WEDNESDAY APRIL 29, 2015
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An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale crumbled buildings and killed thousands in Nepal on Saturday.
Matthew Dawes photos
Abbotsford couple survive deadly earthquake in Nepal
‘My soul was on its knees’
More than two years ago, twin brothers Matthew and Noah Dawes moved from Abbotsford to Kathmandu with their wives Nicole and Cathryn to start a business and help those in need. The brothers set up Milkmandu, an organic dairy selling pasteurized milk, while the wives volunteered at an orphanage the dairy helps support. When Cathryn and Noah returned to Canada to start a family, Matthew and Nicole remained in Kathmandu. They were there Saturday when a devastating earthquake hit, killing and injuring thousands. The couple sent The News this account, edited for space.
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Matthew Dawes:
fore I was tossed on the ground. I looked s per my usual Saturdays in up to see the old brick pillars next to us Kathmandu, I was selling my dairy collapsing. I tried to get to my feet, but products at a local kept on being tossed to farmers’ market in the centhe ground. The pillars tre of the city. collapsed in the oppoJust before noon, the site direction of me and ground started shaking, crashed into other veneveryone started screamdors. ing and ducked for cover When the shaking under their booths. When I stopped, I scrambled for imagined being in an earthmy phone to call Nicole. Matthew and Nicole Dawes quake, I thought I would have Saturday is her day off, so enough time to get someshe would be at our thirdwhere safe, under a table or to a doorfloor apartment in the south of the city. frame. That is not how it happened. Knowing that she is six and a half months I hardly had time to crouch down bepregnant with our first child and less mo-
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bile made my heart sink. I knelt next to my booth and frantically dialled her number. No answer: her phone would not even ring. I’ve been a praying man all my life, but this was different. For the first time in my life it felt like my soul was on its knees. I prayed for her and my unborn son as I dialled her number over and over. The only words that could come out of my mouth were: “Father, let them be alive. Father, let them be alive.” Finally after 16 failed attempts, my phone rang. Nicole was safe and was outside the house with our landlord, an ex-British Gurkha army commander –
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