“Letting all of
my loved ones know I am safe during this massive earthquake. The orphanage,
some locals and I have been camping in a field since 12pm yesterday, praying
for our safety. Please keep myself and the beautiful people of Nepal in your
prayers at this time. Rest in peace to the many lives already lost..”
Ballantyne
Forder’s phone had been flat. Dead flat. In the midst of the Nepal Earthquake
that hit a magnitude of 7.8 and killed more than 8000 people on April 25 last
year, she used her own body heat to give enough life to her phone for one
facebook post. It was a desperate attempt to reach out to her friends and
family and assure them that she was alive.
Now sitting in
her Perth bedroom, smiling warmly through her webcam, Billie experiences all
kinds of emotions – devastation, sorrow, gratitude and zest – as she recalls
the experience she will never forget.
“I had my 21st
birthday all planned out,” she starts. It would be a day surrounded by Nepalese
orphans at the nearby park, sharing food, laughter and gifts with the children.
“My friends basically thought I was crazy!” She laughs, “But when I had a dream
to go to Nepal, something kind of clicked for me. I realised that this was
where my priorities were and suddenly I didn’t see the excitement in going out
and doing all these worldly things. I’d prefer to be helping and in my
element.”
Two months into
her three month volunteering stint, Billie made a sudden change to her plans. “It
was so unlike me. I had every single day down pat to a tee. Where I was meant
to be, what lunch I was having, where I
was going for lunch. But I just felt strongly to go to an orphanage that I wasn’t meant to go to. So I contacted
them and travelled about three hours to get there.”
It was during
this journey from the buzzing tourist town of Pokhara to the small, modest
village of Bradrakali that she unknowingly moved from haven to hazard. “I was
moving towards the epicentre of the earthquake. But if I didn’t have that gut
instinct, all of the orphans [in Bradrakali] would have died.” She pauses and
nods slowly, looking down as she prepares to describe the next day’s turn of
events.
“I arrived and the
two sisters who were temporarily looking after the orphanage were unwell, so I
took the kids to church by myself. As we were getting all 16 boys and girls
ready, braiding the girls’ hair and gelling the boys’, the eldest boy stands up
out of nowhere and walks over as if speaking to an audience… “This is what we
do if we ever have an earthquake, someone told me we have to go under doors and
under the tables!””
Laughter, energy
and play ensued as the 16 children started running underneath the tables,
giggling and pretending that the ground was shaking. “Looking back, I feel like
that was my first warning.”
At the church,
the service is all in Nepalese. “I couldn’t understand anything, so I said,
“Alright God! You better have something good for me to read because this is
going to be a long service!”” Fluttering through the pages of her bible, she
stops randomly on the book of Revelation. “I started reading about an
Earthquake, and then I stopped. I remember putting my finger down and thinking,”
she pauses. “And then I was thrown across the room.” Rumble. Crash. Rattle.
Shatter. “That’s how it started.”
Billie’s bubbly
expression suddenly turns very serious as she describes their first night spent
in a field, away from the crumbling buildings and the shattering glass. “I
didn’t shut my eyes once that night. I had a beautiful four year old boy
sleeping soundly in my arms who called me mama. He was like a grown up in this
tiny body. He didn’t speak much but looking into his eyes was like seeing
through a window to his mind. At such a young age to be without parents or
family, having witnessed such horrible things to me is just unthinkable. Each
time the aftershocks would hit during the night the children would jump up and
look at me with their big beautiful brown eyes. Each time I would reassure them
that everything was okay.”
I ask her to
describe the distinct point at which she realised the sheer magnitude of this
natural disaster. “It wasn’t until the third day. I was able to charge my phone
for the first time in days. A news reporter called and she was just saying all
this stuff, like, “Do you want to give a message to your family? They don’t
think you’re alive.” I looked around and outside the window, and I actually
took in all the bodies. All the broken buildings. There were trucks of people
pulling bodies out. That’s where I realised: I’m actually going through this.”
“And that was
the first time I cried. We couldn’t sleep in the field any longer because it
was storming outside. There was hail, thunder, lightning, all these crazy stray
dogs. We had to sleep in a building
which was one of the most unsafe places you could be.”
The long,
sleepless night crawled slowly into the morning, and by 7am a trusted older
couple had come to take care of the kids. Billie speaks with conviction when
she says it was no coincidence that someone came to take her to the Australian
Embassy later that morning.
“There’s no way
I would have gone [if the kids weren’t safe]. I wouldn’t have even been able to
be dragged!”
With the return
to normal life comes challenges in the mundane. “Every time I had a shower I
cried. I used to wash in this little bucket. I barely fit in it and it was
covered in paint. As much as it sounds crazy I kind of miss it. Not being
around people who truly appreciate everything, that was one of the toughest
things. It was just really difficult.”
Now over a year
later Billie still has a Nepal-shaped hole in her heart, and every intention of
going back.
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