Coming to grips
AFTERMATH: A NATION IN THE THROES OF SORROW
Armed with a resolute spirit, the people of Nepal are surviving from hand to mouth.
One week after disaster struck, travelling through the Nepalese city of Kathmandu it would be too easy to mistake the busy streets and reopening of stores as a sign of moving on.
As you travel deeper into the city and closer to the epicentre of last Saturday’s earthquake, it becomes clear that everything now is a matter of survival.
Outside an ancient Hindu temple that had been destroyed in the quake, locals watched as police and other residents passed one another bricks, trying to make sense of the devastation Mother Nature had left behind.
“We don’t know if there will be bodies, we hope not,” said a local businessman.
“But we don’t know … We just don’t know.”
He smiled, as if it would be impolite to show the pain, and said his good-byes.
Further into town, a security guard sat alongside a dog that was biding its time chewing on an old bone.
Asked if he was affected by the quake, the security guard shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“No … No, not like the other people. Some cracks in the house but no,” he said.
Sitting on the other side of the road was a young woman whose house was still standing but who had seen the devastation of the quake firsthand.
“There is so much trouble, so much trouble,” said Urmila Bhurtel, pictured, a local working at a foreign exchange store in Kathmandu.
Although Bhurtel and her immediate family were not physically affected by the quake, she said a visit to the epicentre left her heartbroken.
“There were two bodies, a mother and a baby. The mother was dead, the baby alive,” said Bhartel.
According to Bhartel, the baby was about two years old and crying, pulling on her mother.
“The baby was crying to its mother for food but the mother was dead.”
Bhurtel tried hiding her emotion behind an unconvincing smile but the sadness was evident.
“I can’t tell you… I don’t know…” she said, looking out into the dusty distance.
After taking a moment and tending to a customer, Bhurtel returned and showed pictures of her grandmother who was three years old when disaster struck 81 years ago.
Her grandmother’s surviving of the last major quake seemed to give Bhurtel hope, as did other disasters around the world.
“Haiti had it, the Philippines had it, and Pakistan. They are okay, yes?”
She searched for an answer, seemed to find it and then, another smile but again, not convincing enough to hide the sadness. See also page 18. – ANA