An eight-year-old boy named Zoyal Ghale has been reunited with his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, following a harrowing ordeal during the catastrophic floods that struck northern Nepal. Ghale had been missing since Wednesday, when a glacier collapse near Langtang Lirung mountain triggered a massive avalanche of ice, rock, and mud that devastated the region, including the Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts.
Ghale was at school when the disaster struck, describing the sudden onset as a moment where everything turned “so, so black.” He managed to escape the destruction by running into a nearby forest with a friend, where he climbed into the trees to avoid the rising debris. By Thursday, he was discovered and taken to the 15-bed Chakra Dev Hospital in Nuwakot with a broken leg and facial injuries. Police officers who rescued the boy had given him two 10-rupee notes to encourage him to seek medical care.
His mother, 28-year-old Matti Maya Tamang, had spent days in a state of despair, moving between various shelters and collection points in search of her two sons. “At the fourth place too, my children’s names were not on the list, and they were not there,” she told Reuters. “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.”
The breakthrough came when Tamang obtained the contact information for a journalist who had met Ghale at the hospital. After the boy agreed to be filmed in hopes of finding his family, the journalist left her contact details at the facility. When Tamang finally received word that her son was alive and had been transferred to a hospital in Kathmandu, she admitted the news felt surreal. She had already successfully located her younger son, and upon finding Ghale, she noted, “After I found the elder one, I felt my life was back.”
The impact of the disaster has been severe, with the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, reporting that at least 17,000 children have been affected across the region. The agency is currently working alongside the Nepalese government to identify, register, and reunite families separated by the floods. Official figures indicate that at least 580 people have been confirmed dead, with approximately 2,500 individuals still missing across Nepal and the Tibet region of China.
Tamang described the scene of the disaster as unrecognizable, noting that the school building and surrounding market areas were completely leveled by the landslide. “You could not understand where the school was, where the market was,” she said. “There was only water, stones and mud everywhere.” She had initially feared the worst when she saw the landscape being swept away, believing her children were caught in the path of the destruction.
On Friday, a vehicle was arranged to transport Tamang to the Kathmandu hospital where Ghale was receiving treatment. Despite the trauma of the event, the mother remained resilient, joking about her son’s history of accidents. “Oh, he is always a mischievous kid,” she said. “This is not his first broken bone.” Ghale’s father, who works as a construction laborer in Japan, is also traveling to be with the family. The report also notes that 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. The report also notes that bajracharya left her number at the hospital and Tamang called her some hours later. The report also notes that taking the school vehicle, and she had begun weaving at home, the boys had gone to school on Wednesday morning. The report also notes that then she heard what sounded like an earthquake. The report also notes that normally a 15- to 20-minute drive away, but said the landscape had become almost unrecognisable, she tried to head towards their school. The report also notes that entire communities were levelled, within minutes. The report also notes that when Reuters encountered Ghale at about 11 a.m.
Source: Gulf Today
