On Sunday 25th May, Penny Hicks of Budd and Elspeth Ryan will run hard and hopefully complete the Edinburgh marathon. At the same time they are raising money for the British Red Cross, helping people in crisis all over the world. The British Red Cross has launched an appeal to help tens of thousands of people affected by the major earthquake in China.
The following is an account of the earthquake that has been sent to us from someone teaching in Chengdu:
“I have been living in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, for a year and a half now. Sichuan, a comparatively poor and densely populated province in Western China, whose mountains slowly rise to join the Tibetan Plateau. Sichuan has a reputation for delicious food and a relaxed and leisurely attitude to life, and I’ve really enjoyed living here. The students I’ve taught at primary and middle schools, as well as at university have all impressed me deeply with their friendliness, intelligence and hard-working nature. So you can imagine the deep sorrow I feel when I think of all those bright young students cruelly robbed of their futures when their school buildings and lives collapsed down on top of them. A loss of any one of these children is a loss to us all.
I was at University teaching when the earthquake happened. At first I thought it was a plane or large truck going past. That might explain the crashing, banging and rumbling. I looked at the words on the projector screen jumping around. Then a student stood up and shouted ‘earthquake!’. We all ran out of the building. We didn’t know that’s not what you’re supposed to do; none of us had experienced an earthquake before. Fortunately we were lucky. Cracks appeared in buildings but very few fell down. At a friends school, two dormitory buildings collapsed (most students in China board at their schools) but the students were in class at the time. It wasn’t until I returned to my swaying 9th floor flat on Monday evening that the full horror of the situation emerged. The next day was awful; the heavy rain was non-stop and wall-to-wall TV coverage of silent, crushed bodies and wailing students clinging on to life was harrowing. The worst thought was that there were thousands more at that point that had yet to be reached by rescue teams. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I was never sure if it was the ground of me. In fact, nothing seems certain or sure anymore. In Chengdu, people are still so frightened that they are sleeping on the streets, sometimes with just a bamboo mat to keep themselves clean. Any open area or patch of grass currently resembles a campsite.
A week later, and people are still living in fear, even in Chengdu. The aftershocks happen nearly everyday, reminding people that this still isn’t over. Rumours bounce around the city in minutes. “The water is contaminated” and sure enough, minutes later in the shops, the bottled water and milk is disappearing fast. Irate customers are shouting at the sales girls that they need all that they’re buying. “There will be a big aftershock in 20 minutes: run outside!” My friends moan that it’s raining, its rumour, but we all still feel nervous and unsettled. Last night we receive another rumour - “in the next 3 days, there will be an earthquake of 6 to 7 magnitude; it was on the news”. We listen to the streets fill with cars beeping at each other, in a race to get out of the city. We think it’s another rumour, but we turn on the TV anyway. I’m surprised, there is a government warning of another big aftershock. The panic and fear infects me, and I cycle through the gridlocked streets to join my friends in the park. I takes me half an hour to find them among the thousands of other’s bedded down there. We give a mattress to a solitary elderly lady, sitting on a small chair in the mud. Dawn breaks, it’s all OK. But all of the schools are closed for another week. The banks shut at random times. Hundreds of people are queuing to buy tents, because it will rain tonight and people don’t dare to stay indoors. Even in Chengdu, life is not back to normal. But for those living in the refugee camps, in the mountains and near devastated towns, there is no hope of normality for months and probably years.
My students tell me of their hometowns. They say that where there were two mountains, there is now only one; whole villages have been buried by the landslides. Towns the size of Newbury have lost 3-5000 souls. Those that survived are now homeless (there are an estimated 5 million who now have no place to live), the children, orphaned. There are many tales of heroism and hope however. Those of us in Chengdu are organising donations of cash and supplies that are immediately sent out to the affected areas; many of my university students are volunteering in local hospitals and in the disaster zone. However, given the scale of the destruction, more help is still needed. Basics like rubber gloves for medics are in short supply; children’s shoes and other essentials like camp beds are urgently required, as well as basic medicines, tents and food and drink. The people of Sichuan have always been incredibly generous and warm-hearted in welcoming me into their lives. They now need others to show the same generosity to help them rebuild their lives and their futures.”
To help Penny and Elspeth raise money for the Red Cross please visit their justgiving page:
