A Villager is enjoying time with her son and grandson, a little more than a year since they were all in a 7.9-magnitude earthquake which struck Nepal killing more than 8,000 people.
Matt Simmons and his four-year-old son Taisei are visiting Kelley Kaufman and her husband Ted Godlin at their home in the Village of Caroline. Father and son made the 35-hour journey to Florida’s Friendliest Hometown from their home in Nepal.
Simmons’ wife, a native of Japan he met by chance at a library in Arizona, works for the United Nations. She was immediately mobilized as part of the recovery effort after the quake. She stayed behind in Nepal and could not make the trip to The Villages.
In addition to the tremendous loss of life, ancient temples were destroyed in the earthquake.
“World heritage sites were destroyed,” Simmons said.
At their home, they are still enduring daily power outages.
“But at least you know when it’s coming,” Simmons said as he showed an app on his smart phone that displayed the time range when the outage would be occurring back home.
His son, whose first language is Japanese and second language is English, attends a British school in Nepal. In The Villages, he’s been enjoying watering the neighbor’s plants, watching cartoons with his grandmother and gazing at all of the golf carts.
Godlin and Kaufman flew out of Kathmandu five days after the quake. You can read more about their harrowing experience HERE
Simmons and his wife are somewhat nervously waiting to hear where her next U.N. assignment will take them.
Miku Watanabe came from a working-class Japanese family and set her sights on a U.N. job. She was advised to pursue a Ph.D. in the United States. She was a student in Arizona when she met Simmons.
For the moment her U.N. duties in Nepal have “normalized” somewhat, Simmons said. She has been working to combat the problem of child brides.
