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“...HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 37 | Number 2 Article 12 December 2017 Becoming Rasuwa Relief: Practices of Multiple Engagement in Post-Earthquake Nepal Austin Lord Cornell University, al947(a>cornell.edu Galen Murton James Madison University, galen.murton(a)colorado.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Lord, Austin and Murton, Galen (2017) "Becoming Rasuwa Relief: Practices of Multiple Engagement in Post-Earthquake Nepal," HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 37 : No. 2, Article 12. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/12 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Macalester College Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons(2)Macalester College at DigitalCommons(2)Macalester College. It...”
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“...Becoming Rasuwa Relief: Practices of Multiple Engagement in Post- Earthquake Nepal Acknowledgements The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to all those who contributed to and supported the work of Rasuwa Relief. First and foremost; we would like to acknowledge our founding team members at Rasuwa Relief: Bob Beazley, Bikram Karki, Sneha Moktan, Arya Gautam, Prasiit Sthapit, Upasana Khadka, and Lakpa Sherpa. This is an incredible group of people who volunteered hundreds of hours, and made Rasuwa Relief possible. As our efforts evolved, many others joined our team and made important contributions, particularly Nathaniel and Amanda Needham, Jennifer Bradley, Rabi Thapa, Johanna Fricke, and Prakriti Yonzon. Our work with Rasuwa Relief prompted many meaningful collaborations with a variety of different individuals and institutions. While there are perhaps too many to name, we would like to thank DROKPA, Mojgone Azemun and Avaaz.org, Bodhi Garrett and Craig Lovell of WeHelpNepal...”
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“...Becoming Rasuwa Relief: Practices of Multiple Engagement in Post-Earthquake Nepal Austin Lord Galen Murton In this article, we reflect on the multiple nature of our engagements in the wake of the 7.8m earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25th 2015. Specifically, we trace the events, experiences, decisions, positions, and processes that constituted our work with a post-earthquake volunteer initiative we helped to form, called Rasuwa Relief. Using the concept of multiplicity (cf. Mol 2002), we consider the uncertain process by which Rasuwa Relief began to cohere, as a collective of diverse efforts, interventions, projects, and commitments, and how Rasuwa Relief was continually and multiply enacted through practices of engagement. As a collaborative effort that coordinated and consolidated many of our post-earthquake interventions over a period of two years, Rasuwa Relief was always in a state of becoming. This process of becoming, we suggest, indexed and informed the multiple ways that we...”
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“...beginning with the earthquake itself and the confusion of the emergency phase, and following the subsequent activities, decisions, and actions that shaped two years of volunteer work with Rasuwa Relief. In our analysis, we show how Rasuwa Relief was enacted in everyday practice and through the shared labor of many contributors. Throughout its existence, Rasuwa Relief was used to coordinate not only different kinds of post-earth- quake efforts but also “the activity of knowing” (Mol 2002: 50)—knowing the disaster, its effects, and our own embedded role in the uncertain aftermath. Over time these different enactments began to ‘hang together’ and Rasuwa Relief began to cohere, and yet it remained fundamentally multiple (Mol 2002: 55).2 Further, by working through and with Rasuwa Relief—as ‘relief workers,’ academic research- ers, and persons balancing a variety of different personal relationships and commitments in Nepal—we also became multiply engaged. While this article serves to highlight...”
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“...humanitarianism. As early-career scholars of the Himalayan region, and as people who were both present during the earthquakes and their uncertain aftermath, we draw from lessons learned as unlikely ‘humanitari- ans’ trying to help while attending to our own neediness (Malkki 2015). We struggled to navigate the uncertain terrain of post-earthquake Nepal. We tried to help while slowly learning how to do so, acting first based on a kind of reflex and, later, more reflexively. While working with Rasuwa Relief, we were constantly attempting to balance a variety of commitments to diverse kinds of people, places, principles, and positionalities: that is, we were always multiple. Uneven Narrations of Disaster Disaster response efforts, humanitarian or otherwise, are often shaped and adapted in relation to particular pat- terns of ascertainment and narration, fueled by a sense of urgency and rupture. In the aftermath of disaster, dif- ferently positioned narrators seek to frame the disaster and to reinterpret...”
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“...gather- ing and sharing information on the phone and online, responding to media inquiries, and attempting to answer questions from embassies and families around the world trying to locate missing people in the Langtang area. Meanwhile, most of the 488 survivors from the Langtang community shifted to a camp for Internally Displaced Persons (iDPs) that had been established at the Phuntsok Choeling Monastery near Swayambhunath in Kathmandu. Austin and others made several visits to the camp to provide relief materials and to talk with community members. After less than 48 hours in Kathmandu, Austin, grew frustrated with the uneven impacts and optics of the disaster (cf. Shneiderman & Turin 2015; Nelson 2015) and wrote the following statement on social media: To be clear: Kathmandu is not just a pile of rubble. Don’t believe the hype. Without dismissing the very real needs of some people, the damage is remark- ably, fortunately, and unexpectedly limited com- pared with the possibilities and most ...”
