“He was in the army. We were completely smitten with each other and eloped. We had four beautiful children before he got posted to Kathmandu and got involved with someone else. Now the only time he speaks to me is to fight with me. He says I was whoring around the village and that the children are not his. He doesn’t help with their education, he doesn’t provide for anything, and he took away the relief money the government gave after the earthquake.”
“My daughter was born with a disability. Since my husband died 20 years ago, it has been me and my daughter against the world.
“Being a woman in this society is difficult. As a woman, you are born with the responsibility of a family. Your life begins and ends with the family. I lost my house and everything inside it in the earthquake. Like the rest, I stay in a temporary tarpaulin tent. I can’t go anywhere to work because there is a constant fear that anyone can enter it and my daughter won’t be able to fend for herself because of her mental impairment. I have no sense of security. I am scared of this generation. I am scared of the men.
“As woman in this village, I have no rights. I haven’t received the 15,000 NPR that was pledged to every family that lost their homes. All the times I went to the local authorities, they gave me a list of excuses. Then they told me I can’t receive any money because I only have a daughter, and there is no point in getting relief as I don’t have a son. Now I have started believing my daughter is a burden to me. But neither can I kill her, nor can I throw her away.“
“My husband moved to Qatar in 2010 with the hope of finding a good job to support our family of five children, but he does not send any money home to assist with our children’s education. I lost my house in the earthquake, where I could have raised my children and given them the life they deserved. Instead, I struggle to make ends meet. My husband hasn’t spoken to me in all the years since he moved there. Neither has he inquired about our well-being after the quake or sent any money to rebuild our home. I don’t know what he is doing. I don’t even know if he is alive or dead.”
Photo: Ritu Panchal
“I have been working and living in this hotel for the past 15 years. I am the only security guard here. I want to be with my family but if I don’t work, there won’t be food on the table nor money to rebuild my home. Living away from them is not easy. It gets very lonely. All the staff members go back to their homes while I have to sleep in my quarters. I am alone at night, alone in the day, and shall be alone for as long as I work here.”
Photo: Namita Rao
Dashain, the longest and most auspicious festival on the Nepali calendar, came to an end early this week. It was largely a subdued affair, particularly for those who lost their houses in the earthquake six months ago. Chris Maxted recorded how people in Gorkha—one of the severely affected areas, where many now live in temporary shelters—celebrated the 15-day festival.
“This Dashain festival is a sad one for many,” said Kshitiz Paudel, Medical Director at the rural Amppipal Hospital, Gorkha. “But there are also a great number of people who feel they still have a reason to celebrate and give thanks.” This time of year sees families travelling, often great distances, to be with loved ones for the undisputed high point of the Nepali calendar. But with many village houses deemed unfit for habitation, the people living in makeshift shelters have marked the first Dashain since the earthquake as a time for reflection.
Little Saroj Bhujel, 8, of Malatagaira was watching cartoons on his bed when the earthquake struck, destroying his house. “Everything is ruined. We are all living in tents,” he said. ”It is not the same anymore and Dashain is not a celebration this year.”
His mother, Bhagbati Thapa, as matriarch of the family, receives kinfolk from far and wide to bestow tika, a significant blessing of good fortune for the coming year. “This is an important tika for us,” added Krishna. “We have to hope for the future.” Their house may be irreparably damaged, but it was still put to good use by the thirty friends and relatives who congregated outside in its shade to eat, chat and play games. For this Dashain, as in previous years, the hills of Gorkha resound with drumming, singing and laughter well into the early hours.
After healing the initial fractures, cuts and bruises caused by the earthquake, at Amppipal Hospital they have seen a lot of post-traumatic stress cases among the farming communities in that part of Gorkha. “They just need someone to talk to. I have counselled some very anxious farmers who are unsure about what the coming season will bring,” said Paudel. “But the Nepali people are resilient. They will work together to find a way.”
Villagers apportioning buffalo meat. During Dashain, outside every Hindu house, the ground is first sanctified and then either a buffalo or a goat is sacrificed. Eventually, the meat is used for the preparation of a big feast.
Devi Pokharel of Phalam Khani waits by the side of the road with her goat, for a crowded bus to take them the dusty 150km to Kathmandu. Normally her whole family returns to her village for the festival. “Now my house is gone, and I have to get to the city because no-one will come here,” she added. “It is far, and very tiring for me. The fuel problem means it is expensive to travel now and there is very little room on the bus. Without cooking gas in the city I have to pay someone else 2000 rupees (US$20) to butcher and prepare the goat for the feast. If others would have come here, we could have done everything ourselves.”
Chris Maxted is a former schoolteacher from the UK, now a private tutor in Hong Kong. A regular visitor to Nepal, he was in the Gorkha district as a volunteer for the Gorkha Foundation.
“The main problem in Nepal and other developing countries is that we have no preparedness plan in case of a disaster. We have no emergency relief material here. We have no proper law and system that addresses the disaster. When the earthquake hit Gorkha, we started collecting tarpaulin, but there was no tarpaulin in the market. We just collected 200 pieces from the entire Gorkha bazaar and there were no more. How can shelters be made without tarpaulins? There was very little rice and biscuits to distribute to the victims. In Chile, there was an earthquake measuring 8.3 magnitude where 14 people were killed. Here we had a 7.8 and 10,000 were killed. Earthquake itself did not kill the people but it was the structure. A government support system, disaster management committee, and preparedness plan are all necessary for surviving a disaster.”
