Hailstorm Rebuilding

The hailstorm did come and it caused a lot of damage in our village. Houses were damaged and knocked down and many crops were lost. The bridge connecting our village to a neighboring village has been knocked down. This bridge is essential for trading goods, travel out of the village and travel into the village for lamas and other important figures. This bridge is personally important to me because I get a lot of my tools and building supplies such as a special type of wood from the next village over. Many people are going to help rebuild the bridge. I have chosen not to go for two reasons; first, my children cannot be left alone and second, there needs to be people here to help rebuild houses. I specialize in house building and have rebuilt many houses that were damaged in previous storms so I feel that I will be most helpful here. I have decided to contribute 15 gold pieces to the rebuilding of the bridge because I feel guilty about not being able to contribute any labor. I hope this small contribution to the building materials fund will help the bridge builders and other workers to get the bridge fixed as quickly as possible. Many males in our community work as porters helping others climb the nearby Himalayan Mountains. Although this is not a busy season for porters, there are still less men here in the community to help with rebuilding the bridge.

This storm has come at the worst possible time, as it was right before the autumn harvest. Some farmers were smart and harvested their crops early but still the huge hailstones crushed a lot of food. For my own family I built a small storehouse where I have dried beef and barley to make tsampa but it won’t last us all through the winter. I will have to speak with the village farmers and see how much food there is left. The hunters in our village are very skilled and often track wild animals. This is a source of food for us but it can be unreliable as hunting is hard in these mountainous areas with many steep cliffs and dense vegetation. We cannot rely on the hunters to feed the village all winter. We may have to trade with neighboring villages for food once the bridge is built.

I have chosen to stay and rebuild houses because it is extremely important that this happens as soon as possible. The weather is beginning to turn very cold and people cannot survive by sleeping outside in this damp area. Also we must get our food stores into secure buildings. Wild animal populations are dwindling but there are still leopards, wolves and large birds such as vultures, which will eat out meat, and grain stores it we don’t rebuild quickly. There are poisonous snakes, leeches and gnats that make having no shelter unpleasant and extremely dangerous. At higher altitudes along the plateau there are nomadic tribes living. I worry about them when we have storms like this. They may seek shelter in caves but even then they are not totally safe from huge hailstones. Living at such a high altitude in this harsh climate is hard on everyone and helping each other is the only way to survive.

I have decided to purchase prayer flags from a religious person to help us and protect us in the rebuilding process. As part of my training in ritual I have done a lot of reading about prayer flags and their protective powers. The prayer flags are colorful rectangular squares hung on a string. I have hung mine on a nearby mountain pass. The tradition of prayer flags began when our Buddha wrote prayers on battle flags that he used to protect his people from enemies. I hope to gain the same protective power for my family and my village. The flags I have purchased are five colors with animal symbols on them such as tiger or dragon. The prayer flags I have purchased will benefit the whole community because goodwill will be blown by the wind to everyone around. I have also learned that there are certain days when I cannot put up the flags so I made sure to choose the correct day. Prayer flags are best to put up in the morning on a windy day so the prayers from my flags will be blown to everyone in my village. I have purchased specific prayer flags with horse images on them, which gives energy. We will need this energy for rebuilding houses and the bridge! They also spread compassion through the village. To recover from this huge hailstorm everyone must help each other and we will have the village back to normal before the harsh winter weather.