April 2015 Nepal Earthquake
It killed nearly 9,000people and injured nearly 22,000. At that time, I was an ordinary house wife, what I am now too, running a small English class at my house. I was wondering what I could do. I thought it might be a very good chance for my students and me to learn Nepal and write letters for people there. So we wrote letters in English. Following is the letter I wrote.
A letter
To the Friends in Nepal:
Hi, I am a homemaker who does small English ciass at my house. I cannot do extraordinary things but I can do little things like learning about Nepal. We now know where your country is and what has happened. My studenets wrote lovely letters. I want to write something as well. I want to tell three things.
Firstly, I want to say that if we have our lives, we have almost everything. You may think I am crazy to tell such things to the people who is suffering right now from losing many things. I am very sorry about that, but please listen to me. I had a breast cancer surgery two years ago and was still under the medication. I could have lost my life. Imagine what it is like. Death means no life, no time, no nothing. Close your eyes and you know how it is. Pitch black world. Open your eyes again. Now you can understand how colorful this world is. The world in front of you now might be disastrous, sad, and devastated but still there is a world and most importantly you have time to make it better. Life's synonym is time. We can do something to make this world a little better place if we have time/life. Let's do it togethr. As long as we are alive we can do something.
Secondly, I want to say that we cannot change the scripts given from the heaven. You may now saying "Why me? Why do I have to suffer? Why all these things happened to me? " I am sorry about that but I really don't know why. Nobody does. It is like this; some people were born rich some were not, some are men, some are women, some are Japanese, some are Nepalese, and so on. Those are like the scripts from God. We have nothing to do with them. Some of our stories may be comedies, or tragedies, we can't change what it is written. We should not complain about it. But, if we play them well, we can move our audience, the people around us. Let's perform seriously. Move the people.
Lastly, I want to say that we should believe happy ending. Once I heard a speech of Mr. Matsui Tadashi, a president of FUKUINKAN SHOTEN which is one of the best publishers on children's books in Japan. According to him, there was a research on the survivors form Nazi Extermination Camp. What are the common factors among them? Age? Sex? Physical strength? Social status? None of them are correct. It found out that the survivors all had heard the fairy tales that end with the phrase " and they lived happily ever after." again and again when they were children. Oh my gosh! Isn't is amazing? We should be happy ending believers. True, life is the series of unexpected matters. But, we should believe the very last twist in the end of the story will fix all the troubles we have now.
Thank you for reading a long letter from an old lady in Japan. I want to send warm hugs to each one of you. Let's not count the money we have lost, count other things we have
Sincerely yours.
Satoko Tabata
I needed the encouragement, too.
I was going to have another big surgery a week after when I wrote this letter. I was writing to the people who is uneasy including me. I sent this letter along with my students'. Mr. Joshi, who happen to be a Nepalese living in Japan and doing the volunteer work in the area of education, read this letter. Atfer the surgery, he came to see my students and me in person. We had a Nepal Event. I remember I needed a cane at that time.
The jorney to Bajhang have starded since then.
