Long wait by the highway

A group of villagers from Gathi in Sindhupalchowk, about 100 kilometres from Kathmandu, stand along the Araniko Highway to gather provisions – a sack of rice and a packet of salt – that have finally arrived on Sunday evening, a full eight days after the earthquake. Bal Bahadur Shrestha tells me how every house in his village has been flattened and razed to the ground. They have been surviving on the food they already had before the earthquake which they managed to secure from the rubble, or from their neighbours – chiura, makai and roti (beaten rice, corn and dry bread) which are the only things that survived the devastation.

Already there is an altercation, as one man is being accused of taking two bags of rice instead of one; each house in the village is to get exactly one portion of rice and salt. Shrestha is worried about how long this will last, as his family consists of ten people, and there is no information about when further provisions will arrive. His family size is average for the village of 150 houses.