When I learned that we would be spending some time in Boulder, I immediately thought of the one person I know who lives there, my high school friend Sharona Fein. We’ve stayed in touch through the years but haven’t seen each other in awhile, so it was a joy to see her. Sharona was free for lunch on the day we arrived in Boulder, and after deciding on Thai food, we went to a restaurant called Aloy Thai Cuisine. Aloy is a variation of the word “Aroy,” which means “delicious” in Thai, and it was appropriately named. As we shared tasty shrimp spring rolls, pad woonsen noodles with tofu, and red curry with chicken and vegetables, we talked about many things, one of which was her career.
Sharona describes herself as a serial adventurer. She has worked as a teacher, business owner, corporate trainer, community builder and leader, and healer. She practices Thai bodywork, which she describes as “I do yoga to you.” In Thai bodywork, her clients are fully clothed, and she uses her body weight to gently relax, stretch, and open muscles and joints.
I asked Sharona about her experience when she was in Nepal during the April 25, 2015 earthquake. She was there with a group of fourteen healers and three Nepalese guides, walking into remote hillside villages in the mountains near the Tibet border, with a mission to set up clinics and offer Thai bodywork. The group was on their way back down the mountain, about 7 days out, when the earthquake struck at around noon. They were in the middle of a wide valley and felt the ground shake. They were transfixed as they watched boulders the size of cars crash down the sides of a distant mountain. Fortunately, they were far enough away that they weren’t in any immediate danger.
The group soon learned that they could not go much further, as the trail below them had collapsed. They stayed in a small village of 6 houses where the villagers maintained and venerated a holy Buddhist shrine in the hillside above them. Four of the six houses had collapsed in the earthquake, and one of the two houses left standing was a guest house where the group stayed, not knowing what would happen next. At the end of the third day, they located a satellite phone and were able to call their families. It was only then that they learned the extent of the loss of life and physical damage caused by the earthquake. As a result of the satellite phone calls, the American Embassy was able to locate them. After determining that the group members were not injured and had sufficient food and access to water, the embassy told them to wait where they were. There were many emergency situations in the country that required the use of the limited number of helicopters for rescues.
I looked up some details of the earthquake. It registered between 7.8 and 8.1 on the Richter scale, killed nearly 9,000 people, and injured nearly 22,000. In the Tsum Valley where Sharona and her group were located, there was, incredibly, no loss of human life.
While they waited, they helped repair rock walls and continued to do Thai bodywork. After spending nine days in the village, they were extracted by helicopter by the American Embassy and taken back to Kathmandu, which was devastated by the quake. It was at that point that they were able to use first world problem solving tools to provide help. They used their electronics to work with many other people to raise much-needed funds, using their personal accounts to bypass the bureaucracy and direct money toward the purchase of supplies for the people of Tsum, such as tents, blankets and rice. Even now, four years later, there is still support coming in, which has allowed for the building of a new school and other structures in the sacred valley, using far more stable construction techniques.
Her time in Nepal left a lasting impression on Sharona. The two things she told me she took away from the experience are these: “Always do what is right in front of me. Make a difference anywhere that I can see to make a difference.”