What now? We need to help..

After I got back I’ve had people ask me: How are you - it must be hard for you that have spent so much time and effort to plan and prepare for the expedition and then this happens. Let me tell you: It’s not hard – I’m safe and have no injuries, not everybody are so lucky.

From our preparations we had our priorities straight – Staying safe and coming home in one piece was our main goal. That we have accomplished and considering what happened, it suddenly got a whole new meaning.

I’m safe, so are all my team members. Amazingly so are everybody else I knew that was planning to climb Everest or working there this season. My heart goes out to friends and families of the ones that are not coming home.

When the forces of nature hit like this, it's dramatic and devastating. However we must never forget that the number of people that was affected at Everest is just a small number compared to the number of Nepali people that have lost loved ones, are injured, lost their homes and everything they have. More than 8,000 people killed and more than 19,000 injured.

The Nepali have now lived with 3 weeks of after shakes after the big April 25th 7,8 shake. Being there the first 1,5 week I can only imagine how tiring must be. And just when everybody thought it was getting safe, on May 12th there was a new big 7,3 shake.

Houses that got damaged in the first big shake now got bigger damage or totally fell down. A lot of people have lost their homes, or have large parts of their homes destroyed. Many have also as part of this, especially the Sherpas and the porters, has no job as the climbing/trekking season was called off and most of the tourists have gone home. There is no insurance company that come and build them a new home.

I must say I’m impressed with what I saw, people starting as soon as possible to pick up the pieces and starting to re-build broken houses, trying to go back to business as usual to get an income. Fantastic people, with a big hart for others.

All of us living in the Western world have all we need and more. Most people don’t even understand how blessed we are.

Now is the time to step-up and help the Nepali people. Either find an organization that do aid there and support that way, travel there as soon as possible they need for us to come back, or you can support a project that I think is important:

Help rebuilding the Sherpa community of Rolwaling: Rolwaling is one of the oldest and best kept Sherpa communities in Nepal. It is found by the holly Mountian Tseringma (7135 m), in hindi called Gauri Shankar. The spiritual guide Guri Ringpoche came here with his people 500 years ago, after fleeing from the Tibetan tribe wars. The earthquakes have made big damages to the houses, all of them have more or less damage. Some of them inhabitable. With the upcoming monsoon and not more than 5-.6 moths left until fall and cold weather sets in again it is important for us to get people under safe roof and proper houses again.

You can read more about it here: rolwaling.no

(Mainly in Norwegain, if you cant read please contact me)

Donations can be sent to Stiftelsen Rolwaling, bank account: 1201 21 21294

(Norwegian account, if you live in another country and want more details to donate, pls contact me)