The violence of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake left countless towns and villages across central Nepal in a shambles. Almost one year later, a shambles they remain.
The country has made almost no progress in rebuilding hundreds of thousands of homes, schools and government buildings, as well as some 600 historical structures, including ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples, monuments and palaces.
Nearly a million children still have no school to attend. Millions of villagers were forced to winter in flimsy pop-up tents and corrugated tin shacks, erected haphazardly at high altitudes and across the rolling plains.
The government's reconstruction agency has so far approved zero projects. Some citizens have started rebuilding on their own, but most are still waiting either because they are afraid of running afoul of new, promised building regulations, or because they still hope to receive government grants.
Many of them are still living in rows of temporary shelters made from salvaged wood covered with corrugated metal sheets that are likely to be their only protection when rainy reason returns in two months.
"This has been home for all of us for the past year and it looks like we are going to be here for a long time. All we hear is the government is going to give us money to rebuild our homes, but when is that going to happen? Our kids are getting sick and we have no money, job or a government that is going to come to our rescue," said Keshar Narayan, a farmer living with eight family members in a tin shed on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
The government was quick to promise help after the April 25, 2015, earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people, but a year later only a few families in Dolkha district have begun to get the money. They have each received 50,000 rupees (USD 467), the first installment of the 200,000 rupees promised by the government to each family who lost their home. Dolkha was among the hardest-hit districts and the epicenter of another major quake that struck May 12.
As they wait for help, even prayer can be dangerous. Many in the deeply spiritual Himalayan nation seek comfort in now-ramshackle stone temples left standing askew, sometimes held up just by wooden beams.
"Every time I come to pray in the temples, I am not sure if I will even leave in one piece. We have to risk our lives just so we can pray," housewife Shanti Shrestha said in Kathmandu while holding her temple offering of a stick of burning incense and a marigold flower. "We all are very angry ... For a year nothing has been done."
The lack of progress isn't for want of money. Nepal, facing an estimated USD 6.6 billion reconstruction bill, has received USD 4.1 billion in pledged donations so far.
The problem, officials and aid workers say, is tangled bureaucracy and government malaise. Some frustrated donors have simply given up.