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“...worked on determining the contours of the gaps in Rasuwa, we began considering our own interventions to help fill them. We reached out to a variety of contacts involved in different kinds of disaster relief efforts, within and beyond Nepal. In an attempt to better understand the ‘information architecture’ (Raj & Gautam 2015) of the disaster management complex, we began to attend a series of informational and logistical meetings focused on coor- dination, and conferred with a variety of other grassroots initiatives and self-organizing ‘non-NGOs’ emerging in Kathmandu. This included the Himalayan Disaster Relief Volunteer Group (aka ‘Yellow House’), an eclectic yet effec- tive group using social media connections to ‘hack’ the disaster response, becoming one of the largest distributors of relief materials in Nepal (Streep 2015). Another group was Kathmandu Living Labs, who were using open-source mapping software to coordinate both localized and global humanitarian crisis informatics through...”
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“... with direct connections to specific areas of Nepal comprised a significant share of relief distribution (Tamang 2015).7 And so, in the first days of May 2015, we also gathered with a small group of volunteers to discern the shape of current needs, gather resources, and form a plan of action. Describing ourselves as a ‘humanitarian volun- teer initiative’—a framing carefully worded to signal our non-professional orientation to the disaster—we released our first public statement via social media. Like many others who have found themselves at the frontiers of disaster response in the 21st century, we launched a crowd-funding campaign to support our initial efforts. We had become a diverse collective of nine people [see Acknowledgments], and we called ourselves Rasuwa Relief. Disaster & Unevenness in Rasuwa Heading upstream along the Trishuli River with our fellow volunteers during our first major relief mission on May 10th, we could see that the impacts of the earthquake and the unevenness...”
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“...engagement, and another reminder that ‘relief work’ was not an abstract exercise. And yet, we still felt in that moment—as we felt later else- where in Rasuwa, in the IDP camps during the monsoon, and at ceremonies for the dead held in Kathmandu and Langtang—that our commitment to informed action and to being co-present was an important ethical decision. Furthermore, these firsthand experiences gained while attempting to do ‘relief work’ had shown us that our situ- ated knowledge of Rasuwa was valuable in multiple ways. Put differently, we saw that an academically and ethno- graphically informed understanding of post-earthquake locations as more than just ‘dots on a map’ allowed us to “act productively as brokers between multiple actors” (Shneiderman 2015:1). Thus, as the terms of our volun- Figure 3- At the time of the 73 magnitude earthquake that struck on May 12,2015, our team of volunteers was in Rasuwa distributing solar panels, tarps, and other relief materials. Here two volunteers watch...”
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“...forty-nine days after the earthquake. This Tibetan Buddhist monastery also served as their displaced persons camp. (Lord, 2015) Figure 5- In October 2015, Rasuwa Relief team members and collaborators walk through the upper part of Langtang village, which was leveled by the blast from the avalanche (visible in the background). During this trip, we conducted a detailed damage assessment that would help facilitate the process of resettlement and reconstruction. (Lord, 2015) teerism began to change following the second earthquake, we made a multiple commitment to continue our work, amid and despite the confusion. Engagement and Praxis in the Post-Earthquake Landscape For two years after the earthquake, we worked as Rasuwa Relief on a variety of different projects—ranging from interventions focused on immediate humanitarian relief to collaborative community-based projects committed to long-term recovery. This kind of sustained engagement, always challenging and often frustrating, was informed...”
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“...Figure 6. Dindu Jangba stands at the edges of the avalanche zone in Langtang village in October 2015, near the spot where his mother's house used to be. (Lord, 2015) Figure 7. Roofing materials being delivered to Kyanjin Gompa in November 2015, used to repair damaged homes and build temporary shelters in advanced of the winter months. Rasuwa Relief worked with the Langtang Management & Reconstruction Committee and other NGOs to coordinate these logistical aspects of resettlement. (Lord, 2015) delivering 37 metric tons of shelter materials and food stuffs to over 1,600 households in Rasuwa and providing infrastructural support to eight different IDP camps in Rasuwa and Kathmandu. Through this work, we gained both an appreciation for the art of logistics and a cynicism of bureaucratic simplifications of‘the last mile’ required for distribution. We also learned a great deal about the micropolitics of‘distribution’ and the need to manage both a variety of differently formed expectations and...”
