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The Ultimate Do-It-Yourself Challenge: Life After An Earthquake

Their houses are in ruins.

They are trying to salvage what they can to start rebuilding.

And they're doing it alone.

That's the plight of many Nepalese villagers in the wake of the April 25 earthquake.

Aid groups are offering help in Kathmandu, where some of them already have offices. They've traveled to other areas of the country as well. But it's not been easy.

"But there are challenges because of the remoteness of some of these mountain villages, the terrain, the poor road network," says Joel Charny, vice president for humanitarian policy and practice at InterAction, an alliance of nongovernmental aid groups.

And so in villages like Barpak, where this video was shot, it is the people themselves who are showing a tremendous spirit of resilience as they rebuild their shattered homes, worrying that the coming monsoon season will bring new threats yet determined to move forward with their lives.

Reporting for this story was supported by The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Rajneesh Bhandari
Pierre Kattar