The Power of One

Volunteering for Smiles

Ionuţ Ursu will jump in to lend a hand wherever he sees suffering, even if that means traveling
8,000 kilometers away from home.

By Ana Maria Ciobanu

Words: 1900

Ionuţ Ursu had been showering with hot water for over an hour in the bathroom at the dorm of
the Faculty of Geography in Bucharest. Shower gel, razors, deodorant, they all seemed like
luxuries after 28 days spent among the debris following the 7.8-degree earthquake that shook
Nepal on April 25, 2015, leaving more than 9,000 people dead, more than 23,000 injured, and
hundreds of thousands homeless. It was a hot June night in Romania and Ionuţ had left
Kathmandu at 5 in the morning, after donating his tent, shoes and mountain gear to the Cold Feet
foundation, which had hosted him. His things were given to a family that had lost their home in
the earthquake. At the airport in Kathmandu, he had given away the rest of his clothes, footwear
and all the personal hygiene products he had. He kept only a baby-blue baseball cap that had
Nepal written on it, a navy blue T-shirt that had Everest written on it, his phone and a bunch of
jugs, souvenirs he had bought for his loved ones back home.

The night before, he had cried in his tent to purge himself of everything he'd seen: houses
reduced to piles of rubble, broken arms and legs, children who had lost their parents and parents
who had lost their children. For 28 days, he'd had no time to get emotional, he had worked non-
stop (sometimes worrying his hosts because he would forget to say where he'd be, forget to
return calls, and would come back late at night). Working as a medical volunteer in Nepal was
not supposed to be about him or his feelings but about the helping hand he could lend. At night,
he went to sleep exhausted after eating a bowl of rice, in the morning he would bathe in the river
and start again. He had taken in all the stories of the people he'd met, he had grown fond of his
hosts, Gopi and Ranju, of the doctors and nurses at the Manmohan Memorial Hospital where he
had volunteered, and all the locals he had smiled at and who'd smiled back at him.

It was Wednesday, May 6, when Ionuţ Ursu, a dark-haired 26 year-old man with the eyes and
smile of a high school kid, landed in Kathmandu with two giant backpacks – one for his tent,
sleeping bag, boots, warm clothes, and his orange uniform that says he's a volunteer with the
Bucharest-Ilfov Ambulance Service, and another filled with medical supplies (intubation
supplies, IV drips, hemostatic powder, bandages). This was his first time in a foreign country, he
didn't speak any English and had to look up words on his Google Translate app. He had come
because, one night in late April, after an exhausting night as a volunteer paramedic, he had
watched the news and shuddered seeing footage of orphaned and homeless Nepalese children.
He had come to help thinking about how hard it had been for him as a child to grow up without a
mother’s love.

Ionuţ was born the year of the Romanian anti-communist revolution. Abandoned five days after
birth, he was one of the more than 100,000 children living in orphanages, remnants of Romania's
communist regime that enforced anti-abortion laws to spike birthrates. The first years of his
childhood were troubled by the caretakers who always came up with new ways to torture the
children who wet their iron beds.. He will never forget the ruler method: a woman in a blue work
coat would measure the urine stains on the bed sheet in centimeters and then hit him as many
times. To get away from the miserable life in the orphanage, Ionuţ took refuge in volunteer work.
He would visit his class mates in the hospital and would bring them cookies, that he hid under
their mattresses. At 16, he took a first aid course and became more interested in medical
volunteering. When he moved to Bucharest to study geography at the university, he became a
volunteer for the Ambulance Service.

To go to Nepal, Ionuţ made a list of all the possessions he could sell – phone, tablet, washing
machine, photo camera – and contacted Mihai Lupu, from an NGO that was organizing a
network of public libraries in the Dhading District (64 kilometers west of Nepal's capital city of
Kathmandu). Lupu asked if he spoke English and asked him not to go to Nepal yet because it
was chaos and they had to see on the spot what was needed and how they could get organized.
But Ionuţ couldn't wait. He had raised nearly 1,000 euros selling his stuff and friends and
teachers had helped with money for supplies and airfare. Five days after the night he had seen the
news of the earthquake, Ionuţ was meeting Gopi and Ranju and was facing the sheer magnitude
of the disaster.

After two days of orientation in the Nepalese capital, Ionuţ and a medical team hired by the Cold
Feet foundation went to the Dhading District, to an area of eight villages, where nearly 90% of
the 300 houses had collapsed in the earthquake and 30 people and more than 100 livestock had
been crushed under the debris. Every morning, Cold Feet volunteers climbed a mountain path for
two to three hours to reach the wreckage.

