{"id":3156,"date":"2016-04-25T17:54:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T00:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/?p=3156"},"modified":"2016-04-26T21:23:16","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T04:23:16","slug":"nepal-quake-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/nepal-quake-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal Quake + 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year ago today, within a few brief seconds, the floor of the Kathmandu Valley shifted five feet to the south.\u00a0It was the earthquake everyone knew was coming, but few had prepared for. In the year since, the survivors have lived in “temporary” shelters for one monsoon season, then one cold Himalayan winter, and are about to enter\u00a0another monsoon season with\u00a0their hopes for more permanent housing thwarted by the fractious nature of Nepalese politics. NGOs have patiently prepared masons and carpenters to build seismic-resistant housing, but–as I pointed out in an article<\/a> I wrote–nothing much is going to happen until the tardily-conceived and ill-equipped government reconstruction agency starts dishing out the $2,000 per family that will finally kick-start rebuilding. In the meantime, most Nepalese are patiently waiting, their belief in fatalism tempering\u00a0discontent, their quiet resilience fueling\u00a0hope of a return to normalcy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently spent several days documenting the work of the ACT Alliance in a variety of quake-affected communities. Some parts of the assignment were more interesting visually than others. Take a visit to Makaising, for example. It’s a remote village in the Gorkha District where my hosts told me that village women were going to have a psychosocial session. That’s a meeting where they share their feelings. It’s an important element in dealing with the post-traumatic stress that follows such disasters, but people talking about their feelings doesn’t usually make for good images. So I whined a bit, wondering if there were better ways to use my time. My hosts assured me all would be well. They were right. It turns out that sharing feelings in Makaising involves\u00a0lots of dancing.<\/span><\/p>\n