Jay Nepal

Jay Nepal, which means “Victory Nepal”, is a motley arrangement of Nepalis and foreign backpackers who have banded together to help rebuild, or more correctly, in the first instance anyway, demolish Nepal.

Nepal’s April 2015 earthquake not only destroyed many buildings, not to mention lives lost, but it severely compromised the many, if not most, of the structures that were left standing. And so Jay Nepal was born. Their mission started out as a result of one man’s observation that these compromised buildings, these structures that were not safe, with cracks down the sides, with foundations crumbling, leaning at odd angles, created a further threat to the people who live in them. Further than that, by logical progression of thought, it was assumed that all the while these unsafe buildings continue to stand as they are, more people could die merely by being in the vicinity.

So, in the absence of any significant government assistance, and I use the words government and assistance generously, Jay Nepal started its work. On the first day of my visit there they took me to a place called Panga, in the region of Kirtipur, between Patan, where I was staying, and Kathmandu. We congregated at the house of Jay Nepal’s founder, were met by backpackers from afar afield as New Zealand, Italy, the United States, and England and set off in a bus where they proceeded to demolish buildings they deemed unsafe for human habitation, unsafe even to be around.

The locals among them, the Nepalis, seemed on a mission to make a statement about where they saw their country, one of hope and defiance in the face of events that had seemingly overtaken them. Hence the name, shouted at regular intervals between swings of the pick axe and crash to the ground of bricks from two or three stories up. The backpackers, on the other hand, some of whom had been in Nepal when the quake struck, others of whom were there beforehand and had come back, and yet others, who just decided to come because either they had lost their job and perished the thought of sending in job applications and sitting through job interviews, or had compared the futility of their current state with the state of the people they were now sharing their lives with, and decided to get to Nepal and do what they could. The excuberance of youth.

The work is dangerous, precautions must be taken, hard hats (although more aesthetic accompaniment than safety device), gloves for the blisters, and the obligatory face mask for the inevitable dust. The locals, the householders, were grateful. They live with the constant fear that their house will collapse, killing them. But they had have no where else to go, there is no help other than from neighbours, who are ill equipped, and Jay Nepal.

This is how it is in Nepal, the people are left to themselves and their indomitable spirit, encapsulated by the members of Jay Nepal, in their monikered t-shirts and their chants of victory. Astonishing it is to see them, to listen to them, the backpackers with no direct connexion, but with an unbridled passion to make some difference in other peoples lives.

And since that day they’ve moved on from merely demolishing to building and connecting – pipes for water supplies, dental clinics, schools. Passionate people this Jay Nepal mob.