Ionuţ helped carry medicine, food and tarps to set up military tents to shelter the more than 500
people who slept outside and rummaged through the debris with their bare hands during the day.
Then, with the medical team, he went door to door to examine patients. He measured blood
pressure and blood sugar levels, cleaned and bandaged wounds, handed medical tools, filled in
medical charts. The people in Dhading couldn't remember when they'd last seen a doctor. They
were used to treating themselves and only go to the capital for serious cases. Since the
earthquake of April 25, no authorities had visited them. When he wasn't assisting the medical
team, Ionuţ dug holes for the poles anchoring tents and hugged children. The children smiled at
him and a little boy made him promise to learn English. "It's very important, you must learn," he
said, and Ionuţ agreed. But at the same time he felt that "hearts speak to other hearts and as long
as he knows how to smile, language is not that important." Like with the old wrinkled lady with
two broken legs. He was trying to explain she would feel a pinch when he injects the anesthetic
and kept saying "Ouch!", miming how it would hurt a little and in reply she looked him straight
in the eye, squeezed his arm and smiled, signifying he could go ahead and give her the shot.

Prakash Khatiwada, IT manager at the Cold Feet foundation, accompanied Ionuţ every day
through the villages badly affected by the earthquake and still shaken by aftershocks. Prakash
had started flinching when his phone vibrated. He and Ionuţ talked a lot with their hands but they
worked together shoulder to shoulder rebuilding houses and distributing supplies. He was
astonished that Ionuţ had come all the way from Romania to help. Although they didn't say much
to each other with words, Ionuţ remains close to his heart, "a person who came here in this world
for helping the people".

As days went by, Ionuţ felt he was distancing himself from the suffering that had followed him
since childhood up until he went to Nepal. Surrounded by people who had lost their families and
homes, he learned to shake off his own problems and better understand his part in the world.
Surrounded by pain, so visible in the men who shaved their heads when they lost a loved one and
the fields where bodies were cremated every day, he learned to cherish life and take joy in the
opportunities he came across, such as assisting a birth. One of the nights he lay down exhausted
in his tent, snuggled in his sleeping bag, he devised his mission: "As long as I am healthy, I can
help. I must offer kindness".

After ten days in Dhading, Ionuţ went back to Kathmandu and paid the $100 tax that volunteers
must pay to offer their services in a hospital in Nepal. He ended up at the Manmohan Memorial,
where for two weeks he was part of the medical staff and assisted dozens of surgeries. At first, he
only handed instruments to surgeons, then he gradually started putting in catheters and IVs,
learned to hold muscles for stitching. One day, he had assisted on the operation of Prakash's
brother, who had broken his arm during an aftershock. Wounded came in by the dozens every
day and dozens of others, maybe even hundreds, were outside the hospital, in tents, waiting to be
treated. The hospital staff took an instant liking to Ionuţ for his devotion, even though all the
doctors and nurses were surprised that someone had come all the way from Romania to do this.
The nurses greeted him in the morning with warm tea and bagels and orthopedic surgeon Shirish
Karki sometimes gave him a ride home on his motorbike at the end of his shift.

Anee Ta, head nurse at the University Hospital in Kathmandu, was impressed that Ionuţ had
come from so far away to help the quake victims. Looking back at the days they worked
together, she says: "He was too kind. He didn't care what was the age, sex, race of people, he was
just devoted towards the work only. I would like to salute him for what he has done for my
country people".

Shirish Karki remembers that the hospital was as at dire straits during Ionut’s stay. “This guy
was like an angel to us. We were running short of staff because many of them were victims of
the earthquake, so Ionut never hesitated to do the job of others who were missing. Our lift was
broken, so he lifted the patients, he cleaned the utensils, and all the other tiny stuff that we
ignore, but that matter so much for the smooth running of the hospital”.

Because Shirish saw that Ionut was so hard working and showed much interest in surgery, he
allowed the volunteer to assist him in the operation theater . Between surgeries, they would take
snack breaks and talk about life. “We would just speak to the phone and the phone spoke back
with a translation”, the surgeon recalls. “Few of the surgeries lasted till 9 or 10 in the night. So
he worked overtime as well with the surgery. I think this was his biggest adventure.”

After 28 days, Ionuţ left Nepal with tears in his eyes because it's where he felt the most that there
were no differences between people, where he was treated with respect and nobody cared that he
didn't have parents. On the day of his departure, the volunteer was exhausted and 10 kilos lighter,
but he felt stronger and more confident than ever. He had found his calling and promised himself
he would return, convinced that "evil will not triumph if good people don't ignore the sadness in
the world."

Today, Ionuţ continues his volunteer work with the Bucharest Ambulance Service. In his spare
time, he sells photographs from his first trip to Nepal and he’s always looking for new ways to
raise money to buy medical kits to send to Dhading (where 90% of the locals have still not
rebuilt their homes) and an EKG machine to donate to the hospital where he learnt he was born
to help.