[When a lack of trained builders hampered
reconstruction in earthquake-hit Nepal, women stepped up to the plate – yet
their resourcefulness has perturbed some traditionalists]
By Pete
Pattisson
 |
|
Sharmila
Tamang in one of the houses she is building, after training as a mason
to
help with post-earthquake reconstruction. Photograph: Pete Pattisson
|
This time last year Phulsani Tamang was
living in a makeshift temporary shelter on the terraced slopes of eastern
Nepal.
Her home had been destroyed by the 2015
earthquake, which claimed close to 9,000 lives and left hundreds of thousands
of people homeless.
When disaster struck, Phulsani’s husband was
working in Saudi Arabia and the other men in her village were too busy
rebuilding their own homes to help.
“At that time, it was hard to even find
someone to build a cowshed … it was so frustrating,” she says.
So Phulsani decided to build a house herself.
She and nine other women in Baluwapati, a
village a few hours’ drive outside the capital, Kathmandu, signed up for a
training course to become stonemasons. In deeply traditional rural Nepal, this
was a radical step, and the reaction from the men in the village was
predictable.
“They said, ‘You are women so you can’t do it
and you shouldn’t be doing it,’” says Phulsani.
But 12 months on, with eight houses under her
belt, things have changed. “Now the men walk by quietly when they see us
working. They don’t dare to make negative comments.”
Nepal’s efforts to recover from the 2015
earthquake, which destroyed more than half a million homes, have been hampered
by political upheaval and bureaucratic hurdles, but also by a lack of trained
builders.
To address the shortage, the Swiss development
agency Helvetas, with funding from the UK’s Department for International
Development (DfID), has trained 6,500 masons, a third of whom are women.
“The training has given these women much more
confidence. Now they believe they can do any kind of work, not just house
building. They have more income, which they often spend on their children’s
education, and they are no longer dependent on their husbands,” says Kriti
Bhuju, a programme officer at Helvetas.
About 54,000 people nationwide have now been
trained as masons through government and non-government programmes as part of
Nepal’s earthquake recovery efforts. However, only 10% are women.
And a recent study by the Housing Recovery
and Reconstruction Platform, a forum for all bodies involved in earthquake
reconstruction, found that of the women they spoke to who had trained as
masons, only half were working at the trade.
“Some women who have done the training have
had a positive experience, but many can’t find employment. Some are not trusted
to do the work and others are paid less than men,” says Siobhan Kennedy,
recovery adviser at HRRP.
Three years after the earthquake,
reconstruction efforts are patchy at best. While building has accelerated in
the past year, much of this has been prompted by government deadlines to claim
reconstruction grants. These are disbursed only after homeowners can prove they
have built property to a prescribed level, resulting in many small, impractical
buildings in the rush to meet the deadlines.
The scene in Baluwapati is typical. Along the
steep terraced slopes stand the cracked remains of traditional stone houses
alongside temporary earthquake shelters built from bamboo and metal sheets.
Among them are new, earthquake-resistant brick homes; some still at the
foundation stage and others completed.
Pride of place among the new buildings is the
two-storey local administrative office, built by women, including Ranjana
Tamang.
“Some people complained that it would take
women two months to build it, but we finished it on schedule in a month,” she
says. “People acknowledge that we are capable now, even if they do not
specifically praise us.”
Because of her building work, Ranjana is
earning an income for the first time – about £6 a day. “I used to be totally
dependent on my husband’s money, but now I can contribute to the children’s
expenses. I can stand on my own feet.”
Sharmila Tamang has become a contractor,
overseeing the building of 12 houses, with three more under way. “I do
contracted work as if I was building my own house. People say I work hard. We
women have become the first choice for building a house in the village,” she
says.
Like many villages across Nepal, Baluwapati
is short of men. Scores have left to find work in Kathmandu or abroad, but
Sharmila says this is not the main reason women have turned to construction.
“Men don’t like to do hard work. Building
houses is difficult. So they didn’t want to do that training. Also men drink
and create problems, but women work well together,” she says.
But in places like Baluwapati, female
builders are still expected to keep up with their traditional jobs; housework,
farming and childcare. Sharmila’s response is typically entrepreneurial: “If I
don’t have time to do the housework, I pay another woman a small amount to do
it for me.”
Sharmila’s husband, Jeet Bahadur Tamang,
appears supportive. “Whatever they’ve done so far is good. The buildings they
made haven’t come down yet. Women do everything nowadays,” he says.
But some men remain unconvinced. “These women
are still learning. Their work is not to a professional standard. I would only
employ men,” says local carpenter, Gyan Tamang.
Ranjana Tamang shrugs off such comments. “We
face these challenges every day of our lives. So we don’t worry about it. We
ignore them and move on.”
