Zoyal Ghale, who ran into a forest and climbed trees to escape Nepal’s deadly floods, was reunited with his mother on Friday after she had begun to fear he and his brother had both perished in their school.
“I had come to accept that both my children were no more. All I could do was weep. I couldn’t hold myself together at all.
A day earlier, 8-year-old Ghale had been airlifted alone from the devastated northern district of Rasuwa with a broken leg and cuts on his face, while his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, 28, moved from one shelter and collection point to another looking for her two missing children. At least 17,000 children have been affected by the floods across Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts north of Kathmandu, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said, adding that it was working with Nepal’s government to identify, register and reunite children separated from their families.
“At the fourth place too, my children’s names were not on the list, and they were not there,” Tamang told Reuters.
Tamang and her family have been among the lucky ones. Bajracharya and a Reuters team had gone to the hospital after hearing about a young boy who had been taken there and the authorities did not know where his family was. At least 580 people have been confirmed dead and around 2,500 are missing in Nepal and China’s Tibet.
After speaking to Ghale before he was airlifted for more treatment, Bajracharya said he agreed to be filmed in the hope of finding his family. “I could see everything was being swept away,” Tamang said. “I thought my children were getting swept away too.”
