SALE FOR LOVE

It’s been already more than one year that the earthquake occurred in Sichuan. I still remember the miserable and harsh condition of the people who live in there, listen the screams of people who stayed under the debris and couldn’t help it was really ominous. I don’t have an exact idea about casualties but after doing some research, I saw an enormous casualties. The earthquake took place last year, so the result I get is the net results. When we think the deads, injureds and missings together, we will face unfortunately with a huge amount.

Image a disaster that almost 69,227 people had died, 374,643 injured and 17,923 missed, you can see clearly how this disaster is a miserableness. Under these misery circumstance, almost all of countries tried to help to earthquake victims. And I felt honor to get information about the aid of Turkiye. when a disaster occurred in a place, diplomacy remain in the background and the humanity come to the forefront as it should be. So all of people and countries gave their helping hands and made donations for victims. I hope donations and aids could dress their wounds at least a tiny bit. Now it already passed more than one year from the occurance of quake, people who is involved in quake partly, and who is not involved in it totally forget it. I was in china when the earthquake took place. My family worried about me when they saw the newsbreak on tv. I generally don’t like to watch tv, so the day of the occurance of the quake I got a phone from my father, he asked me if I still alive, when a said
‘of course I am, what s up?’ he gave me the news of quake and said,
‘the news just said a huge quake took place in china and a lot of people took a knock, so I worried about you.’
‘ I am ok, don’t worry about me’ I said.
I got back to dorm for watching the news. Oh! It was really bad to see people who was under the debris. I knew if I live in Tukiye, it was probably influence me lesser but I live in China so I was influenced from that disaster so much. It seemed to me as if the quake took place in Turkiye. Regardless of their belief, race or background, I though I must give my helping hand to the victims. For this reason, my friend and I started to think some way for helping. Firstly we thought to donate an amount of money but it would not be a proper favor when we consider the calamity. So we tried to find another way. We might let other foreigners to join us, so we did it. We informed all of foreign students for donation. Finally we got more money than we thought but it also seemed not sufficient. We started to see about to make larger the amount. And one of friend found a way to get more money. He said we could trade with the money we have. We also didn’t know what kind of trade it would be, but as all we know trade is the best way to double up the capital on hand. Eventually we decided to hold a kermess, that was a great idea for making more money to donate. Yes it was a good idea because the most important feature of a kermess is that it usually hold in the open air in order to aid people, associations or organizations in need.

Firstly we got the green light from the foreign students’ office then rolled up our sleeves and set to work.. At first, we asked almost all of foreign friends for participating in this benevolent charity event. Most of them have joined us. We gathered all things we have; food, clothes, souvenir and drinks. Some of us cooked his cultural foods and desserts too. We also prepared some t-shirts and made to print ‘everything for Wenchuan’ on them. From the morning till afternoon, almost everything have been ready. We brought things to place where the kermess would take place. We began to sell at midday during the luch. Dinnertimes are so important to Chinese., they are punctual at dinnertimes just as at other things. So at the lunch time before dining hall became crowded. It was like a bazaar. So we began to call out students to buy something for earthquake victims. Chinese people of course felt more sorry than we foreigners. So when they saw us as tried to doing something for victims, they were appreciated and didn’t hesitated to give more money for the things that had less value. They gave 10 yuan for a small piece of cake or gave 200 yuan for a souvenir for instance. During the selling, some teachers also gave us back, their help made our work eaiser. When the time arrived to mid-afternoon, we already sold all of things we had. We didn’t expect to finish up the things in such a short time but thanks God we did it.

The end of day we turned 1000 yuan into 5000 yuan. That was a good job. Later on we gathered all of money and went to donation center all together. After delivering money by hand, we got back to dorm and our hearts were at ease because we gave a helping hand to earthquake victims as volunteers. The donation center gave us a plaquet in order to thank us. But I think we didn’t deserve that plaquet because the things we did should be done already. I still want to thank for kindness of Chinese people, and always try to pray for them. God forbid another such disaster again!