone reading this is a single pound donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee via the Just Giving link listed below. £1 from each of you as a contribution to rebuilding a country that needs as much help as it can possibly get right now. A single pound that may be nothing more than a drop in the ocean to us, and yet can drastically change the lives of people just like you and I, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Please donate here: www.justgiving.com/Matt-Gill996/ or learn more via Facebook at '80 miles on foot for Nepal'.
MATT GILL
