The villagers in Tasarphu, which lies close to the quake's epicenter, are desperately poor, like most rural Nepalese. Over the past week, some 7,000 have received food, blankets, shelter materials and other emergency items from the IRC’s partner, AAR Japan.
Text and photos by Peter Biro
TASARPHU, Nepal—Ram Bahador Ghalan, a farmer in this remote village near Nepal’s Kathmandu valley, had just returned home from tending his crops when he felt the ground tremble under his feet. Within seconds, everything around him was chaos: Bricks, wooden beams and other debris came raining down.
“I screamed for my family members to follow and ran outside,” the 60-year-old recalls. “Then the house collapsed.”