By Khem Aryal and Krishna Sharma in Dhanusha, Janakpur

The village of Osara, a tiny village in mid-eastern Nepal with nearly 1,200 people, was more like an abandoned village than anything when an afternoon we reached there with a camera in our hand. Once we started taking photographs, the villagers, mostly women and children, surrounded us and demanded that we take photos of all the damaged houses and the tents they were living in with buffalos at one side of them. Our failure to meet their expectation because of the hot sun of the mid-afternoon nearly resulted into an attack on a local youth who was leading us through the village. We were sorry to realize that they were so desperate to get some support from outside. They hoped that if photographs were taken, they might be shown to some kind donors bringing them some support.

The villagers in Osara, hit by recent floods in the Jallad River, are still in need of external support, may be in the form of relief packages, after more than one and a half months of the disaster. Although the village is jut five kilometers east of the district headquarters of Dhanusa, the villagers are still suffering unheeded.

"God knows how long we will have to continue in this condition," says Hardev Paswan, 56, who now lives in a tent that Nepal Red Cross Society had provided him immediately after the flooding of July 8. Paswan's hut was among 27 ill-fated houses that were completely swept away within a couple of minutes on that ill-fated day.

Field supervisor of Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), Dhanusa branch Ram Nath Mahato says, of the 101 VDCs, 64 were worst hit by floods. The flood and landslide took toll of 8 people, most of them women and children, injured 12, displaced 1,593 families and destroyed over 9,000 houses in Dhanusha district alone.

Hunger striken Osarians recall that fateful afternoon with horror in their eyes and say God still loved them when Jallad River broke the dam during the day. "Had it been during night time, many of us now would not have been here talking to you," says Kewal Kumar Yadav, the only youth in the village who understands and speaks in Nepali. Half the village, including a man-made pond, a school and nearly a hundred hector of arable land now wears a deserted look.

"We helplessly cursed ourselves for two weeks as the water continued to flow from our village," says another half naked old man in his Maithili dialect.

Inhabited mainly by older generation of children, the population density in this poverty stricken village which in the past housed 275 huts or hovels, is decreasing as the trend of migrating to safer places or fleeing of youths to India is on the rise.

However, there are women, children and aged people who can hardly think of migrating, and worry about their future in the village. "While we are just busy for survival, we can't simply think of how we would be able to change the course of the river and save ourselves before the next monsoon comes," worries Paswan.

They are grateful to the Red Cross that could provide them with immediate relief for a few days, but they are in need of more support. Yadav, who works in his village as a volunteer for Participatory Environmental Development Programme, says it would be better if the government and NGOs could come up with plans to save villages and arable lands from possible floods in the future than to come with relief package which are often late. However, all they feel that their immediate needs are more urgent.

The need of relief to the victims of Osara village is just one example. There are many such villages in the adjacent Terai districts that are waiting for adequate assistance to bring their daily life to normalcy.

Nepal Red Cross Society has been continuously working for the support of the affected people, starting with the rescue work during the disaster. From central as well as the local level, the NRCS workers have devoted to the service of the affected people. "We have been able to reach to all the affected places and people with our relief materials because of the acceptance of the Nepal Red Cross," says NRCS Secretary General Dev Ratna Dhakhwa. "But the need is very big, and we are expecting further support to reach the needy people," he adds.

The Society has distributed more than 18 thousand family packages. Each family package contains a kitchen set, a plastic bucket and jug, female sari, male dhoti, printed cloth, blanket and tarpaulin. In addition to this, the NRCS district branches have collected food and other necessary materials on their own and distributed to the affected population. More than eight hundred plastic sheeting have also been distributed for the immediate shelter.

The NRCS has plans distribute family packages to 30 thousand families and reach one thousand families with food support through the emergency appeal launched a month ago. Rehabilitation of four hundred families is also planned in the appeal. "We are in need of further support to go with our rehabilitation plan," says the director of the Disaster Management Department of the NRCS Sanjeev Kumar Kafley.

Many organizations like the CARE Nepal, Lutheran World Foundation, Plan Nepal and UNICEF have been supporting and working in coordination with the Nepal Red Cross at national and local levels to reach to the needy people for the humanitarian support.