Providing shelter to people affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck Nepal on 25 April is a herculean task. Over half a million homes have been totally destroyed in Central Nepal, and a further 260 000 partially damaged. The challenge becomes even more intimidating when considering that a vast proportion of the devastated hamlets are not accessible by road, and many were cut off by the multiple landslides caused by the earthquake and numerous aftershocks. As the monsoon begins, it is urgent that everyone gets a roof over their head.
“You cannot imagine how relieved I am”, smiles a beaming Uttam Gurung, clearly pleased with the change of fortune that has come his way in the last few days. “I was so anxious these last weeks at the idea that the monsoon was coming, I didn’t know what to do. But now, I know that my elderly parents will at least have a proper place to stay”.
Five days earlier, Uttam Gurung received 16 corrugated iron sheets, thanks to a distribution organised by World Vision with funding from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO). Within a day, he gathered friends to help him replace the tarpaulins he had initially used as a roof for the makeshift shelter he built after his house was reduced to rubble. Given the huge demand for corrugated iron sheets since the earthquake hit and killed close to 9 000 people, these precious sheets are very hard to find.
In these remote parts of Gorkha district, in Central Nepal, access is an extra obstacle. Located barely a kilometre away from the epicentre of the earthquake, Uttam’s small village is a five-hour drive away from the nearest market, followed by an hour and half of arduous uphill trekking. This means that, even if Uttam could find and afford the iron sheets, their price would double by the time he would reach his doorstep, due to transport costs. And with the rains starting, the dirt roads get so muddy that it is unlikely that trucks will continue coming for very long.
Chuk Rana, from World Vision, knows these obstacles very well. Armed with four tractors, two jeeps and close to 20 men, it took him six days to deliver the sheets to Uttam’s village and surrounding hamlets. “The track is already dangerous to begin with, but with the rain it was a nightmare”, he says, recalling the number of times his team had to reduce the load, push, or simply turn back. “A colleague was sending me the weather forecast by sms, and I was trying to work accordingly. This means we were sometimes working in the middle of the night, to avoid the rain”.
After several failed attempts and two sleepless nights in the forest, the group eventually managed to reach four different distribution points from which all 454 households in the area could fetch their prized iron sheets. A huge relief for all, as in this area there is not a single house still standing. Each family also received 2kg of nails and sets of tools.
Family after family, smiles immediately lighten up the faces when asked about the delivery. “We were very surprised they managed to reach us all the way here; we thought that if anyone managed to bring us roofing material, we would need to carry it up from the road on our backs", says Dhankaji Pariyar, for whom such a scenario would have meant four to five three-hour trips to the valley below. That was without counting on Chuk Rana’s determination. “These people have such difficult lives surviving in these remote villages, and they have already gone through so much in the past few weeks, I didn’t want them to have to break their backs carrying such heavy loads up the mountain," he explains. "It was extremely challenging, but we didn’t give up, and in the end we got it done”. In the nick of time, as a landslide cut off access for days soon after.