On May 7, 2015, I got to Bimire village in Shyampatti VDC of Kavre District – it was my first field visit to a village since the earthquake. I spent the first few hours surveying the damage in the central village, doing an initial needs assessment and organizing distribution of relief.

Bimire looked like it had been bombed inside-out, with its inhabitants’ lives and belongings on display – carefully painted pink walls exposed, posters of Bollywood movie stars ripped, beautifully carved windows and doors half broken. At one point the villagers gathered around to show me a newspaper. One man whose house was featured said, ‘Look miss. This is my house. It’s on the front page!’

Photo: Priyanka Bista

As I walked through the village, a woman signalled at me and asked if I wanted to visit her house. Apologizing for the distance I had to walk and the difficulty of the path she cautiously led me to a complex of homes, or what remained of it.

Here, I was introduced to an extended family of five female-headed households living together. Their husbands and sons had left for the Gulf. Here, they described their journey since the earthquake.

“On the first night of the earthquake, we camped in the forest under a tree, lighting a fire so tigers wouldn’t come. The next day it rained so we went to the village centre where we slept under a thin sheet of plastic with about 40 other people. Then, there was a storm and the few tents that remained were blown away so we returned. On the nights it didn’t rain we slept under the tree with a fire.” The granddaughter of the woman speaking interrupted, “But grandma has refused to sleep outside, she still sleeps on the first floor. You know, she’s very stubborn.”

Even in the second week of the earthquake, there was no indication that relief materials had reached Bimire. The women had managed to organize some help to demolish the second storey of one of their homes. They’d put a roof on it, and were relieved to have a space to sleep in.

“Tell me, where should I pose? What angle is better? Can you see my house properly?” Giggling, they gestured at me to take photos as they stood proudly, one by one, in front of what remained of their houses.

“Doesn’t grandma look really bright and beautiful?” her granddaughter asked. More giggles followed.

In their story, in the rubble, lie the stories of hundreds of villages and hundreds of thousands of villagers, mostly women who have been left to cope with the aftermath of the disaster. Their problems are of a practical nature – their livestock need fodder, they need firewood to stay safe at night, they need to salvage building materials from the ruins, they need to knock down their homes before they collapse, and they need to rebuild temporary shelters – first out of tarps, then out of tin, then wood – experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. There’s no time to grieve.

 “Monsoon is coming soon. We have to be ready.”

Photo: Priyanka Bista