Editor's Note: Reporter Sonia Narang went back to follow-up on a health volunteer she profiled a few years ago for PRI's The World.
The entire second floor of Bimala Parajuli's house toppled in the Nepal earthquake a year ago, and the remnants of the first floor are uninhabitable.
She lives in a mountain village in the Kavre district, one of the hardest-hit areas during the deadly 7.8 magnitude quake. It's where Parajuli has done life-saving work with babies for years, preventing newborns from getting potentially fatal infections.
Before the earthquake, she'd climb a wooden ladder to her second floor and get dressed in a bright blue sari, the uniform for women health workers in Nepal. Now, only parts of the bottom floor remain alongside that ladder, and the sari sits in a creaky, wooden cabinet in her one-room shelter.
Today, she pulls out the sari and holds it up as a proud reminder of the work she’s done over the years. Even now, she remains a well-respected health worker in her community.
Across Nepal, thousands of female health volunteers provide counseling and medicine in their local communities. The devastating earthquake hit on April 25, 2015, killing almost 9,000 people and leaving many thousands homeless. In the aftermath, these blue-sari-clad volunteers toiled to combat disease and malnutrition in hard-hit villages, many too far from health clinics or hospitals.
When disaster struck, Parajuli was on the frontlines, running from home to home trying to rescue children and adults in the village.
“On the day of the earthquake, I didn’t know who was alive and who wasn’t. I thought, maybe we were the only ones who survived,” she says. “Immediately, my concern was: what had happened to everyone else?”
Though she injured her ankle when brick and stone buildings came crashing down around her, Parajuli kept going, helping those in need. She pulled her own 4-year-old niece from the rubble, but the child didn’t make it out alive. In the days that followed, she helped distribute medicine and checked up on the mothers and babies she’d been keeping tabs on before the quake.
But Parajuli suffered major losses, and now, an entire year later, she’s living in a cramped shelter of tin and wood that she set up next to her animal shed.
She quiets down and chokes up thinking of plans to rebuild her home. Though she’s managed to stay strong, she has little hope for that.
She still has a loan to pay off for her old house, and Nepal’s government has only offered families a total of $2,000 to build new homes. This amount will be distributed in three smaller installments over time. And the homes will have to meet specific design criteria determined by the government.
“What house are we going to build with that money?” she asks. “Even when I built my previous home years ago, it cost more than that.”
So far, Nepal’s government has been slow in disbursing funds to families who lost their homes.
“That is a five-year plan, and only God knows when will we get it,” she says. “The government took years and years to build a very essential bridge in this village, so I have no hope about the money or the house.”
Parajuli no longer has a kitchen, so she cooks in her animal den, full of goats and a cow. It's dark and smells like grass and manure. In the corner, there’s an open fire pit on the ground. There’s a shelf with some pots and pans, and behind her, a big pile of corn is stacked up on a tarp.
The large cow goes to the bathroom right there in the shed.
“See, I have to cook food in such a place,” she says. “But, I still go around and tell people to be hygienic and maintain a clean living area. I don’t want them to suffer from diseases.”
She can’t believe the irony of her situation. “Our kitchen used to be clean before, look what has happened now. Now, we practically live with the animals here.”
Another new challenge is access to water. The earthquake damaged water pipes and tanks. Now, there’s no water available from the local tap, and Parajuli and her daughter have to walk a half hour from home to fetch water, which is only available for an hour a day.
Sonia Narang
As a volunteer health worker, Parajuli doesn’t get paid for her community health duties. Her only source of income is her cow, which provides some extra milk she can sell. Parajuli worries about her 14-year-old daughter’s school fees.
“I have to educate my daughter. And if I start having to pay off these house loans, how can I educate my child?” she says with a deep sigh.
Still, Parajuli says she’ll never stop working for her community, even though she’s trying to put her life back together. She happily talks about all the healthy babies born in her village after the earthquake.
“All of the mothers gave birth in hospitals,” she says. That success is in part thanks to her: She spent years educating women of the importance of safe childbirth practices in her village.
“I feel very happy to see these healthy babies,” Parajuli says. “I saw their mothers when they were pregnant. I taught their mothers what to do, what to eat. None of the infants have had pneumonia so far."
She knows her role is an important one, and she tries not to let her own despair get in the way.
“I don’t want mothers and babies to die because they don’t have access to medicine,” she says.
Three years ago, Parajuli delivered a tube of chlorhexidine, a cheap ointment that can prevent infections of the belly button, to an eight-months-pregnant woman in the village. Now, the woman has a healthy baby, and Parajuli checks in on both mother and child regularly.
“Since I’ve helped people for years, they seek me out and have confidence in me,” she says. “They want me to attend ward meetings. I might not receive help from anyone, but I will continue to help people in need.”
Sonia Narang reported from Nepal with support from the South Asian Journalists Association.