By Sahana Bajracharya
NUWAKOT, Nepal, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Zoyal Ghale, who ran into a forest and climbed trees to escape Nepal’s deadly floods, was reunited with his mother on Friday after she had begun to fear he and his brother had both perished in their school.
A day earlier, 8-year-old Ghale had been airlifted alone from the devastated northern district of Rasuwa with a broken leg and cuts on his face, while his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, 28, moved from one shelter and collection point to another looking for her two missing children.
“At the fourth place too, my children’s names were not on the list, and they were not there,” Tamang told Reuters. “I had come to accept that both my children were no more. All I could do was weep. I couldn’t hold myself together at all.”
At least 17,000 children have been affected by the floods across Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts north of Kathmandu, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said, adding that it was working with Nepal’s government to identify, register and reunite children separated from their families.
PHONE CALL WITH REUTERS LEADS MOTHER TO SON
Tamang and her family have been among the lucky ones. At least 580 people have been confirmed dead and around 2,500 are missing in Nepal and China’s Tibet.
After more unsuccessful searching, Tamang on Thursday obtained the telephone number of Reuters journalist Sahana Bajracharya, who had met Ghale several hours earlier at a small hospital in neighbouring Nuwakot district.
Bajracharya and a Reuters team had gone to the hospital after hearing about a young boy who had been taken there and the authorities did not know where his family was.
After speaking to Ghale before he was airlifted for more treatment, Bajracharya said he agreed to be filmed in the hope of finding his family.
Bajracharya left her number at the hospital and Tamang called her some hours later.
When Bajracharya told her that Ghale was alive and had been transferred to Kathmandu, Tamang said she could barely believe it.
“When you told me that you knew where Zoyal was, it didn’t sound real,” she said. “I had already given up that I would find them.”
Tamang had already found her younger son alive as well.
“After I found the elder one, I felt my life was back,” she said.
UNRECOGNISABLE LANDSCAPE
The boys had gone to school on Wednesday morning, taking the school vehicle, and she had begun weaving at home.
Then she heard what sounded like an earthquake.
The floods were triggered when the lower part of the glacier near the Langtang Lirung mountain peak collapsed on Wednesday and tumbled into the valley floor below, resulting in an avalanche of ice and rock that triggered a massive landslide, according to videos shared on social media and verified by Reuters.
“I could see everything was being swept away,” Tamang said. “I thought my children were getting swept away too.”
She tried to head towards their school, normally a 15- to 20-minute drive away, but said the landscape had become almost unrecognisable. The school building had been destroyed.
“You could not understand where the school was, where the market was,” she said. “There was only water, stones and mud everywhere.”
The landslide sent water and debris through northern Nepal and into Tibet. Within minutes, entire communities were levelled.
A BOY WITH 20 RUPEES
When Reuters encountered Ghale at about 11 a.m. on Thursday at the 15-bed Chakra Dev Hospital in Nuwakot, nobody there appeared to know where his family was.
His right leg was broken and his face was scratched and bruised. In his left hand, however, he tightly clutched two 10-rupee notes.
Police officers who had rescued him had given him the money to persuade him to go to hospital with them, officials said.
He said he had been studying at school when the flood struck. Suddenly, “it was so, so black”, he recalled.
He said he ran from the school into the forest with a friend and climbed into the trees to escape.
Asked whether he had been frightened, he shook his head. “No.”
MOTHER AND SON REUNITED
On Friday, Tamang finally reached the Kathmandu hospital where Ghale had been transferred in the meantime, around two hours’ drive from their home.
With bus lines all suspended, Bajracharya arranged a vehicle for Tamang.
After days of frantic searching, Tamang stood quietly beside his bed. Ghale’s father, a construction labourer in Japan, was also on his way, Tamang said.
Wednesday’s flood has transformed life in Rasuwa. But for Tamang, at least a degree of normality had already returned.
“Oh, he is always a mischievous kid,” Tamang said. “This is not his first broken bone.”
(Reporting by Sahana Bajracharya in Nuwakot; Writing by Ariba Shahid; Editing by Rick Noack and Alison Williams)
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