What People Really Need After a Natural Disaster

Emergency earthquake relief is vital but short-lived. The Dzi Foundation brings Nepails aid that lasts.

- Abe Streep

The road loses form in the night. That's probably a good thing. It's not much of a road at this point, more a gully full of boulders and hail drifts perched on a cliff. The truck, a 1980 something Tata, bottoms out regularly. Occasionally it fishtails towards the edge and a drop-off of a few hundred feet into the blackness of eastern Nepal's Khotang district. "Have you looked down?" asks Ben Ayers the Nepal director of the Dzi Foundation, a nonprofit development group focused on rural communities. The passengers in the car, myself included, too busy bracing ourselves for the next spine jarring impact ignore the question.

We’ve been driving for 14 hours. Our guru—a term of respect for drivers in Nepal—is a 20-year-old kid named Jeevan, who recently took over the wheel from his 17-year-old brother, whom Ayers hired after a guy with an impressive rattail ripped us off. “My brother doesn’t know how to drive,” Jeevan says, his earrings glinting. “He doesn’t even have a license!”

The truck hits a mud patch and slides toward the edge of the cliff. Jeevan slams the brakes and shifts into reverse. The truck hits the wall behind us. Our guru gets out and, after a cursory examination, announces that all is well— just a broken taillight. When he starts the engine back up, the transmission sounds like a helicopter, and some new kind of bad smell engulfs us. The truck, Jeevan says, is due for repair tomorrow.