Children of lesser gods

Pasang Tamang has the kind of smile that stays. If he smiled in a room full of people, it would be the warmest spot in that room. Seated on a bench in the sign language classroom watching deaf TV, Pasang turns away from the screen and smiles at me as I enter.

After being rescued from Rasuwa in the 26 August flood, he was brought to Bhairabi Secondary School in Bidur where he has been living since. The 13-year-old is among 17,000 children impacted by the flood.

Without parents, Pasang was being brought up by his uncle and aunt. When the disaster struck, their house in Syaule quickly disappeared and his relatives went missing, snatching away the only feeling of home he had ever known.

Pasang was brought to the school with 38 other children, and over the weeks, the children were identified by their families and taken to new temporary homes. But no one showed up for Pasang.

“He wept the day the last rescued child left. No one came to get him and we later found out his relatives had died in the flood,” says Rajendra Shrestha, who has been teaching sign language at the school.

The power goes off and so does the TV Pasang has been watching. He gestures at Rajendra Sir and gets up to bring out a folder of drawings. It is a collection of his and that of his friend Roshini, another child displaced by the flood. One of the images shows four friends who lost their homes, seated together.

Pasang’s drawings are eclectic. There are those of the village landscape that have changed since the flood, but there is also one of Indra Jatra, of reindeer and one of Naruto.

In another drawing, he is outside his home in Rasuwa, filling a water bottle, while the elders appear busy in the front yard. A village home in the shadow of the mountains, not far from a raging river.

PAST LIFE

When the school assembly begins, the teachers ask him if he wants to go join the rest, but he signs to say he would rather stay indoors. With everyone from his past life gone, living in a shelter in a new school, Rajendra Sir is the only real way he can communicate with the world.

On 12 October, over a month after the flood, a relative traced Pasang to the school and took him home for the holidays. For many other children like him, there is no going home, some are still living in holding centres.

Many have been transferred to other schools in the region, based on where their families are sheltering.

At Bhimsen Secondary School in Batar, Buddha Maya Tamang stands quietly in a corner. Her family, originally from Rasuwa, lived in Betrawati where Buddha Maya and her sister went to school.

They had a home with a farm now lost to the flood. Her sister was inside the house when the flood surged past.

Buddha Maya is also new to her school with 30 other transferred students, displaced children from Trisuli and Betrawati. Most are from low-income and Dalit families. During her lunch break, Buddha Maya comes and sits next to me quietly. She does not smile, and does not go to get lunch.

“She used to be a bubbly child, but has changed completely since the flood,” says school assistant Sabitri Magar who has known Buddha Maya since she was in KG.

Sabitri's Betrawati had to flee her Betrawati home and not Katichap home. They were not evacuated. They had to run fast. They had settled in Betrawati after being displaced from Katichap by a landslide so they're twice displaced.

Sabitri and her colleagues who worked in Betrawati’s government school have been transferred to the school in Batar after the flood. She and her four children rent a room, but the price has doubled. In some places in Nuwakot, people continue to live in tents, but will have to find warmer accommodation as winter sets in.

“HURRY UP”

“People have received enough dry food and clothes and that is not even the need anymore,” says Bhawani Panta, school teacher. “What people need is money to buy medicines and other essentials. Most of all, they need homes and those in authority need to hurry up.”

While they wait, people are so desperate, they have started cleaning up their old homes to see if they can move back in, even though their homes are not safe. Distribution of relief has not always been fair because of language, reach, access to authority and inability to work the system.

Like all government schools, Bhimsen also provides free lunch to students up to Grade 5 -- little bowls of noodles appear in trays and the children sit down on the porch to eat.

One of the children who has just finished eating comes up to me and says, “Ma bahini.” I’m a sister. Her hair has been shorn off and she wears green sequined sandals. Her name is Phool Tara, and she is four.

Phool Tara holds my hand, lingers, and says her favourite book is Mero Sero Phero. “It has stories and drawings and I love stories.”

“What about you?” I ask Buddha Maya.

She pauses a long time and then answers, “I used to like the thought of becoming a teacher, but right now, I don’t know.” I say I look forward to hearing she has become a teacher someday. She almost smiles.

Suburban Tales is a regular column in Nepali Times.