Under Dubai’s blinding afternoon sun, Hari Krishna lays bricks for a luxury residential complex.
But his thoughts are 2,000 miles away, amid the mud and debris of Nepal’s Bhote Khosi-Trishuli corridor.
For the past week, the 32-year-old construction worker, who sends most of his earnings home, has spent every spare minute frantically trying to call his relatives on iMO and checking local news channels on his cracked smartphone.
Late August brought catastrophic flash floods to his home district of Nuwakot in Nepal. The waters swept away bridges, roads, and entire hillside settlements, leaving at least 1,399 people dead across the country and nearly 5,400 missing at the time of writing.
And like thousands of Nepalis, the floods swept away everything Krishna’s family owned - their house, household supplies, money, gold and a shed housing their cows and goats. With their land destroyed, Krishna said there is no possibility of farming in the future.
