Almost one year since earthquake and still no progress of rebuilding towns

Last year on April 25, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Himalayan country with its epicenter in Lamjung District, approximately 81 kilometers northwest of the capital, Kathmandu. On May 12, a second magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck the district of Dolakha. The Nepal government categorized 14 districts as severely affected. The two earthquakes killed 9,000 people and made one million Nepalis homeless. On April 25 last year, Kaanchi Tamang’s Ramechhap house was completely flattened. Though she escaped harm at the time because she was in a Buddhist temple, her only child, a teenaged boy, was badly injured. “Both of us survived with nothing. We had only the clothes on our back,” she recalled. With the roads destroyed and no public transport running, Kaanchi, with the help of other villagers, carried her son and walked for three days to reach Kathmandu’s Chuchepati Camp. Close to one year later, Kaanchi and her son are still living under a tarpaulin in Chuchepati Camp. Though her son has recovered and is now working as an apprentice painter, painting Buddhist deities on silk, also known as thangkas, she has little hope of returning to Ramechhap.