The long journey to recovery
Two years after an earthquake devastated Nepal, people still live in temporary shelters, barely getting by. Kirsty Lawrence witnesses their struggle, after the destruction.
As the earth beneath his feet began to settle, a single thought of family dominated Sukh Gurung’s mind: Are you still alive? Working as a porter, hired to carry bags in Tsum Valley with a group of tourists, all Gurug could do was stand and watch, and worry, as his world collapsed around him.
The 37-year-old walked back to his village through active and unstable landslides searching for his wife, two sons and daughter.
‘‘We had no idea. Was our family alive? Was my house destroyed? I was panicking a lot.’’
It was almost five days before he found them. They were alive. Fear turned to relief, but it was then the real hardship took hold.
Every house in the village had been destroyed, about 100 homes. It was the whole world for Gurung, but just a fraction of the 605,254 houses destroyed when a 7.8 earthquake struck on April 25, 2015, claiming close to 9000 lives.
The village knew no help was coming. They had to help themselves.
‘‘What we did was we took carpet and made a tent out of it,’’ Gurung says.
‘‘So for 60 days we stayed in that tent that we made out of carpet.’’
Then a relief organisation arrived and constructed temporary shelters out of steel for the village.
Two years on, the shelters remain, with no hope of building a more permanent home anytime soon.
Before the 2015 earthquake, Gurung could make about 50 thousand rupee (NZ $670) a trekking season.
Now, he is lucky to make half of that.
Gurung is not alone in this struggle. Countless Nepalis people are still living in temporary shelters. But life goes on. Gurung is just focusing on what he can do, not dwelling on what he can’t change.
Staring out into the mountains as a chilling wind whips through, he shares a joke with his porter companions, a big smile stretching from ear to ear.
His spirit isn’t broken. This is just life now.
Tourism plunged after the 2015 earthquake. It was a year before #Visitnepal began trending on Twitter, with concerted efforts to lure back international visitors.
Nepali Times editor Kunda Dixon says the hashtag was part of a campaign to revive Nepal through tourism.
He says they were trying to let people know the country was safe and the best way to help them bounce back was to inject their money straight into where it was needed – the people.
Aid money is held up in Government bureaucracy and even though statistics show tourist numbers are back to what they