Kathmandu, Oct. 22 -- When Urika Tamang last spoke to her husband, he told her he would be home on October 1. A teacher at a government school in Timure, near Nepal's border with Tibet, he had spent the last eight years living apart from his wife and son so their child could attend a school in Kathmandu.

Tamang, 37, learned that her husband had been killed in the Rasuwa disaster when the school principal, who had been airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment, broke the news to her.

"I told our son, but he still thinks his father will come home for Dashain," Tamang said. "He did not see his body, so it was difficult for him to believe he had died."

Now Tamang is trying to find a way to pay for her husband's Ghewa, a Tamang ritual to help th...