The first birthday of Pasang, the 'son of the earthquake'
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It was 6:11 in the morning and Ashta Ganga Sherpa, seven months pregnant, was preparing breakfast for her two young daughters. It was not in her plans to have to flee from an earthquake. Much less give birth. Ashta Ganga went into premature labor as the roof of her house collapsed on her. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through her country as she brought her child into the world.
Ashta Ganga, a single mother, gave birth to her third child in the rubble and without assistance. She cut the umbilical cord and ran with her baby and her two girls to a makeshift refugee camp in Kathmandu. Her neighbors gave him a nickname right away: “The boy's name is Pasang, but here we all know him as bhuichampa. It is the name of a flower that is born in complicated places. And we joked that one of the shakes was the one that expelled him out of his mother's womb, ”says a neighbor.
Chuchchepathi refugee campDavid L. Frías
Pasang will celebrate his first birthday on Monday. And he will do it in the same cabin where his mother sought shelter on April 25, 2015. One year has passed since that disaster just when Ecuador has suffered an earthquake of the same intensity (7.8) taking the lives of almost 600 persons. In Nepal, fatalities numbered more than 8,600. And a year after the earthquake, little Pasang and his family are still homeless. Like them, 1,700 people still live in shacks made of wood, fabric and sheet metal, crowded together in subhuman conditions. No one in the Nepalese government has visited them yet.
The luxury next to the misery
The last large refugee camp in Kathmandu is located in the middle of the city, in a huge unpaved vacant lot in the Chuchchepati neighborhood. It is right next to the luxurious Hyatt Regency hotel, where famous people like the Queen of England stay when they visit Nepal. A few meters further on is the Boudhanath, the most touristic Buddhist temple in the capital. It is in full reconstruction, full of scaffolding and open to the public upon payment of 3 euros.
By contrast, no one has passed through the camp yet. Government and authorities continue to ignore the refugees. There are still 250 huts left standing, numbered by the international NGOs that helped build them. 500 were installed. In some of them up to 12 people are overcrowded.
Chickens, goats and sacred cows circulate among the dusty alleys of the wasteland. Meanwhile, the children beg for alms or run in search of tourists who will give them a few rupees to pose for the photo. The women wash their clothes in basins and dump the dirty water into clumsily constructed canals, because there is no sewage system.
victims of corruption
Nepal, a country of 30 million people that separates India from China, is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. Democracy arrived in 1991, but failed to change the stagnant structures of the state. Not even the ten years of civil war (1996-2006) managed to liquidate the prevailing patronage regime.
In the camp they are aware of the political situation and nobody is surprised by institutional oblivion. The government used the money sent by international aid after the 2015 earthquake to fix the tourist enclaves. The airport area, the hotel district (Thamel) or the main trekking routes that take thousands of tourists to the Himalayas each year have received most of the investment. Chuchchepathi is uninteresting.
A girl cries between the cabinsDavid L. Frías
In the camp, those affected by the earthquake continue to depend on charity and NGOs that have not yet left the country. The living conditions are undignified. There are twelve toilets for 1,700 people and the queues that form first thing in the morning are very long. The water is obtained from huge water tanks installed by Unicef, which also built a precarious water supply and filtering network. The inhabitants crowd each day in front of the tanks to get supplies.
Work, study and return to the cabin
Little Pasang walks around the camp in the arms of his seven-year-old sister Ranju. "My brother already knows how to say hello," she says smiling as she asks the boy to say hello. The boy puts his palms together, as if praying, imitating the gesture that Nepalese make to say “namasté” (hello).
Ranju explains to me that between her and her little sister they take care of the child these days, because her mother works for her and will stay away from it for a few days. And it is that this is not a refugee camp to use, like those established in Europe to welcome Syrian migrants. In Chuchchepathi, routines continue as before the earthquake; many of the inhabitants have jobs and in the morning they put on a suit, leave their precarious cabins and go to work.
