Nepal Journal: Have you ever felt called?
Special guest blog by Dr. Nikhil Joshi currently on the ground in Nepal for Team Broken Earth.
It was April 25th. I had just gotten off the phone with my friends in Nepal. It was hours before the earthquake. I laughed to myself and went to sleep. In the morning I saw that I had missed another phone call several hours after we talked. I didn’t think much of it.
But then I saw the headlines the next morning. I urgently called back. Nothing. Every phone number I had, every email address, every social media account- nothing. Every second went by without an answer was agony. And then something just flicked on and I realized something.
We’re all called. We’re all called to live compassionate lives where we care about others. That’s what makes us strive in our own lives for a better world. And as a result, I was going to Nepal because I just had to.
The next lesson happened when I told Dr. Barter about my plans to go to Nepal and do some clinical work. He was supportive, but shared some perspective that he had gained in Haiti. “Trying to make a difference in Nepal seeing patients for a month is like trying to knock down a wall by kicking it with a pair of flip flops”. The ridiculousness of the imagery was jarring and accurate.
Teamwork does make sense. Individual efforts while laudable become infinitely more powerful when amplified by the energy of likeminded people. That’s how it felt to be in the cafeteria with Drs Furey and Pridham. It took 3 minutes for me to make up my mind to be part of Team Broken Earth’s efforts in Nepal.
The goal is simple, to find out what the situation is on the ground in Kathmandu and the surrounding countryside. To see what people need, who is offering it to them, and ask is there a way Team Broken Earth can be of service to Nepal and its people in the long term.
Team Broken Earth’s core strengths lies in the fact that it is an organization comprised of hundreds of compassionate members with unique skills and stories. And those people all share something in common: a calling. An indescribable feeling that tells us that hope isn’t dead, that altruism is noble and that caring about the world isn’t an exercise in futility but an action befitting humanity.
And so I’m on this flight heading in to Kathmandu. I have no idea what I’ll find when I land. I don’t know what’s happened to my home away from home, I have no clue what the air feels like or what is the humanitarian situation on the ground. I just know that whenever I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of these problems, I tell myself that I’m not alone because many others also feel called. And we’ll find a way through this together.
-Dr. Nikhil Joshi