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On 25 April I was standing outside my house with two of my children inside. I had no idea it was an earthquake. I went inside to get my children out. That’s when I realised it was an earthquake. Naïna, my husband, was on the roof, building the new house. He jumped off the roof onto the ground.

I was scared for three days. I lost awareness of what I was doing; I lost my memory of those moments. I couldn’t work. At night, there were 45 of us in the greenhouse next to the house. During the day, as soon as the ground moved, I’d jump. We didn’t sleep all night, we talked, we cried.

The first thing I did was get my children out of the house. They were crying and screaming.

According to Dan, everyone (many) thought that the earthquake was caused by the bad behaviour of the Nepalese. The gods were angry because of the politics, the civil war, the lack of respect for each other.
But Dan (and others) ‘knew’ that it was the earth that revolved around the sun, causing the earth to slip.
Others didn’t think much at all. You shouldn’t cry, it was natural, it happened in the mountains; you should stay where you were protected.

After the earthquakes, we stayed outside for 45 days. With a group of 5 or 6 people, we built temporary shelters together. The first government aid arrived after 45 days; we received NR. 7,000. (around 70 euros).

When I think back to that moment, the thought that comes to me is not to go back to my house, because if there’s another earthquake, I’ll die.

For the future, we need to build earthquake-proof houses, but I don’t know how. I have no hope of getting the NR 200,000 promised by the government, because Rapcha is not a priority. But I do need to build an earthquake-proof house. But I have no financial resources left after the destruction of the two houses. There are eight of us in the family. I don’t mind a two-room house (the 20 m² sandbag houses), but I find it hard to accept. In fact, I’m hoping that the government will help us to build earthquake-proof houses and give us the financial means to do so.

Finally, I’d like to know whether technology will make it possible to predict earthquakes and whether I’ll get the financial means to rebuild my house.

Interview with Dan Kumari Rai

Marc Béchet – November 2015

On 25 April, around midday, I was in the fields and it was a bit cold. On 12 May I was up in the mountains, harvesting wild honey. I was walking up the Koledo slope with a friend when the earthquake hit. I grabbed him with one hand and held on to a tree with the other. I was so scared. It was unimaginable. The mountains were moving. I thought it was the end of my life. I saw several landslides in Koledo.

Afterwards, people gathered and looked for protected places. They looked for food and objects to protect them from further earthquakes. They went into destroyed houses to rescue people and belongings. The children were shaking, crying and scared. Everyone thought they were going to die. It was a terrible situation. If the earthquake had happened at night, there would have been deaths, like in my house where material collapsed on our bed. For 2 or 3 days I tried to save the people and the most important things, because I have political responsibilities in the village.

The problem quickly became how to sleep. We prepared a temporary shelter with woven bamboo fences, mats and plastic sheeting for the night. At first we all got together: Rai, Magar, BK (Dalit). We wanted to be together to die together or to help each other. For 25 days, 80 of us lived in the temporary shelter because the aftershocks wouldn’t stop.

When the earthquake struck on 25 April, the first thing we said to each other was to get out of the houses. On 12 May, with my friend in Koledo, we immediately said that we had to go into the houses to get the news.

We can’t know the cause of these earthquakes. It’s God who decides. Because there are things that don’t work properly: dishonest people, no discipline. It’s a punishment sent by God.

The second earthquake caused numerous landslides (Koledo). Information from Namche led us to believe that the Dudhkosi river was blocked (by landslides) and that this was going to flood the lower parts of Rapcha. So we had to get the people living in the lower parts of Rapcha, in the hamlets of Bodu and Lop, to move up. A little later the police came to find out if there were any victims. They visited each house to take stock of the destruction.

When I think back to those moments, I say to myself that if these tremors had happened at night with the inhabitants in their houses, there would have been no chance of survival. With the fragile soil and the houses weakened by the first tremor, life in Rapcha was over. And so I asked God to protect the Nepalese, to stop the earthquakes.
After the earthquakes, people’s opinions changed. They now know that you have to build earthquake-proof houses that aren’t too big, that you have to protect children with earthquake-proof schools.

I was disappointed by the state aid. The police and administration have done a poor job. There was favouritism for people close to them, including NGOs. There was no transparency. I spent two months living in Namche. I saw that there was no strategy to help the victims and that aid went to those who didn’t need it most.