Hundreds of young students also reside in the camp. When their classes are over, they gather at the doors of their cabins to do their homework and review the lesson. They have to hurry because the only light they have is the sun. When evening falls they must stop studying. The smallest, meanwhile, have a tiny nursery built with sticks and brown cloth. Classes are held in the morning for the same reason.
the inhabitants are crowded inside the shacksDavid L. Frías
Next to the nursery there is another ersatz training center. It is a blue tent, larger than the others. There, several social workers paid by foreign NGOs come a couple of times a week to instruct women who have no trade: “They teach us to sew and embroider. But they come very rarely. It would be very good for us if they came by more often, because we don't want handouts. What we want is to work and have a house like any other person”, explains another woman.
Speculation and neglect of NGOs
“The NGOs helped us, but many of them have already left,” laments Bijay, an old man who begs on the outskirts of the camp. He lives with his son, his daughter-in-law and his five grandchildren in a miserable cabin of ten square meters. “We can barely move inside. And the worst thing is that we don't know how much more time we are going to spend here”, he says. A year has passed and international emergencies are in other parts of the planet. Nepal is no longer in fashion.
“Those who have managed to save enough money have already left here and live in houses. Those of us who remain here are the poorest”, says old Bijay, who assures that real estate speculation has also increased after the earthquake. “Before it was much easier to find a cheap house. Now they tell us that there are no free flats, that there are many destroyed and that they are more expensive”, he complains.
Water causes kidney problems
At the entrance to the camp there is a small tent where a Nepalese social worker tries to distribute the aid that is arriving by the dropper. The first thing she does when receiving a foreigner is point to a sign on which she says: "We need food, tents and lights." She then adds: "also medicine, they forgot to put it."
It is one of the main shortcomings of this camp. Many residents suffer from health problems, mainly kidney problems. The water they drink is not properly filtered and affects the elderly. “Almost all the elderly go to the hospital every day to do dialysis” explains the social worker “and obviously they walk. They have to walk for more than half an hour. If they haven't even given them a house, who is going to provide them with an ambulance?”
hunger and religion
There are also people who are hungry. A woman named Raj, a 33-year-old mother of five, shows me her tiny garden of no more than a couple of square meters. She has planted cucumbers and broccoli. "My husband does not work and what the garden gives us is not enough for the whole family. Sometimes we change some vegetables for eggs or rice. Other times a neighbor kills a chicken and gives us some meat. But it is not enough; we go hungry I have even thought about eating cow, although I will not do it because our religion does not allow it," confesses Raj, who is Hindu like more than 80% of the country's inhabitants. Several cows graze peacefully in front of her cabin.
Raj carries in her arms Prakash, her five-month-old baby, whom she gave birth to at the camp. "There were many of us who had children here after the earthquake. Some died because the living conditions here are not good for babies. Mine is lucky."
neighborhood tensions
Coexistence in the village is not easy either. The camp is divided into two areas, separated by a dirt road. Those who live in the northern sector (the furthest from the door), have numerous disputes with the rest of the neighbors. Sangita, an elderly woman who lives in this area, justifies herself: "All the aid that comes in goes to the residents of the southern sector because they are closer to the door," she shouts furiously as she weaves a blanket on a manual loom.
A girl washes buckets at the door of her cabin David L. Frías
The social worker at the door denies these accusations. “I am the one in charge of distributing these aids and I distribute them equally. I have no interest in benefiting anyone. I don't even live here. What happens is that they need an enemy on which to vent their anger and they do it against me”, she says with resignation.
There are also neighbors who complain that there are established people in the camp but they have houses. "They do it so that they can give them another residence when the government decides to help us," argues the old woman from the northern sector. The social worker darkens her face when she is asked about this question. “A year has passed and no one from the government has come here, not even to visit. I don't think they're going to give anyone a house."
fear of the monsoon
Suddenly, the sky becomes cloudy, four drops fall, and the children stampede into their cabins. Three young people, who work as clandestine taxi drivers aboard their motorcycles, look at the sky with fear. “We are going to have the problem starting next month, when the heavy rains begin. The monsoon will come and, just like last year, the wind and water will wash away the tents.”
Little Pasang, oblivious to everything, keeps smiling and putting his palms together to greet the visitors. His sister Ranju remembers that “when it started to rain last year, the wind blew away our tent and my mother would get on top of the baby to protect him from the water”. He watches his brother smile and says, “He is happy because he has never lived in a house. I want to get out of here."
The first birthday of Pasang, the 'son of the earthquake' is a report produced in collaboration with Ayuda en Acción.