The earthquake occurred on 25th April 2015 in the afternoon. It was a Saturday. I was in Wilson Academy School with Bec, Nimu, Bandana, Saraswoti, Patrick sir, kids and the parents of our new kids. We were having a meeting with the parents of 14 new kids of our Mitrataa Foundation in Wilson school. In the meeting we were discussing the responsibilities of the children, parents, school and Mitrataa Foundation. The parents were divided into four groups with different topics (responsibilities). I was in the group discussing Mitrataa’s responsibilities. We were told to explain to our group members about the topic that we had got. We had all finished explaining the topics to the parents in our own groups. After finishing the explanations, the parents from different groups had to explain what they understood. Among the four groups, three groups had finish explaining and it was my group’s turn to explain. We were about to explain but suddenly the hall where we were sitting started moving. I had never experienced such a huge earthquake in my life so I didn’t know what was happening, but the principal sir (Patrick Wilson) was sitting at the door; he knew it was an earthquake and he said that it’s an earthquake. As soon as he said “it’s an earthquake!” everyone ran away with fear. Many of the parents and the kids cried. It was very difficult to handle them because even the parents were crying instead of looking after their kids. But when the quake calmed down after 1 or 2 hours, we told the parents to go home. After all the parents left we also came out of the school, saying bye to Patrick sir. There were no vehicles on the road so we had to walk all the way to Mitrataa hostel from Bafal to Hadigaun. There was also no availability of network due to the earthquake. On the way we saw lots of houses being destroyed by the quake. We also had been trying to contact the girls to find out whether they were okay or not, but Bec had already told Rohan to go to the hostel so that he could look after the girls so we didn’t have to worry so much about the girls because Rohan was with them. I also had been trying to call my mum and my family in the village but wasn’t able to contact them. Finally I could contact my mum and one of my uncles in Chitwan. The day was very scary. After walking for 1 or 2 hours we reached the hostel. There, the girls were sitting on the ground of the Euro School which is near our hostel. I sat there with them for some time and went home. I was very hungry; I had rice. After some time my sister told me that my uncle’s son was dead because he was buried under a destroyed house during the daytime. I felt very sad because my little brother was dead. After listening to the news I cried, but I didn’t believe it so I called my aunt to confirm whether the news was true or not, and my aunt said it was true. Then I cried more; I felt very guilty for losing my brother who was just 10 years old. All the people in our area were very scared so none of them agreed to sleep inside their houses. Even our landlord didn’t allow us to sleep inside our rooms because he was worried about the people who have been living in his house by renting. So we could not sleep inside the room that night. All of us females stayed in one room and the males stayed in another room. None of us could sleep so at 2 o’clock we watched the news. All the Nepali channels were gone; only Hindi channels were available so we watched about the earthquake in Nepal. The news was very scary. So without sleeping, our night passed.
Abo
ut Sarita
Sarita has completed class 12 in travel and tourism and currently works in a Montessori kindergarten in Kathmandu.