Reuters, Thali :
Nepali tea shop owner Phurba Sherpa has spent four nights cramped under a tarpaulin with his wife and nine others on a school field outside Kathmandu since falling rocks triggered by an earthquake last week demolished his distant mountain village.
The Nepali government is struggling to provide shelter for more than a million people like Sherpa who were uprooted by two massive earthquakes, first on April 25 and then 17 days later.
Tens of thousands are sleeping in the open, with monsoon rains possibly little more than a fortnight away.
“I lost everything – my house, tea house and all that I owned. I am a refugee in my own country now,” said the 28-year-old, one of about 120 people who made the 110-km (70 miles) trip from Tatopani, a village on the Chinese border, to the town of Thali near the capital, Kathmandu.
Sherpa said he left his village after the second quake triggered landslides that left almost no space for shelter.
“We don’t have any place to go and this is not enough when it starts raining,” said Sherpa, who shared the cost of the blue-and-yellow plastic sheet with three other families.
Parts of Nepal have returned to relative normality since the quakes. Shops have reopened in Kathmandu, farmers are back in their fields and power lines are being reconnected.
