“Richer people have already left the camp. But whenever they hear about the distribution of new relief material, they come back. They do not participate in any kind of community work. But they show up whenever a new face appears in the camp.”
Photo: Pratik Rana
“Engineers pasted red stickers on our house, marking it unsafe. But we repaired it on our own. We had to move back in because it was difficult to live under a tin roof once the winter began. I am not sure if the house is safe now or what will happen if there is another earthquake. We live in fear. All I can do is pray to the lord to keep my family safe.”
Photo: Deepa Poudyal
“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.”
“We lost two houses in the earthquake. Our original home in Ikudol and our rented house in Badhikel. We spent five miserable days under the open sky. When we asked for help from our Village Development Committee, they told us to request it from the place we moved to. When we asked here, they said we should ask our original VDC. So we fell between the cracks and received nothing. We managed to buy zinc sheets and begged our neighbours for the bamboo and wood we needed. Now, my parents, my sister and I live under one zinc roof. This single room is our bedroom, kitchen, sitting room and store room. It is too hot in summer, too cold in winter. Once, I woke up to find a snake slithering in my bed. But we’ll probably stay here for four or five years. I’m determined to work hard, earn money, and build a new house for my family.”
Photo: Naomi Mihara
“I don’t know how many years it will take for Nepal to recover. I feel reconstruction is going at a snail’s pace. Recovery is not a miracle; it is gained only by action. But action is not happening here. In 2008, I experienced the 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, China. Sichuan was totally destroyed. Nearly 70,000 people lost their lives, but the recovery took only a few years. There was such a strong crisis management team, government coordination and unity among citizens. The Chinese people were very proud of their government. It touched my heart a lot. I wonder when the time will come when we in Nepal can feel the same way towards our government.”
Photo: Mandira Dulal
“I never expected this building to be so dangerous,” said Tenzin Paljor (above). Standing in the crumbled remains of a weaving hall, the secretary of the Jawalakhel Handicraft Centre looks dejected. The centre, which has played a pivotal role in the lives of the Tibetan refugees living next to it, is now unusable.
“We called four or five engineers to check the building,” he said. “Each one of them said that it needs to be demolished. The irony is that it is too expensive to even demolish this building.”
We had stumbled upon the centre walking through Kathmandu in an effort to avoid travelling on the overcrowded buses. Rows of Tibetan prayer flags billowing in the breeze told us there was a Tibetan settlement close by. On entering a large compound, we realised we had walked straight into the centre we had read about before coming to Nepal. From the outside, despite the deep cracks creeping across the walls, the building appeared intact. But once you entered, the scene changed.
Pillars of the building have sunk into the ground. Photo: Namita Rao
The main centre, which used to be thrumming with industrious Tibetan weavers, is now a striking reflection of the devastation caused by the quake. Our footsteps echoed in the deserted building. Rows and rows of broken pillars greeted us, many of which had sunk into the ground. Everywhere we look, we could see red brickwork under exposed patches of plaster—some bricks missing, others surrounded by webs of cracks. The remnants of the thriving weaving hall could be seen in the forms of tattered yarn, balls of threads lying here and there, and tall weaving machines, now abandoned.
“It was fortunate that the earthquake was on Saturday,” said Paljor. “If it had been a working day, a huge loss of lives might have occurred.”
Outside, we met Choezin, a store manager who has been working at the centre for more than 15 years. She recalled the first time she saw the centre after the earthquake. “Those two months, living in the tents pitched on our football ground, and then coming back to the weaving centre to see it broken down, felt like being in a nightmare I had not woken up from,” she said.
Choezin lives in the refugee settlement next to the centre, which is home to around 780 first- and second-generation Tibetans. In 1959, around 30,000 Tibetans fled to India, Nepal and Bhutan along with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, following the Chinese occupation in Tibet. This meant that the Tibetans had to start their lives all over again in a new land.
These store managers have been working for more than 15 years at the handicraft centre. Photo: Ritu Panchal
“The first 300 to 400 Tibetans who arrived in Nepal by 1960 lived in the Jawalakhel camp, which was funded by foreign aid and relief programmes,” said Paljor. “In 1961, with the help of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the International Red Cross Society, we built the Jawalakhel Handicraft Centre.” The centre allowed the Tibetans to retain their identity and culture, and served as an economic avenue to sustain the community organically.
The carpet business was a big success. The JHC introduced this unique craft to Nepal and it also became famous elsewhere in the world. As Paljor showed us around the camp, he told us that the weaving has always been exclusive and of top quality, with products ranging from 60 and 100 knots carpets, shawls, pashminas and handicraft items. For decades now, the centre has been weaving exquisite carpets using time-honoured Tibetan designs as well as fresh contemporary patterns. The intricate carpets come in dark hues, muted pastels, earthy ochres and enduring neutrals adorned with traditional iconography like the endless knot, mandalas and the Tibetan landscape.
“But for the last four years the business hasn’t been very good,” said Thupten Dolma, another store manager. “There are too many new carpet stores and factories in the same area which are run by single families. Their carpets are cheaper as they use lower quality material. The profit they make sustains only one family. On the other hand, the JHC makes the best quality carpets which are invariably more expensive as they have to sustain an entire community of 200 Tibetan families.”
