LHO, Nepal — A dozen children, wearing the maroon robes of Buddhist monks, sat together on the packed earth of the village courtyard, solemn-faced and whispering. Behind them, vertical cliffs rose to snow-covered peaks. In front, a narrow valley opened up, sunlight glimmering off the gold paint of a Buddhist shrine where other monks were stacking a stone wall.
The stillness was soon broken by a United Nations helicopter thudding up the valley toward them, its rotors whipping up stinging dust as it landed in a wheat field. When the rotors stopped, the children, lugging ragged day packs, were led to the helicopter, where officials signed paperwork and United Nations field officers confirmed the children’s identities by checking numbers written in black marker on their forearms.
Even for post-earthquake Nepal, where villagers have been plucked from the ruins since the first days, this evacuation was unusual. Fifty-nine minor monks, mostly boys, were airlifted that day, in four helicopter flights, out of an isolated Buddhist monastery and school in Lho, a tiny village that sits at an altitude of 10,170 feet in the northernmost part of the Gorkha district, abutting Tibet. It was the first official airlift of unaccompanied minors, and it required quasi-military planning and execution.
“Our monastery was destroyed and we did not have enough food,” said Lopen Mingur, the monks’ headmaster, “so I asked the government to help us organize a way to get the young ones to safety.”
For the student monks in Lho, life has always been hard. Their families, mired in grim poverty, have for centuries provided a child to a monastery for religious or educational reasons, or simply as a means of keeping them fed. The valley residents are ethnic Bhotia, whose main language and culture are Tibetan. The children, many from far-flung mountain areas, may not see their parents until adulthood.
The monks and their teachers sleep in dormitories, their beds warped wooden planks on the dirt floor. The walls are plastered with newspaper sheets, the only sign of insulation. Last winter, villagers said, the snowfalls exceeded six feet and avalanches tore down the hillsides.
The powerful earthquake on April 25 destroyed their dormitories and cracked their monastery, forcing them to move into flimsy tents. Dangerous overland routes to the south and west take many days, one requiring a hike over three-mile-high, snow-covered passes. To the north, the border with China is closed. The monastery’s only cellphone tower was knocked down by aftershocks, cutting off all outside communications. Food and other aid can come only by helicopter.
The monastery had kept poor records, and it was unclear how many monks resided there, although the headmaster estimated that before the earthquake, the monastery and school housed 500 monks and seven teachers.
“The plan is for 52 monks to stay and everyone else will leave,” said Tenzing Choegyal, a math teacher. “The children who live nearby, we have sent home. But for those from far away, the only place is Kathmandu.”
Before the United Nations and the Nepali government got involved, getting the monks to safety was a disorganized effort, according to local villagers and United Nations officials. Private helicopters flying in with relief aid were quickly mobbed by young monks wanting a ride out of the valley. Tsewang Norbhu, a villager, did not know that after the quake, the government, worried about an increase in child trafficking, had refused to allow unaccompanied children to be moved out of their districts unless they had the clearance of the chief district officer and the Central Child Welfare Board, the government body that monitors the movement of children.
“I put my 7- and 9-year-old daughters onto a helicopter because I don’t have enough food for them,” said Mr. Norbhu, 45, who grew up as a young monk in Lho, went on to study in a monastery in India but left the monkhood as an adult. “But the group of monks they were with were all stopped by police when they got to Dading District,” north of Kathmandu, he said. “They are now being sent back to Gorkha.”
After the headmaster requested the government’s help, Udhav Timilsena, Gorkha’s chief district officer, turned to Unicef to help arrange the evacuation. The World Food Program supplied the helicopters, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs mobilized field officers to monitor every step of the rescue.
Even then, complications quickly arose. Hardly any of the child monks had identification papers. Almost all shared the same last name: Lama. The marker identification system was used for the monks on the United Nations helicopter to make sure they were all accounted for.
As they boarded the helicopter on June 9, the monks, who ranged in age from 4 to 16 or so, awaited help to fasten seatbelts and put on noise-canceling headphones. By the time the helicopter had left, they were holding hands, sweat pouring down their foreheads. The rising valley heat made the helicopter shudder and shake. The pilot dipped so close to a hillside it was possible to see the pine cones in the fir trees. Some monks became airsick; two boys, both under 5, sobbed; and a teenage boy rocked back and forth, eyes closed, mumbling mantras. One girl spent the 40-minute flight leaning forward, staring straight ahead. When they landed in Deurali, a town in Gorkha known for its blistering heat, they all put on their woolen hats before leaving the aircraft.
In Deurali, once again, they were greeted by a government official and their names checked off a list before they were taken for a shower and dinner. But even then their trip was not over. The Central Child Welfare Board had discovered that the school on the outskirts of Kathmandu that had been their destination was under construction and not registered with the government.
So, accompanied by police officers, the children rode a bus to Kathmandu and the young monks set up a temporary new life under tents. Unicef officials said social workers and psychosocial counselors would visit daily. And the welfare board is profiling each child and trying to track down the parents.
“We support reunification,” said a senior Unicef official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of dealing with minors. “If the family wants them back, we will provide family support whether it is food, shelter or education support. The aim is to reduce the poverty burden on the family.”
But the monsoon season rolled in this week, and as entire communities in the mountains are cut off from the rest of Nepal, the process will no doubt take many months.
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