Nepal earthquake: broken villages awash with memories

Arjun, the carpenter of Bhimtar, was charging a bank of mobile phones in the small shop we stopped at to ask directions to his village. It had taken us three hours to drive there from Kathmandu, which, as the crow flies, was just 25 miles due west.

Remoteness is a relative concept in Nepal, one of the most mountainous countries in the world – and one of the poorest too.

“I’ll guide you up there,” Arjun said, pointing to the other side of the exquisitely beautiful Indrawati valley, its river raging across a broad flood plain, crammed with emerald paddy fields. He set off on his motorbike. We followed, down the rocky road, across the river, and up the other side, on a precipitous trail suited better to goats than four-wheel-drives.

Read Jonathan Miller's blog: Nepal earthquake - slow aid stirs anger in ravaged villages

The mobile phones belonged to other people from the village. There’d been no power in Bhimtar since the quake. We’d heard it was one of several in the area that had been badly hit and we were the first outsiders to reach it: there had been no relief aid, and they were running low on everything.

Having driven through other towns and villages en route, which showed limited signs of earthquake damage, what confronted us in Bhimtar was a shock. It looked like an apocalyptic film set. Eighty of its 100 houses had imploded into piles of mud-brick rubble and jagged splintered timbers. The only ones left standing were some half-built concrete structures.

Thirty-three villagers had been killed when the quake struck last Saturday at four minutes to noon. Scores more were badly injured. The smell of death came not from human bodies – they’ve now all been cremated on the Indrawati riverbank below – but from more than 500 dead animals, still buried in collapsed byres. In Nepali village houses, the livestock live on the ground floor.

Other animals were still dying. An injured water buffalo lay wild-eyed and heaving, as villagers tried to make it comfortable. We stepped around a moaning calf as Arjun took me on the saddest tour of any village I have ever been to. In all, he’d lost 11 relatives, although his wife and two children had been spared.

“My grandmother died in here while she was cooking,” he said, as we stood respectfully on what was now a heap of stones, from under which the body of the 70-year-old widow, had been retrieved. We continued walking round what last week would have been a corner, but was now an impossible obstacle course, through which we slowly and carefully picked our way.

Half the village was now in tow, many of them children. There was no laughter. “Six of my cousins died in here,” said Arjun. “And two more over there.” A man pointed to another pile of dusty bricks. “My wife died here,” he said. The tour went on and on and by the time it finished, one hour later, they, and I, were emotionally exhausted.

“I want to use my skills as a carpenter to help rebuild my village,” Arjun told me. “But there is a feeling of frustration here, and general despair. We look across the valley to the villages still standing on the other side.”

There is a feeling of frustration here, and general despair. Arjun

They all wonder why their village had been destroyed, as the quake’s shockwaves radiated out, randomly flattening some villages and leaving others untouched. In Bhimtar, the village rice stocks had been buried. They are living on some corn and a dwindling pile of potatoes. They fear their supply of water is now contaminated.

“We would prefer it,” he said, “if we had another earthquake so we could all just die. If we live, we wish to live here, though. And if we die, we wish to die here too.” Bhimtar is a broken village, probably one of hundreds, maybe thousands, in Nepal; villages are awash with memories and tears.