Photo: Namita Rao
Submerged in the political wrangling over its new constitution and the furore surrounding the fuel shortage in Nepal lies an imminent, far severe crisis for the thousands of earthquake survivors living in the higher reaches of the Himalayan nation.
Winter is coming and they have no real shelter.
“We are in a race against time to reach 84,000 people with vital supplies before snow sets in,” says Iolanda Jacquemet of the World Food Programme, which leads the United Nations Logistics Cluster, the agency responsible for coordinating relief operations in the country. “Earthquake-affected populations at high altitudes will be cut off from the world in about 3-4 weeks.”
In the last fortnight, across Nepal, earthquake relief has suffered severely. Protests by ethnic groups in the Tarai region near the Indian border over their underrepresentation in Nepal’s newly enacted constitution resulted in a pile-up of supply trucks from India, leading to a severe fuel shortage in the country. The Dashain festival, when most Nepalis travel home to celebrate with families, began yesterday, and has accentuated the need for mobility, placing further pressure on the already squeezed resources available for relief work.
“We have used the last drop of diesel available to distribute food,” says Jacquemet. “Fuel for choppers will expire in one week. We are 30 per cent late on our distributions as of today.”
The situation is particularly serious for those in the hilly, remote areas of Gorkha and Sindhupalchok, where temperatures dip to below zero. Supplies can only reach these communities through a combination of off-road vehicles, porters and mules. WFP has one month’s worth of food relief supplies ready on the ground. But the lack of diesel has meant distributions to some 224,000 people have been severely disrupted, says Jacquemet.
Women for Human Rights founder Lily Thapa is concerned her organisation will not be able to finish distributing supplies before the winter sets in. Photo: Patrick Ward
Survivors face the prospect of a winter in open tents in the lower reaches as well. Sudarshan Shrestha from Save the Children spoke of how his organisation had promised goods and supplies to several communities before Dashain, and how that commitment could not be kept. If relief work does not pick up momentum quickly, he says, “we could could end up with a double humanitarian crisis”.
In Chhoprak, a remote village in the Gorkha district, where 1,504 of the 1,531 houses were destroyed by the earthquake, the Nepali NGO Women for Human Rights faces a similar, broken promise. Most households live in temporary shelters without proper windows or doors, and WHR is concerned that supplies such as solar lights, winter clothes and blankets will not get dispersed in time.
“We have distributed 8,000 items over the past two months,” says WHR founder Lily Thapa. “We still have 10,000 more to distribute.”
The fuel crisis has also pushed up the cost of distributing relief for NGOs. “Usually the private vehicles we hire to take goods from Kathmandu to Gorkha cost around NPR 22,000 [approximately £138],” says Bisheshta Shrestha, an aid worker at WHR. “That has doubled right now. Local transport in Gorkha is even more expensive.”
Further, NGOs face the prospect of losing donor support if they do not meet agreed objectives. “If you don’t finish your work within the deadline, you have to find another funding source,” says Ram Hari Adhikari, who works for Mission East, a Danish NGO. “It’s the same story for all the NGOs.”
Adhikari works in Sindhupalchok, the district worst affected by the earthquake, building community toilets and hygiene facilities. That work has been hampered by the unavailability of cement, sand, and other construction materials. In addition, the fuel crisis has had severe economic and social impacts on the communities in the district.
In Sindhupalchok, the district worst affected by the earthquake, thousands still live in temporary shelters. This is one such camp in Bahrabise, close to the Chinese border. Photo: Patrick Ward
“Many people working in the transportation industry are jobless at the moment. Those selling goods which come from India, like milk and vegetables, are also suffering,” Adhikari says. “After the earthquake, schools closed for two months. Now, schools have been disrupted again, so children can’t finish their courses this academic year.”
In the southern plains of the Tarai region too, NGOs are facing issues. Relief has been disrupted by the turbulence caused by the Madhesi and Tharu protesters calling for amendments to Nepal’s new constitution. An EU delegation to Nepal last week issued a statement expressing concern about the effects of the current situation on “the poorest segments of the population, including in the Tarai”. General strikes have crippled everyday life in the Tarai for the past few months; curfews were imposed and many schools suspended classes.
“In the past weeks we’ve had to temporarily close operations in six districts, in the interests of the safety of our staff,” says Sudarshan Shrestha. The Nepal Red Cross faced several incidents of vandalism. In one incident, an ambulance was set on fire and an injured patient killed.
The UN Logistics Cluster has now requested the government for priority access to fuel. But Rameshwar Dangal, head of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Disaster Management Division, is doubtful it will be approved immediately.
“We have a huge crisis due to Dashain,” he says. “I think the government will prioritise providing fuel to public transport and private vehicles.”
At this point, like the rest of the nation, aid agencies can only wait for the situation to improve. But time is running out fast. “Even if the situation improved tomorrow,” says Sudarshan Shrestha, “it would take us a week or more to get back on our feet.”