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“...n Committee (LMRC)—a group of Langtangpa leaders tasked with organizing the resettlement of the Langtang Valley and seeking self-determination within the official process of reconstruction. While Austin was honored to serve in this role, he also felt unqualified at times and had to deny requests for advice or support regarding certain sensitive matters, like post-avalanche relocation.9 This involvement, however, provided insight into the Langtangpa planning process, which then allowed Rasuwa Relief to be more precise in providing logistical support that would facilitate the reconstruction process (i.e. trail clearance, restoring local infrastructures, building storage facilities) and to coordinate more effectively with partner organizations. As a result, when the winter months ended in early 2016, the LMRC was in a somewhat unique position to initiate their own reconstruction efforts.10 As time went by, we began several other collaborative projects focused on the social and cultural dimensions...”
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“... and intentionally to make certain people, places, practices, processes, and pasts more visible than others—to draw attention to certain needs still unmet, like pervasive struggles with mental health, and to explicate the complex process of reconstruction (and its politics) to a broader international audience. These attempts to promote informed and critical awareness, however incomplete, were only possible because of the multiple nature of our engagement. Finally, on April 25th, 2017, Rasuwa Relief—which was formed to fill gaps and designed to be a temporary volun- teer initiative rather than an official NGO—was formally closed. And yet, while this phase of our work has finished, we remain engaged and committed, multiply. On the Practice of Engaging Multiply Our commitments are to making sense of the frus- trations, the possibilities, the unknowns. (McGrana- han 2015:1) This article represents a preliminary attempt to consider our own practices of post-disaster engagement and our own multiple...”
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“...maintain, however, that our proximity to specific communities and participation in their response allowed us to form a more specific and grounded critique of vague concepts like ‘transnational humanitarianism’ (cf. Ticktin 2014) and ‘disaster capi- talism’ (cf. Klein 2007) based on direct experiences and encounters. Further, by reflecting upon our own imperfect efforts in the post-disaster context, we have also high- lighted the contingent and conjunctural dimensions of post-disaster response and ‘relief work’ in a time of crisis where “aid work and research seem like flecks of dust, at best. And there is no right balance between distance and proximity” (Malkki 2015: 73). While this account of our process may not necessarily offer any neat models or solu- tions, we hope that it provides a few examples of the ways that scholars might contribute by engaging multiply in the wake of disaster. By critically reflecting on our own experiences in Nepal through the writing of this paper, we have proposed...”
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“...to and supported the work of Rasuwa Relief. First and foremost, we would like to acknowledge our founding team members at Rasuwa Relief: Bob Beazley, Bikram Karki, Sneha Moktan, Arya Gautam, Prasiit Sthapit, Upasana Khadka, and Lakpa Sherpa. This is an incredible group of people who volunteered hundreds of hours, and made Rasuwa Relief possible. As our efforts evolved, many others joined our team and made important contributions, particularly Nathaniel and Amanda Needham, Jennifer Bradley, Rabi Thapa, Johanna Fricke, and Prakriti Yonzon. Our work with Rasuwa Relief prompted many meaningful collaborations with a variety of different individuals and institutions. While there are perhaps too many to name, we would like to thank DROKPA, Mojgone Azemun and Avaaz.org, Bodhi Garrett and Craig Lovell of WeHelpNepal, Temba Lama and all the members of the Langtang Management & Reconstruction Committee, NayanTara Kakshyapati Gurung and the Himalayan Disaster Relief Volunteer Group, Amchi Tenjing Bista...”
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“...Conversation, May 4, 2015. (accessed on November 30, 2016). Oliver-Smith, Anthony. 1986. The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the Andes. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Oliver-Smith, Anthony and Susana M. Hoffman, Eds. 1999. The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. London: Routledge. Raj, Yogesh and Bhaskar Gautam. 2015. Courage in Chaos: Early Rescue and Relief after the April Earthquake. Kathmandu: Martin Chautari. HIMALAYA Volume37,Number2 101...”
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“...Shneiderman, Sara. 2015. “Dots on the Map:” Anthropological Locations and Responses to Nepal’s Earthquakes. Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology website, October 14, 2015. (accessed on November 30, 2016). Shneiderman, Sara and Mark Turin. 2015. Nepal’s Relief Effort Must Reach the Rural Poor. The Globe and Mail, April 27, 2015. Simpson, Edward. 2013. The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stirrat, Jock. 2006. Competitive Humanitarianism: Relief and the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. Anthropology Today 22(5): 11-16. Streep, Abe. 2015. Nepal’s Aid System is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It. Wired Magazine, May 13, 2015. Tamang, Seira. 2015. Dangers of Resilience. The Kathmandu Post, May 25, 2015. Thapa, Deepak. 2015. The Country is Yours. The Kathmandu Post, July 2, 2015. Ticktin, Miriam. 2014. Transnational...”