On a quiet spring afternoon in 2015, Jack Stefanowski and his wife Christel were sharing a lunch with their children, Emmanuel and Hannah, in an apartment in Lalitpur District, just south of Kathmandu. The meal was meant to be a simple outing before a planned family excursion, but the ground beneath them began to tremble with a force that would soon reshape the city.
A Narrow Escape in Lalitpur
The quake registered a magnitude of 7.9, a tremor so powerful that it killed more than 4,000 people across Nepal and left countless others homeless. In the seconds that followed, the apartment shook violently, forcing the Stefanowski family to flee into the street as aftershocks continued to reverberate.
With the building unsafe, the family sought shelter in a nearby earthquake‑resistant structure owned by friends. The makeshift refuge offered a brief haven amid the chaos, allowing them to survive the immediate danger while the city grappled with power outages and broken infrastructure.
Football on Shaky Ground
As the dust settled, Stefanowski, who had been appointed head coach of the Nepal national team, faced an unexpected setback. The stadiums earmarked for the South Asian Football Federation Championship were damaged, forcing the squad to suspend training and relocate to temporary facilities.
In interviews after the disaster, Stefanowski reflected on how the catastrophe had brought strangers together, turning strangers into lifelines. He also emphasized the broader need for international assistance to rebuild not only homes but also the dreams of a nation eager to recover on the world stage.