For the future, when it comes to aid, we need to think about a classification that distinguishes between people who need help the most and those who can rebuild on their own.

When the first earthquake hit, on 26 April at ten to twelve, I was in my house watching television. Everything started to move. I went outside. The walls on the first floor of my house fell down. It’s a good thing it happened at midday, because people would have died in the evening or at night.

I immediately thought of my family in the fields. I feared a landslide, falling rocks. I cried. I thought of my father who was in hospital in Kathmandu. His house was broken. I was afraid of a crack in the ground, I was afraid of dying.

During this 52-second tremor, I felt three movements: one vertical, one horizontal and a third, circular, like a cyclone. The aftershocks continued for two hours.

Then I went looking for my family, then for a flat spot. Everyone (the neighbours) gathered round my house. They thought that if they were going to die, it would be better to be together.

At the end of the day I went back to my house (the first level) to look for food and a place to sleep. We shared all this with the other families nearby.

The first words we exchanged were to ask each other if we’d been scared, and then to find somewhere protected in case of a bigger tremor.

To explain this phenomenon, some people (around 10%) thought that Shiva was angry at the politicians who weren’t doing their job. But Ganesh knew, as did others (15%), that there was a scientific explanation: the tectonic plates were moving. The rest of the population thought nothing except to save their lives.

When evening came, we had to find a place to sleep. We found two tarpaulins, usually used for animals, and some plastic, and we sheltered under them. We ate biscuits and noodles and drank tea. Around 11 o’clock there was a rumour that we were all going to die at midnight. We were very scared until midnight. Then there were more little tremors for an hour and a half. We talked all night without sleeping.

When I think back to that moment, I say to myself that if there had been another tremor, it would not have been possible to survive, but that it was Shiva who decided. The image that stays in my head is the cyclonic movement that I felt at the same time as the sound of the landslides on the opposite bank of the Dudhkosi.

Since those tremors, I’ve been living without a roof over my head. I need to find somewhere safe from landslides and falling rocks, and I need solid ground. My house will have to be earthquake-proof to protect my children. New houses must be able to withstand tremors. But I want to keep my grandparents’ house, because it’s a symbol. I’m waiting for something scientific and reliable from the government and NGOs to rebuild, because Nepal is on a tectonic plate that is moving. I’m not waiting for the NR 200,000 promised by the government, because the Rapcha area is not a priority.

I don’t think there will be any more major earthquakes for another 80 years, because that’s how often these phenomena have occurred in Nepal since the eleventh century.

Interview with Ganesh Bahadur Rai

Marc Béchet – November 2015

Suddenly there was a big tremor. It felt like our house was collapsing. At first I didn’t understand what was happening. Then in the next second I realised it was a big earthquake. And a strange kind of fear came over me. The tremor wouldn’t stop. My wife was totally terrified too. I pulled her out of the house. As I rushed out of the house, I shouted to my neighbours to go to the square in front of Chandrodaya Primary School.
As we ran out of our house, I saw the neighbours rushing out of their houses, shouting and screaming. It was chaos.

It was Saturday and the school was closed. Soon our community gathered in the square in front of the school. People of all ages were terrified and many were screaming. After a while there was another powerful tremor and this time I saw the big hill on the other side of Tholodunga, on the Jubing side, move violently. I thought the hills on both sides were going to collapse, that everything would be destroyed and we would be swallowed up. It was frightening.

While it was happening, I kept thinking about my two children who were in Kathmandu. Maybe the telephone relay had been destroyed or maybe everyone was trying to make a phone call and saturating the traffic, but there were no mobile phones working in our area. I was desperate to find out what could have happened to them.

After a great deal of effort, we found out from the radio how many victims there had been throughout the country. Sad news of human casualties and the loss of historic monuments.

After repeated attempts I was able to speak to my son in Kathmandu; he and his younger brother were safe. It was a great relief. After half an hour, my eldest son arrived from Andheri, where he has lived with his family for several years. Everyone was safe. So nobody in our family was hurt. And I was happy about that, especially as it was the same in our village. But the death of all those compatriots in our country was really sad.
And after the strong aftershock that followed the big quake, I prayed and hoped that there wouldn’t be another one.

