An Update from Half The Sky

Although this arrived a few days ago - it is the latest from Jenny Bowen on the earthquake in China. Please continue to pray that good comes from this. There is a real opportunity for the Chinese government to improve adoption procedures to allow their own citizens to adopt chinese orphans. Jenny's letter follows:

Hello Friends,

I just arrived in Chongqing from Sichuan. Yesterday was the one month
anniversary of the earthquake. We traveled several hours to a hard-hit
mountain town in Beichuan, Hongbaizhen, and worked with children and
volunteer teachers. I have added many photos to our website:
http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08-healing.php#part2

A couple of weeks earlier, we braved the rock-strewn roads and broken
bridges of Hongbaizhen to deliver relief goods to the children. The whole
town was in shock. As painful as yesterday’s visit was, we began to see
signs that the town will slowly begin to come back to life.

Our communications director, Patricia King gave me this moving report:

An 8-year-old boy stands in front of the pile of rubble that had once been
his school and explains that he was the last student to have been pulled
out alive. When the earth shook, he was one of the obedient children
sitting with arms crossed at their desks—some naughty boys were still
outside, safe on the playground. For ten frantic minutes, trapped between
a piece of concrete and brick on the second floor, he waited. His cries
couldn’t be heard over the wailing adults, but finally when the crowd
outside the collapsing school quieted down they heard him and came to
rescue him with their bare hands.

In the first days after the quake, he couldn’t return to the pile of
debris that had once been his three-storey school, but with the help of a
volunteer teacher from his tent school, he has visited the site several
times and now is not afraid when he comes back. Today, at 2:28, exactly
one month after his world shattered, the boy and another child from the
tent school placed their hands on their hearts, then bowed three times,
saying goodbye to their friends who died at the Hongbaizhen Primary
School. Finally these brave survivors vowed: “We will live our lives as
best we can.”

In Hongbaizhen, an isolated mountain town where it took three days for the
Air Force to make it on foot past a collapsed bridge while the cries of
children trapped under heavy rubble grew weaker and weaker and then
stopped forever, the pain is palpable. But one month after the earthquake
children and adults are also expressing their grief, working to find a way
to cope with their pain, and taking the first steps to rebuilding lives.

Sitting under a tree outside a tent school only 100 yards from the
collapsed Hongbaizhen Middle School, it took only minutes before a group
of middle school girls, two with their heads bent into their arms and one
sitting up straight, weeping and sobbing, opened their hearts to Vancouver
psychologist Dan Zhang and University of Minnesota psychologist Pinian
Chang, both of whom were also once students in China.

A 14-year-old twin, who aches for her one-minute-younger sister. She
escaped the building, but her sister didn’t. Finally her sister was pulled
out of the rubble, but with no medical care available, her family listened
helpless as she spoke her last words: “I hurt. I hurt. I am so tired. I
think I am dying.” Now her grieving sister refuses to go to any school
with more than one storey—she tried a middle school with two stories and
dropped out after two agonizing days. Still she is trying to take comfort
from “Invisible Wings,” the song she and her sister loved and sang
together. “I know I’ve always had a pair of invisible wings that take me
flying and give me hope.”

Two girls mourning their brother, a 10th grader, and a nimble athlete as
well as a good student, who made it out of the building. But he went back
to rescue three crying girls only to die when another piece of the
building gave way. One of his sisters is tormented by regrets—why did she
brush off her brother, who wanted to talk to her a few days before the
earthquake when she wasn’t in the mood? Both sisters know that their
brother died a hero, but they miss their older brother and cry for him as
an adult volunteer encircles them in a hug to try to ease the pain.

Meanwhile inside a white tent decorated with balloons and tinsel, a crowd
of volunteers hungry for help sit at shiny wooden desks salvaged from the
collapsed middle school. Executive Director Jenny Bowen tells them that
Half the Sky’s greatest contribution to helping in Sichuan will be to
provide training for caregivers. She urges them to identify adults in the
local community who can be trained to provide consistent, long-term help
for the children long after the last volunteers have gone back to their
homes. When she tells them that Half the Sky is committed to working in
Sichuan for “at least five years,” they burst into applause.

