Rebuilding the village of blacksmiths

Tired of waiting for aid to arrive, people in the village have started building houses themselves. (Source: Express photo by Vishal Srivastav)

The Rasaili family sits outside their crumbled home in Nayapati under Gokarneshwar municipality — about 10 km from Kathmandu district headquarters — surrounded by an old red sofa, wooden chairs and a pile of planks and bricks that were once their home.

As Lakshmi Rasaili, 19, and her sister Swastika Rasaili, 15, wait, their grandmother prepares a meal at the threshold of one of the rooms.

“We ran out when the earthquake struck. We are all okay, but we haven’t had any help so far from either the government or any NGO,” said Shivrani Rasaili, 51, their mother. On Saturday, exactly a week after the earthquake, her husband, a blacksmith, went to work for the first time. They were provided a roof and snacks by their neighbour Sunmaya Thing, 54, who also gave them a tarpaulin sheet and kept their utensils and other items at home to keep them safe.

“For two days we didn’t have anything to eat,” says their neighbour Raju Rasaili, 51. His four-year-old nephew, Rohan, was stuck under the rubble for a while before his mother Sarita Rasaili, who was working in the fields, pulled him out. They have vacated their house and now live without a roof. They, too, were helped by their neighbour Ramesh Shreshtha, 46, who gave them two kg of rice and some noodles. “We are poor. He is a blacksmith and can’t go to work daily as he has diabetes,” says Raju’s wife Suntali Bishwakarma, 50.

Nayapati is home to small-time blacksmiths and the houses are mostly old and made of sand, bricks, and wooden planks.

Down the muddy road, Kumar Lohar, 35, and the men of his extended family are installing a temporary residence. “The police came, took notes, and went away,” says Kumar. Next to them are two collapsed homes. They say that a local group of volunteers gave six kg rice to 18 houses in the locality, which helped them survive.

Kumar’s brother Ajay Lohar, 31, who had a house adjacent to Kumar’s, said that they’ll rebuild it on their own. Kumar’s uncle Vishnu Kumar, 37, said an Army truck came but it didn’t give them anything. Dol Bahadur Lama, 59, a local, said they are using the three tents reserved for social dos such as marriages. “People had pooled in money to buy the tents, so several families utilised them now,” he said.

Source:: Indian Express