POKHARIDANDA, Nepal (AP) – Knock-kneed children drag scavenged sleeping mats into tarpaulin tents. Grandmothers clear rocks from demolition sites once called homes. And prodigal sons who rushed home to comfort their mothers are building new structures to shelter them from the rain.
A week after the magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit Nepal near here, in the central Gorkha district, people in many villages along the roads have stopped waiting for the government to bring help.
Their needs are vast, but Nepal is so short on relief supplies and the means to distribute them that officials are focusing on the farthest flung reaches of the remote Himalayas.
That leaves villages like Pokharidanda to fend for themselves. And so everyone who is able is pulling together and pitching in.
Occasionally, someone will show up with aid. A group of nurses, for instance, has set up a makeshift medical tent, where toddlers covered in bedbug bites and women with toothaches can find relief.