Despite the economic crunch faced by the centre in the recent years, it provides free education to the children, a kindergarten for the younger kids, support to the elderly people and handicapped, and medical assistance and housing to those who do not have homes.
After the quake destructed the weaving hall, workers have had to move to this cramped storage room. Photo: Namita Rao
Due to the destruction of the weaving hall, the weavers have had to move to an old, cramped storage room to carry out their work. “Work has become slow and has totally changed,” said Dolma. “They have to take more tea and water breaks to cool down and their faces become very red. The old hall was big with a lot of space to move around. Despite that, we are happy to work and be busy.”
There are now 60 women weavers along with administrative staff, store managers, salesmen, and packaging units at the centre. Even though the centre was not functional for two-and-a-half months, it still paid minimum wages to the workers during that time. According to their estimates, it will take three to four months just to demolish the buildings and around NPR 90 million (around £560,000) to rebuild it. The thought of raising this amount is an overwhelming one, especially as the community has little means of raising funds to cover the entire cost, given their status in the country.
While the Nepalese government treated Tibetans who arrived in Nepal before 1989 as refugees, those who arrived more recently have no legal status here. They cannot own property, be legally employed, pursue higher education, carry a refugee card, or have a passport. Because of its economic dependency on China, Nepal has come under political pressure from Beijing to restrain Tibetan activity—which has placed a huge humanitarian and economic burden on this community. After the earthquake, and with no legal status, Tibetans are not ‘eligible’ for any compensation—nor have they received any from the government. In such a scenario, it is next to impossible for the centre to raise funds on its own. Paljor said all they have managed so far are a few private donations of small amounts.
“It is a very hard time for us right now,” he said. “But I am hopeful that some way will come out.”
“For the past 15 years, I have lived in a rented room in Kathmandu with my husband. Now we live in this camp. I want to forget the earthquake, but even now I am scared by nightmares. I saw people die in front of me. My husband tells me not to be so afraid, but my heart beats fast even when small aftershocks come, or when people joke about the earth shaking. It was only when I got the opportunity to paint here at the camp that I became more calm. I immediately felt better. When I picked up the brush again, I remembered my school days. When I was in fourth grade, my teacher taught me how to paint the danphe [the Himalayan monal, Nepal’s national bird]. In the village where I grew up, every day started with seeing this bird. It was my friend. I used to love painting it, and my teacher would give me sweets for being the fastest in the class. But I couldn’t continue with my classes. My parents arranged my marriage when I was 13. Now, painting these pictures, I forget all the tensions of the past few months. I become lost somewhere in the hills and mountains and jungles of my childhood in Solukhumbu.”
Photo: Naomi Mihara
“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
“Every house in our village collapsed during the earthquake,” said Ram Sharan Parajuli. “It’s a miracle no one died.” We were standing at the spot where his home used to be, now reduced to mounds of stones and piles of wooden beams. “There used to be four houses here, but now it is all gone.”
The 24-year-old physics student had travelled from Kathmandu to his home for Dashain, the longest and most auspicious festival on the Nepali calendar. This year, along with the other villagers of Chimling Beshi, he was celebrating it in a temporary shelter. It seemed a bittersweet coincidence that Dashain – which celebrates the victory of good over evil – overlapped with the six month anniversary of the worst natural disaster to hit Nepal in 80 years.
We had set out for Sindhupalchok earlier that day on a bus packed with men, women and children wearing their best clothes, foreheads adorned with red tikas, on their way to visit relatives. Our overloaded bus climbed into the hills, swinging perilously around the corners of the twisting roads. The road journey felt dangerous, but when you look at the small, fragile houses on the hillside, many of them partially or completely destroyed, you realise that precariousness is a part of everyday life in this part of Nepal.
Chimling Beshi is one of many villages in Sindhupalchok district that was destroyed by the earthquake in April. Every house suffered severe damage and was rendered uninhabitable. The district suffered more devastation than any other, with around 3,500 deaths and nearly 64,000 houses – around 90 per cent –listed as ‘fully damaged’. The village is part of Mankha, the second most badly affected Village Development Committee in the district, where more than 7,500 people required immediate assistance after the earthquake. Six months after the earthquake, we were on our way to spend the night in the village, to see how life had changed for its inhabitants since the disaster.
This is the new settlement of Chimling Beshi. All the houses in this village were damaged in the earthquake. Photo: Ritu Panchal
AFTER WE CLIMBED a steep path from the nearby town of Khadichaur, rows of glinting metal roofs peeking out of lush foliage came into view. The small shacks were built by the villagers within a week of the earthquake, using materials salvaged from their ruined houses and bamboo from the forest.
“After the earthquake, the rainy season started and people were scared of landslides,” said Ram, as we navigated a steep path. “It was very hot and we had to carry large tin sheets two at a time from our old house.”
