Let's build a house! - Jo Carroll
What's house-building got to do with writing? Not a lot - at least not right now. I've other things on my mind. For I've just come back from Nepal and witnessed first hand some of the devastation of the earthquake. Too many families have spent the monsoon huddled under tin roofs. Too many schools are still in tents. The big charities are very active in the cities - the temporary shelters are fairly well organised in Kathmandu. But in the villages - often only reachable along narrow tracks - the story is very different. I met a family who were living in the ground floor of their home - the first floor had collapsed but they daren't move the rubble in case it all fell down. Others had homes which were cracked from top to bottom and faced months in tarpaulin shelters. It is easy to retreat into helplessness in the face of such need. We can't rebuild a city. We can't rebuild a town. Even a village is beyond us. But one house - we can rebuild one house. This ...