Community · Resilience · Hope
WHAT PEOPLE REBUILD AFTER LOSS
What can we learn from people who have lost almost everything?
In 2015, the earthquake and the destruction that followed devastated communities in Langtang Valley.
When we travelled there in 2020, five years had passed.
The landscape still carried the memory of what had happened.
People from the community narrated their experiences and what they had lived through.
Among them was an elderly woman who had lost both her son and her husband.
And yet what stood out was not only her loss.
It was her spirit.
She was warm, jovial and remarkably enthusiastic about life.
Five years after losing so much, she and the community had rebuilt.
Homes had been reconstructed. A new settlement had emerged. The community had created a life around the ruins of what had once been there.
They had not forgotten what happened.
They had simply refused to let the tragedy become the end of their story.