Kids paint away quake blues

Lama, an eight-year-old boy, paints his house on a piece of paper with bright colours sitting inside an open tent.

Lama’s house no longer exists. In fact, hardly any house is standing in Chautara — headquarters of the worst affected Sindhupalchok district — and nearby villages like Irkhu and Sangachowk.

The eight-year-old boy with soft eyes and many of his friends spend their time between 8 am and 5 pm inside the tent set up by the non-governmental organisation SOS Children’s Village. Their parents are either in adjoining tents that double up as the in-patient ward of a field hospital or have gone back to the villages to retrieve valuables from the rubble of their houses.

“We have more than 40 children in the camp, which is up and running since Saturday. As the children are occupied here, the parents can go back to the villages during the day and come back in the evening. For hospital patients, the children return to their parents in the evening and sleep with them,” Pratik Kafle, a SOS worker told Deccan Herald.

The NGO accepted the service of two woman volunteers, who encourage the kids to draw and paint and to participate in interactive games. They also teach the kids to remember their parents’ names and mobile numbers.

The emergency childcare space has been set up in an open field at the edge of the town which was crushed to the ground by the killer quake. Other tents serve as field hospitals, patient wards, stores and residential spaces for the doctors and Red Cross workers.

“We are seeing almost 150-200 patients daily. In fact, just after the earthquake on last Saturday, we assisted a woman to deliver her baby in this field. It was a normal delivery and the baby is fine,” said Nikki Shrestha, medical officer of the Chutara district hospital.
This reporter was witness to a dramatic sequence of events in which a pregnant woman from a far-flung hamlet was brought to the hospital by a Nepal Army team and taken to Kathmandu in a chopper within minutes on the doctor’s advice.

“She has abdominal pain and since we only have a portable ultra sound machine but no X-ray or pathology, we refer the complicated cases to Kathmandu. Close to 200 patients have been sent to the capital so far,” said Satish Koirala, a post-graduate student at Kathmandu Medical College.