Below the six rows of tin houses stood three temporary school buildings for the younger children, built by NGOs shortly after the earthquake. Other than 25 kg of rice per household and some tin sheets, the villagers received little in the way of relief goods. It was difficult not to feel a sense of sadness at what had happened to this community. And yet, Chimling Beshi was full of life. Children were playing cards, elders were placing tikas onto the foreheads of their younger relatives, and the villagers had built a giant swing (called ping in Nepali) for Dashain.
But the scene was very different at the site of the old village, which stood a short trek away, on an adjacent hill. Within six months, the jungle had consumed what remained of the village. The trails were hidden under a blanket of moss and grass, and creepers and wild flowers grew on the broken walls of what used to be houses. It was hard to imagine that the same place was a thriving, sustainable community, and that these ruins used to be homes, which echoed with laughter. Babies were born here, elders had died here – but now nothing remained except for the ghost of a settlement.
In six months, nature has taken over the remains of the houses at the former site of the village of Chimling Beshi. Photo: Ritu Panchal
We clambered over rocks that had plunged down the hillside to reach four families who had decided to build temporary shelters next to the remains of their houses, rather than move. Weren’t they afraid of landslides?
“During the rainy season, I can’t sleep,” said Saraswoti Poudel. “But we didn’t want to leave our animals and our land.”
Their biggest concern was having better shelter, which was too costly for them to build on their own. The yearning for a proper home would become a familiar tale that we would hear again and again during our stay.
It was beginning to get dark as we made the hike back to the new village. That evening, Radha, Ram’s mother, prepared a meal of lentils, rice and potatoes for us, all gathered from the farmland. Subsistence farming has become more difficult since the family moved to the new location, as they now have to walk further to gather food from their land, which lies near their old home.
As we ate our meal outside the shelter, we began to shiver. The day and night time temperatures in Nepal fluctuate considerably. Earlier on, it had been searingly hot; but now, there was a harsh chill. We could only imagine how cold it might get in the winter, which was fast approaching. The tin sheets would provide little insulation to the villagers.
Inside the shelter, two chipped but sturdy double beds occupied most of the space, in addition to two cupboards and a dresser. A line of colourful clothes were hung up across one wall. We slept that night in thick blankets provided by our host, the blare of TV sets from the adjacent houses clearly audible.
THE NEXT MORNING, we woke early to the sounds of a village beginning to stir. The clatter of pots and pans, the clamour from the radio, and the smell of burning charcoal filled the air. We could see villagers occupied with their morning chores. Several of them were making their way down the tapering trail, towards their old settlement to tend to their land and animals, to pick vegetables. Many were making multiple trips to carry water home from a remote tap<
“We are compromising on even our basic needs,” said Nikesh Parajuli. “So building a house is a distant dream.” The 16-year-old’s biggest concern was that he found it difficult to study: being in cramped clusters, the settlement offered little space and he found it difficult to concentrate amidst all the noise. “I don’t even dare to hope for that here,” he said.
Nikesh Parajuli, a high school student, finds it difficult to find time or space to study in the temporary shelter. Photo: Naomi Mihara
Many villagers were hoping that their situation would be resolved soon. “For the time being, we don’t mind living here because it’s just temporary,” said Subash Battarai, a 21-year-old student, who had returned home for the festival>
How could they be sure, we wondered? “Hope is everything,” said Ram, simply.
Despite six months having passed, the villagers have no choice but to hold onto the promise made by the government back in April, of 200,000 Rs (around
When we broached the topic of politics, the sense of frustration was palpable. So far, households have only received 15,000 Rs (£95), a tiny fraction of the cost of rebuilding a house. One resident, Madan Krishna Adhikari, told us he had already spent that amount clearing the rubble of his old house.
“The government is not taking our problems seriously,” he said. “Even the plans of the earthquake-proof houses they proposed have not been released yet.” His biggest needs were getting basic construction materials, such as cement and iron rods, and the capital needed to build the house, he said.
Balkumari Parajuli and her granddaughter, Dikshika, who now lives in Kathmandu with her parents. Photo: Naomi Mihara
As we walked past the remains of another house, a sudden jolt shook the ground. A small girl ran past us into the arms of her grandmother, who had just emerged from a tin shack next to the rubble. It was the first time we had felt an aftershock in Nepal. But they occur frequently in this part, the villagers told us, providing a constant reminder that the next earthquake could happen anytime.
The elderly woman, Bal Kumari Parajuli, told us that before the earthquake her whole family had lived together in the house. But her son and daughter-in-law had decided to move with their young children to Kathmandu shortly afterwards. The children have returned to celebrate Dashain. But the earthquake and the destruction of her family home have traumatised Bal Kumari.Every morning she wakes up to the sight of her broken house, which is a perpetual reminder of what happened.
“I can’t sleep at night,” she said. “I miss my family and I am still worried about earthquakes.”
Like so many villages in Nepal, Chimling Beshi is a community in limbo, waiting for help that may or may not arrive so that they can rebuild their homes. Normality has been disrupted, but even these circumstances have become normal for the villagers now.
“Earthquakes come and go,” said Anant Kumari Adhikari, who allowed the other villagers to build their shelters on her land. “It has become like a habit.”
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.
