WIREDGOV

“I held on to this and didn’t let go until the shaking stopped,” 

When the deadly 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal just before noon on 25 April, Ajay, barely 7 years old, escaped death by using his best instincts. “I held on to this and didn’t let go until the shaking stopped,”

Ajay explains as he grasps the pipe of the family’s biogas plant outside their home in Bhangar, a remote village of 15 households in Mahadevsthan Village Development Community, Kavre district, nearly 100 kilometres south of Kathmandu. “I cried a lot and heard everyone screaming, but I closed my eyes until the earthquake disappeared,” he says, looking at his mother, 30-year old Bhawani Danwar, who forces a smile.

The displaced families now live in tented camps. With the weather worsening, the tents often leak when it rains, which is now taking place every day. Parents are however more worried about the state of mind of their children, who often start crying with a slight shaking of the ground due to frequent aftershocks.

“Even a slight movement of the ground scares them, and we are doing everything to calm them,” says 40-year old Mangal Bahadur Danwar, who almost lost his 5-year old daughter Sushmita when she was trapped under a heap of debris after their two-story house collapsed. His friend Harka Danwar managed to pull her out in time. Today, his daughter is still traumatised and gets frightened at even a slight movement of the tent when the wind blows. “I don’t know how to bring her back to normal. We need help,” says Sushmita’s father. The children in the village walk everywhere together now, afraid to go anywhere alone.

Most of the families lost their cattle and cannot provide milk for the young children. The food supplies that farming families usually stockpile for six months are lying under the debris, unreachable. Food prices have skyrocketed. “We cannot afford to buy enough food, because we don’t have any money,” says a tearful 65-year-old Rita Danwar, showing us her destroyed house.Like all the parents in the village, she is worried about the impact of homelessness on the children, as they continue to endure the rainy weather and lack of proper food supply.

“When will we get our homes back?” asks 6-year-old daughter Bina Danwar, who wanders around in the debris of her house that she misses very much.

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