It was 4am. After being on a rickety bus on the bumpy and curvy roads of Nepal for 12 hours I was finally able to lay my head down in the empty seat next to me and doze off. And then it happened. I woke up abruptly to a loud crash followed by screams as I saw people being tossed around the bus like ragdolls. Once the initial impact was over and the bus stopped moving, I looked around to see dust clouding the air, people scattered about laying in the aisle and in seats, and broken glass everywhere. I felt writhing pain in my knees and quickly discovered the broken seat in front of me as the cause. I was comforted by the familiar voices of my teammates calling out to see if we were all OK. I had no clue what had just happened. I found my sandals that had flown off during the crash, grabbed my backpack and crawled out of a broken window as the front door was smashed in.
Once outside I got a clearer picture of what had happened. We had hit another bus. I found out later that our bus was traveling at approximately 60mph when the driver fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the other bus. The driver didn't even have time to react by putting on the brakes.
We were in the middle of nowhere in Nepal so there was no one to help us. The grassy hill quickly became a place for injured people to lay down. Some were injured so badly they needed to be carried out of the bus. People were covered in cuts, scrapes, and gashes.
The sun was just rising as we approached the hospital. By then, I was able to begin processing all that had just happened. It was a scary event, one that still replays in my mind when I close my eyes. I have a gash and soreness in my knee, various bruises, and a sore hip to remind me that it really happened. The hospital we were taken to brought no comfort. It was a small building with little resources. The injured were laid on the dirty cement floors. Used needles and bloody gauze were scattered across the floor. The locals began crowding the hospital to take pictures on their phones of us. The doctors were overwhelmed.
It has been something I've had to work through over the past several days, fighting off a spirit of fear. Especially when I had to board another bus and take the 12 hour trip along the same bumpy roads back to Kathmandu. I've also had to overcome the disappointment and discouragement of not getting to hike into the village of Ilam and help with the school that has just been started in that village so that children don't have to walk 3 hours and cross a dangerous river if they want to attend school.
Through the physical and emotional bruises and wounds of the bus accident I can see and be thankful for how God's hand was in everything that happened. We were traveling on a dangerous curvy roads through the mountains with one side being a drop off. It was a miracle that another bus brought us to a stop rather than us driving off some mountain. The way each of us were positioned on the bus at the time of the accident kept us safe from worse injury. We were the least injured people on the bus. I had just moved my head from against the window to down in the seat next to me – and by laying down my body was protected from getting tossed around too much. In the aftermath, each of us maintained a calm and a peace that allowed us to attend to the injured – by using our first aid kits to bandage wounds, pray and comfort those around us, and get belongings off the bus. Officials eventually showed up at the first hospital that we were taken to and provided transportation for us to a nicer, bigger hospital. At that hospital, we were blessed with two blonde haired, English speaking interns from Europe who went above and beyond to care for us. We even got hot showers at the Hostel we stayed at following the accident.
And here I am safely back in Kathmandu, where I currently consider home. It is a cool fall morning and the sun is shining at my back. I am so thankful for how God had his loving arms of protection around me and my teammates during the whole ordeal. I am thankful that I still have 20 days in Nepal to soak up it's overwhelming beauty, to love on the people in various ministries, to enjoy eating mo-mo's, and to pursue my quest to see a yak. God is so good.
