When the hills around his house began to shake, Budhman Ram Bahadur was out tending to his maize crop. He believes that saved his life. His mud-and-stone house collapsed, killing a buffalo, but he and his family of five survived.
“The first I knew of the earthquake was when all the dogs in the village started to bark,” the 65-year-old Nepalese farmer said. “If it was at night, we’d all have died.”
Given the strong aftershocks that followed the 7.8 magnitude quake that struck on 25 April, killing more than 8,800 people, the dogs have barked often since then. The epicentre was close to Bahadur’s village in Nepal’s western Gorkha district. The powerful temblors not only flattened houses but also buried livestock, farming equipment and food grain.
Two-and-a-half months after the first earthquake, the government announced a move from emergency response to early recovery. At a conference on reconstruction in the capital, Kathmandu, last month, governments and aid agencies pledged $3bn (£1.92bn), split equally between grants and loans.
In remote villages tucked between steep Himalayan foothills and roaring mountain rivers in central and western Nepal, farming communities continue to struggle. According to estimates from the ministry of agricultural development, the agriculture sector – which accounts for 34% of GDP – has lost more than 10bn rupees (£100m) in livestock and crops, including nearly 8bn rupees’ worth of food grain stocked in houses that collapsed in the earthquake.
“I’ve lost my buffalo, my ploughs and my scythes,” said Bahadur. But he also faces bigger problems in the wake of the earthquake. Pointing to a white patch high up on the green mountainside almost directly above the terraced fields, he said, “That’s a landslide. Those rocks could come down any minute.”
Across the worst-hit areas of central and western Nepal, the quake destroyed terraced slopes where farmers plant maize, wheat and rice. It also destroyed mountain trails used by villagers. In many areas, farmers are reluctant to work in the fields for fear of landslides, a threat that could grow more serious with the onset of the monsoon.
“We should be planting rice now,” Bahadur said. “But the quake opened cracks in the mountain and people are afraid.”
Bahadur is a Dalit, an “untouchable” under the Hindu caste system. Dalits are among the most impoverished Nepalese and usually among the last to receive aid after a natural disaster. Like most Dalit farmers, Bahadur farms land that belongs to someone else. He gets less than half of the crop he grows.
Since the earthquake, Bahadur’s family has been living in a makeshift hut made of wood and corrugated iron sheets scavenged from his destroyed home. Nearby, other Dalit families live in tents made out of plastic sheets.
Experts say losing their homes has hit rural communities hard since most farmers are finding it difficult to raise the cash to rebuild. Professor Chaitanya Mishra, a sociologist at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, estimated “20% to 30% of farm households will be forced to make do in temporary shelters” for a long time.
“Squalor, disease, malnutrition, missed schooling, trafficking, and a host of other ills are likely to strike this category of farm households,” he said. “It is these households that must be identified and helped.” Because the extended kin are also poor, Dalits can rely less on their social network than others, said Mishra.
Bahadur said his community has received some emergency food aid as well as tents, but no cash. “I don’t know how I’ll get through the monsoon,” he said.
In the nearby village of Neupane, Bel Kumari Gurung, 53, is also worried about the monsoon. The quake on 25 April destroyed many of the 82 houses in her village and left the rest uninhabitable. Like her neighbours, Gurung lives in a tent near her ruined house, a daunting proposition in the torrential downpour.
“Managing the farm is a big worry,” Gurung said, “especially when you have to rely on women and old men.” In Gorkha, most farms are managed by women.
An exodus of young men to India, Malaysia and Middle Eastern countries has left many villages short of able-bodied farmhands. Economic migration has surged in recent years, with nearly 500,000 Nepalese leaving the country every year, according to estimates from Nepal’s department of foreign employment. Experts such as Mishra expect the process to accelerate after the earthquake.
Gurung says she hopes her son, who works at a restaurant in India, will send money to build a new family home. “I could have used his help in the fields, but the money he earns will be useful now,” she said.
The Gurung clan is famous for its martial heritage and is one of the hill tribes from which the bulk of the British army’s Gurkha soldiers are drawn.
“The earthquake was an enemy we couldn’t fight,” Gurung said. “But we’re strong and we’ll survive.”
