My Reaction to the Earthquake
By: Preeinatree
After a long day at work, the weary worker returns home. After the street dims and dinner is prepared, the children return home. When there is nowhere else to go or too many places one is obligated to go, everyone longs to return home. Following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, over 8 million people were left not only devastated, but left without a home to return to. The weary worker did not have a place to rest his or her feet and children did not have the luxury of going back inside. From discovering the destruction of homes to the destruction of various sites in Nepal, I was forced into a state of unapologetic sympathy. The horrific earthquake, through social media, molded my perspective on my personal identity and the potential of people.
Social media was the source of all my information about the tragedy. I was privileged enough to be under a roof in America, but I was not left untouched by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The impact I felt was not due to the number this earthquake placed on the Richter Scale, but was caused by the location the earthquake hit. I clicked through pictures on top of pictures of places I’ve never been able to visit. These were the places that I’d only heard my parents talk about. These were the places my family came from, thus they were the places that have indirectly shaped my identity. Now, each of these places have become another picture to click through and to uncover either a damaged landmark or a demolished shelter. From one photo to the next, I scrolled through images of the dried ground and the cracked buildings.
Social media is capable of transporting any event to any and every other location, especially those with free wifi. Even sitting in a local fast food restaurant, I could feel the ground beneath me shake. This was also in part due to my own identity. The entirety of my family tree has every root embedded into the soil of Nepal. All these ancestors have created a society in which they believe their people with thrive best. They have passed along habits and knowledge to members of my direct family, who continue you to attempt to reinforce ideals and themes they believe to be valuable. My behaviour, my perspective on the world, and thus my identity has been shaped by Nepal. The destruction of this land felt, in part, like a destruction of my own home, a place that held a history that shaped the person I became. From the monumental buildings to the homes, these parts of Nepal are without a doubt part of my story.
With buildings left destroyed, I was forced the click through pictures of the hardworking individuals that were forced into tents or homelessness. Underneath all of the negative imagery, underneath the destruction, I felt that the attack on Earth by mother nature was unfair and unnecessary. In reality, the Earth’s plates moving is a phenomenon that can not be stopped and nature is a force that is not to be reckoned with.
While the negative impact of the natural disaster on the people of Nepal was blatant, finding a positive impact is not impossible. Digging through the photos allowed me to uncover a hidden treasure that seemed to appear only when the ground divided. Like the last item in Pandora’s box, a single positive effect helped compensate for the infinite negatives in the situation.
The separation of the ground forced the unification of people. The people, whether inside or outside of Nepal, were unified with the same goal. When I thought the closest I could get to Nepal was in photos, I was proved wrong because I shared a common goal with the Nepali citizens. Individuals with Nepali heritage in America gathered and met to create awareness about an event that occurred in a country that did not physically impact them. Instead, we were all impacted emotionally.
Also, not only did global powers send aid, but the people within Nepal showed empathy for all their neighbors. Not only did Nepalese-Americans click through pictures, but they joined together, held meetings, raised money, spoke, wrote and worked to support a country that had a hand in molding their identities.
