The outlying mountain region belongs to the badly affected areas in Nepal. The damages in the villages, which can be reached partly only after long marches, are still visible. The inhabitants repaired their houses poorly. Others still live in temporary housings, because their houses got totally destroyed or are endangered to collapse. There is no area-wide construction aid from the authorities. So our work is even more important.
In seven of the nine villages in Ghyangphedi the water systems had been destroyed. The arche noVa team supports the community with the reparation of the piping and the spring captures. Besides continuing with those activities, arche noVa will build a school in the principal village for 120 students. At the moment the children have to learn in simple shanties, which the inhabitants constructed after the earthquake by themselves.
The intended school construction site is no easy undertaking, due to the fact that it is not possible to bring construction machines or heavy material with automobiles to the site. Everything has to be carried by humans.
The construction of the school is presumably the last point of our Nepal project that started with the water supply of an emergency shelter in Bhaktapur. Besides the activities in the mountain villages our project team helped in the meantime mainly in the two neighboring cities Bidur and Trishuli (Nuwokat district) at the foot of the Himalaya. In the community hospital in Bidur arche noVa installed pumps, water purification plants, tanks and pipings to secure the water supply of the staff and of the patients, as well as of the neighboring families. More filtration systems were installed in Trishuli at a school with 1.100 students, as well as in another hospital. This system provides also another nearby school with 450 students.
Sony Lama goes to the eleventh grade and is pleased with the help from arche noVa: “Our school was closed for one month after the earthquake. Then when it opened again there were no buildings, no toilets and also no water. Everything was destroyed. We were taught in tents and the teachers and students brought their water from home. We all were so happy when arche noVa rehabilitated the water supply. On the first day when the water came back my friend and I splashed each other with water, because we were so happy.”
