Today marks three months since the first of two earthquakes devastated Nepal. With more than 100 aftershocks, many people have lost their lives, homes and livelihoods. The earthquakes impacted 5.6 million Nepalese with more than 853,000 homes damaged or destroyed.
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At around eight in the morning on a dry Thursday morning during monsoon season, a big Red Cross truck full of relief supplies shows up in front of the local school in the community of Kalikasthan. Volunteers start unloading hygiene kits, blankets, kitchen sets and tarpaulins.
Two sisters, 12 and 6 years old, used to come by the child friendly play space at the Canadian Red Cross field hospital every day. It was set up in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake, in the community of Dhunche. One day, the older sister opened up to the Canadian Red Cross aid worker providing psychosocial support and told her their story.
Local Nepalese staff including drivers and translators hired to support the Red Cross field hospital in Dhunche are getting first aid training this week.
It's hard to believe that I have already been in Dhunche one week. This morning when I got up, the sky was clear enough to see the snow-capped mountains in Tibet and Langtang Mountain. Usually, this region is a trekker’s paradise, but the earthquakes and ongoing instability of the landscape have changed that for now.
Each hospital bedsheet that Deki Tamang washes represents another brick in the new home that she hopes to build for her children one day. Since the Nepal earthquakes reduced her house in Dhunche to rubble, the mother of four has worked full-time at the laundry in the Canadian Red Cross field hospital operating on the site of the original damaged hospital.
In a half-constructed classroom open to the sky, about 65 Nepalese students laugh, wave their arms and carefully mimic the gestures of a young woman in a Red Cross and Red Crescent vest.
On a misty, pre-monsoon morning at the Canadian Red Cross field hospital, a colourful line-up is forming of elderly Nepalese women in traditional embroideries and heavy brass earrings, crying children, and a few proud, wiry men.