After shouting to my neighbours to gather in the school square, I gathered information from the villagers to find out if they were all safe and if any of them needed help.

For the next few hours, I tried to calm down the people gathered in the school square and the desperate people of Rapcha who were coming and going along Rapcha’s main road. And the more I tried to calm them down, the more the elders also tried to calm me down, given that I was in the same state as the other villagers.
Then I started to build temporary shelters with the people of the community so that we could spend the night there when there were so many aftershocks and nobody wanted to sleep in their own houses. There was a lot of tension but we tried to comfort each other to get through this difficult time.

I dismantled my newly-built plastic tunnel(to make a greenhouse) and we were able to make a very large roof to shelter us during the night. That night and for weeks afterwards, most of my neighbours and family slept under this plastic roof, built near my house in a safe place. It was our home for a month.

I was desperate to reach my children in Kathmandu. After many attempts, I was able to phone my youngest son Suraj on my mobile. I told him that we were all safe in Rapcha and asked him to go and see his sister, our daughter, who lives in a boarding house.
I also told her to ask about our other relatives and friends in Kathmandu. I advised her to stay in a safe place and to check with her sister’s school what security measures had been taken to protect the children, including our daughter, from any danger.

Before, I didn’t know the causes of an earthquake. Now I know, thanks to the radios and TV channels that gave information just after the two big tremors.

It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced an earthquake. I remember a very strong one in 1988. But it wasn’t as strong as the last two.

I remember that the elders in my village used to tell us a story about earthquakes. They said there was a huge fish deep underground. And from time to time it would shake its ears. And this movement was the cause of the tremors.

After resting in the shelter to sleep, it was the things the villagers needed immediately after the tremors that became the most important. The houses in the Tholodhunga sector were relatively less damaged, but nobody wanted to sleep in their house, fearing that another strong tremor or an aftershock would come and that they wouldn’t have time to escape in the darkness of the night.

We had heard that food in cities like Kathmandu was scarce, but this was not the case in the village. The villagers don’t have anything of great value such as money or rich jewellery, so there was no problem staying outside the houses. Our most important possessions are grains, such as millet, wheat, soya etc, which we store inside the houses. Maize is often stored outside on high ground. Many houses were damaged, but nobody took the grain outside to store it elsewhere. People seemed to have less interest in the usual things. Everyone was confused.

Gradually the sad news of the deaths and destruction of historic buildings reached us on radio and television. As we heard and observed what had happened in other parts of Nepal, we realised that our suffering was less. This gradually encouraged us to resume the normal course of our lives.

At the same time, we were saddened by the sight of the suffering in so many other regions, and our hearts went out to them, even though there was nothing we could do to help.

One thing that was really common to everyone in the village after the earthquake, whatever their age, was that they felt lost and confused. Everyone had clear signs of sadness and terror on their faces. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something terrible to happen, and this expectation imbued them with sadness. The unfounded rumours of a greater tremor made life even worse.
Yes, seeing that sadness on everyone’s face was in itself a very painful experience. It was definitely a hard time and we were shouting together to calm ourselves down.

I don’t know about the others, but my life certainly changed a lot after that big earthquake. I now know the value of family, neighbours and community. Before the earthquake I was more concerned with my own responsibilities and the activities of my business, my family or the community. But now I know that family, neighbours and community are in fact the most important things in life. You can get through the hardest times if you have the support of your family, neighbours and community; without their help and support, life becomes a real challenge, even for the simplest things.

Radio and television reports have told us that earthquakes occur in this region every few decades, and I’m afraid there will be more. I’m more afraid for my family, my neighbours and the community than for myself; I’m especially afraid for my children.

Above all, I very much hope that the villagers will soon return to their normal lives, because many of them are still very shocked. And I also hope that the Nepalese government and international aid agencies will help the population to rebuild.

Now I think the population has been given enough information about the causes of the earthquakes. At the same time, I hope that they will also be well informed about how to build earthquake-resistant houses to avoid the death and destruction of property when the earthquakes happen again.

For Rapcha we are all in favour of rebuilding earthquake-proof houses, and we are asking for this with all the families. Our area wasn’t the worst hit this time, but maybe next time it will hit us harder. That’s why we’d like to be prepared for the worst that could happen in the future.

Interview with Asser Man

Marc Béchet – November 2015