Expat community wait to hear news from Nepal

After the earthquake hit Nepal, Prem Raja Mahat spent a sleepless night at his home in the eastern US city of Baltimore, trying again and again to reach his son, who was visiting friends and family back in Mahat’s home country.

“My wife was crying, crying so much: ‘My son is not here, keep calling, keep calling.’ All night I called, but I could not get through,” said Mahat. “I could not work. I could not sleep. Everyone felt so bad.”

Power outages and communications problems have made life agonising for the nearly 6m Nepalese who live abroad — or about 22% of the population. They try desperately to reach loved ones through mobile phones and global messaging apps, only to be met with silence or fleeting connections. They are forced to wait for word to slowly trickle out of the impoverished country of 28m whose communications have been shaken back to a different era.