Nepal quake victims trek through mountains to get needed aid

After roughing it five nights in the rain, the 60-year-old woman finally had a plastic sheet over her head.
Sukhmaya Tamang had walked about 20 kilometers in flip- flops on mountain paths to get the emergency kit to help ward off the weather, and faced the same long journey back home.
She and hundreds of others many elderly and all of them poor arrived in recent days at this village to collect the emergency shelters after their remote mountain homes shaken to a shambles by Saturday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake that radiated from the epicenter directly below.
Tamang's cliffside hamlet in the Gorkha district can't be reached by vehicle, and Balua is the closest place to her home that even the toughest trucks and SUVs can get to. Helicopters are scarce during the crisis, and rainy weather has further reduced their flights.

"I walked four hours to get here, and I've been waiting here for two days," Tamang said yesterday while crouching amid dozens of other now-homeless and destitute women. "I have no home, no food, nothing left. I have been sleeping under the open sky."
Five days after the massive quake, UN aid trucks were finally arriving after a few false starts. Their dogged and determined drivers successfully pushed through rain-swamped and washed-out roads.

They were being joined by all manner of enthusiastic and concerned people, as local charities, foreign tourists and able-bodied village youths pitched in.
Balua village elder Shekhar Nath Neopani was stunned by the outpouring of help.

"It's surprising to see everyone, even people who are usually divided, coming together, and all these foreign people bringing us help," he said.
Nepal faces a crisis on multiple fronts in coming weeks and months.
Experts say it is crucial for the government and relief agencies to get food, medicine and shelter from unseasonal rains to some 1.4 million in the worst-affected regions.
Collapsed latrines must be rebuilt and animal carcasses must be cleared away to avoid a sanitation nightmare.
In the longer term, Nepal's vast farming community, making up two-thirds of the country's 27 million people, will need help.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization said the earthquake and the 73 aftershocks that have terrified the population could hamper efforts to harvest this year's wheat crop.