It soon becomes clear why the applause is so heartfelt. These volunteers,
some recently arrived and some soon to go back home to their own families,
have bonded closely with the children and they know the children will need
support for a long time. One wears a beautiful shell bracelet made for her
by one of the girls who has become like a little sister. Another favored
volunteer’s arms, face, and t-shirt have been decorated by playful
children using colored markers. Both the volunteers and the children who
cling to them are finding it difficult to even conceive of their leaving.

Psychologist Marleen Wong and psychiatric social worker Suh Chen Hsiao of
the National Center for Trauma & Bereavement tell the volunteers they have
given the children a great gift by providing a school and a routine for
the children. Research shows that children who go back to school soon
after a disaster fare better than children who have no routine for a long
period of time. They also praise the volunteers for developing such strong
bonds with the children and then urge those who are leaving to find a new
local volunteer they trust to work together with the children before they
leave. They also urge the volunteers themselves to get together after they
leave Hongzbaizhen to talk through their feelings among peers who
understand what it is to try to provide comfort to traumatized children
living in a tent school surrounded by rubble and soldiers wearing white
masks spreading disinfectant on the site where so many of their friends
died.

The volunteers, some with tears in their eyes, explain why they are
worried for the children and feel helpless because they cannot help them
more. They worry about a 5-year-old girl with a scar on her back from
being buried by debris who screams whenever she sees a collapsed building,
an unavoidable sight in this mostly leveled town. A thirteen year old
boy, the last to be pulled out of the middle school, refuses to come to
the tent school so close to where he was trapped. A six year-old boy whose
two brothers died, draws a picture with cherries because his brothers
liked cherries, but this volunteer thinks he is too calm, too
matter-of-fact: “I am so worried about him. I ache for him.”

Wong tells them they have done well. “Do not underestimate how much good
kindness can do.” She recommends that they continue to reach out to the
13-year-old afraid to go to school. Visit him at home, offer him some
water, bring him some notes from his friends. For the 5-year-old, try to
have her draw or tell why she is screaming and help her learn to breathe
deeply when she is afraid so that slowly, slowly the screams become less
frequent and finally go away. And for the too-calm child, sometimes
children have a delayed reaction, which is why long-term help is so
crucial: “We have to wait for the child.”

For the Hongbaizhen parents heartbroken by the loss of their children,
there was no delayed reaction—they have expressed their grief since the
day of the earthquake and they still show it in their eyes that well up
with tears even when they express nascent hope for a future life. On this
one month anniversary one tiny mom, her hair flecked with gray, shows
visitors cell phone photos of the two children she lost. She lowers her
arms to illustrate the unthinkable, the collapse of her daughters’ school.
She walks slowly away, but not without first thanking Half the Sky and
everyone else who has come to help. It is that support, she says, that has
recently made it possible for her to start to at least imagine a future
for herself without her children.

And a short climb up one of the mountains that made Hongbaizhen renowned
for its beauty before it became renowned for its suffering, parents are
still trying to comfort their children, who died four weeks ago. At the
four-tiered hillside cemetery with hundreds of children’s freshly made
graves, parents have laid things that their children once loved—a pink
backpack, wrapped candy, spicy Sichuanese snacks, a big teddy bear and a
stuffed monkey. A weeping dad injured in the quake, his arm still in a
sling, burns paper money and incense and apologizes to his child. “I am so
sorry. This is the first time I could come. I hope you don’t mind,” while
his wife wails the lament of every parent who has wished that they could
have saved the life of the child even at the cost of their own: “Mommy is
here for you. How could you go before us? Please wait for us.”

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund
you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our
website:
http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children's+Earthquake+Fund


If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate at
http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia
(+852-2520-5266) or donate online at
https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:
http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

with love,

Jenny

Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that
establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational
support for orphaned children living in government-run welfare
institutions in China