Nepal : One month after the earthquake, children return to school

Thousands of children, still traumatized by the memory of the earthquake that devastated parts of Nepal a little over a month, returned to school this sunday.
The earthquake of magnitude 7.8 that occurred on April 25, followed by another strong quake on May 12 killed more than 8,600 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings, including many schools. Summaries classrooms were temporarily located away from vulnerable buildings threatening to collapse any time.
A schoolboy, 8 years old, is pasted to his father on the way of public school Madan Smarak in the Kathmandu Valley. According to his mother, the young boy terrorized by the earthquake refuses to be alone since. "The aftershocks continue. It's hard not to worry about sending children to school, but teachers have assured us that there was nothing to fear", she said.
Classrooms of bamboo were pitched on the football field. Other courses are held in local hard on which construction engineers wrote : "Safe".
"We stayed at home too long, it's nice to come and play here and see my friends", says a child of 9 years.
Older pupils are encouraged to cleaning out their closet front of their classmates to tell what they lived, the loss of their homes, and often, the death of a relative.
"We don't make course as usual, and we trained teachers to help children overcome the trauma of the earthquake", says the director, Govinda Poudel.

No less than 8,000 schools were damaged in Nepal. In the most affected districts, Gorkha, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchowk, these are 90% of the institutions that were set down.
The schools were initially to reopen May 17, but the reply of 12 May, of magnitude 7.4, differed the return of school.
The general director of education in Nepal, Dilli Ram Rimal, hoped that schools will be more and more numerous in the days and weeks ahead to be able to welcome their students.
"We know that all schools don't have the resources to operate. But education is an important part of the rebuilding process and we must begin this process", he explains.
UNICEF, the United Nations Fund for Children, is worried about the earthquake's consequences on education in Nepal who made a giant leap since the 1990 years, the enrollment rate in elementary school from 64% to over 95%.
"The more time children stay home, more difficult it's for them to return to school", said Tomoo Hozumi, representative of the UN agency in Nepal. "Education can't wait. It must be an integral part of the overall effort of relief and reconstruction", he says at AFP.

Source : Liberation