Rainy days in Pulkhara

Lelia Jo Dusthimer

July 13, 2019

Heavy rain has been a staple of this week in Pulkhara. The monsoon season in Nepal ranges from July to late August and is accompanied by, on average, 105 days of nonstop showers. Farmers in Nepal are highly responsive to the the monsoon rains, the first of which they use as a marker to begin planting their rice fields. The paddy crop thrives in wet climates, so the monsoon season is perhaps the most important farming season of the year.

The rain was still unrelenting this morning as we journeyed to Shriee Secondary School for the second day of the pad making workshop. The roads were certainly more precarious, filled with an even greater number of puddles than usual, but passable. When we arrived at the school, however, we were surprised to find it flooded. The principal spoke to us in passing, as he and a group of local men hurriedly carried tables and chairs out of rooms still ankle-deep with water.

He explained that this morning, he came early to work and found every room of the ground level of the school in knee-deep water. Acting quickly, men from the village dug a trough around the back of the school allowing some of the water to drain out from the rooms.

The night before, the principal had, thankfully, moved the school’s one computer to a higher storage shelf. The computer monitor was a little damp from the roof leakage, but seemed to survive unscathed. But countless supplies – papers, books, desks, fans, electric outlets, and the three carpets owned by the school were completely soaked with water.

The principal was flabbergasted, telling us that this was the first time something like this had ever happened. It was not typical of the monsoon season. Instead, the intense flooding was the result of government infrastructure repair. The original drainage system was tampered with when they were building a new main road through the village. When the rain came, it was a recipe for disaster.

Due to the flooding, which likewise had happened in homes across the village, the school was unfit to host the workshop and it was unlikely that women would be able to journey to the school to attend. We returned back to the hotel to continue planning and wait for a stop to the rain.

(Ashwin later explained to us in the car that the government has been trying their best to repair the infrastructure of some of the poorest villages in Nepal. However, the process itself is slow and can leave the communities without running water or functioning plumbing systems for months or years. )

The next morning we awoke to an even greater surprise, less than a mile from our hotel - a bridge had collapsed. This meant it was both impossible to reach the village where our collective was located or to leave the region at all. The only alternate route from our hotel led us to Kathmandu, which was experiencing an even deadlier series of flash floods. Since Sunday, over 55 have been reported dead due to the floods in Kathmandu - with dozens missing or injured.

Our options are limited, so we’ve decided to remain at the hotel for another day or until a diversion around the collapsed bridge can be found.