Brian Donnelly ’04 traveled to China in late May as part of a law school/MBA dual-degree program at Rutgers University. He landed in Beijing two hours before the earthquake rocked the Sichuan Province. Donnelly passed up sightseeing in Xi’an to travel to the quake epicenter to help out. The business administration major wrote about his experience.
“The trip to the Sichuan Province was a remarkable experience. I was able to do a lot of good and help a lot of people. I flew into Chengdu in the Sichuan Province Friday night with a piece of paper that read, “I’m here to help with the disaster relief effort,” and, “My plane leaves Monday morning,” in Chinese. I helped a girl with her bag and she said, ‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘You speak English?’ She said she did and two hours later, we were in her mother’s car being escorted by two ladies on a scooter to a volunteer organization.
Saturday morning, I was put with a team comprised of military members and volunteers. Everyone was so appreciative that I was there to help, considering that I was a foreigner and spoke no Chinese. They gave me military-issued camouflage pants and a jacket. We took a bus to a warehouse just outside the epicenter (about a 45-minute ride) with a colonel standing at the helm of the bus. When we arrived at the warehouse at 8 a.m., we unloaded water and food from large cargo trucks into the warehouse. At 5 p.m., we went to a pharmaceutical plant and unloaded large trucks full of medical supplies into smaller cargo trucks until around 4 a.m. That day was remarkable.
The Chinese people assigned a translator to come along with me, and everyone came over to thank me for helping. The next day, I was given an award for volunteering. When I walked through the gates into the courtyard of the area, all the different teams were applauding me. They had news crews there to interview me and ask me why I was there to help.
After that, we took a bus into the heart of the disaster area, which was reminiscent of a bomb scene in a movie. I got to do a lot of good there as well. First, we went around to see the most seriously damaged areas and were swarmed by people who had never seen a foreigner before and wanted to tell me their stories about being in their buildings and saving their families. Then, we unloaded trucks of food and water. For the next two hours, homeless people came into our area to get one bottle of water, one package of ramen noodles and soup, and a cookie. If they had a baby, they got a diaper.
I also helped out in a medical tent set up by the Red Cross before being asked to join a search team. A school had crumbled during the earthquake and 12 of the 260 students were missing. A team of us dug through the rubble by hand to see if we could make any progress since the Chinese were unable to make any progress with their machinery. That was a remarkably sad experience, finding little pink backpacks and shoes.
Afterward, the volunteers from the Sichuan Province cooked a feast for the volunteers. It was by far the best meal I had in China. The people were very kind to me and treated me like royalty, though I tried my best just to fit in as one of the volunteers.
All in all it was a totally surreal experience. I am looking forward to reflecting on what I learned about people’s ability to adapt and be positive in the darkest of hours, how beneficial humanitarian relief is for those who face disasters of this magnitude, and the feeling you get from knowing you are truly helping others and making a difference. I’d like to take that knowledge and use it to start a charity to provide aid and relief to victims of natural disasters domestically and abroad.”