It has been two months since a powerful earthquake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria, sending buildings tumbling to the ground and killing 50,000 people.
Even if their homes have survived, many fear they could die if another earthquake hits and 1.6 million people are now sleeping tents.
Newstalk Breakfast presenter Ciara Kelly is in the region with the charity UNICEF and met a number of locals whose lives have been utterly changed by the earthquake.
Hudai has been a teacher for nearly 20 years but now lives in a tent in her garden.
She describes life as “very difficult” and says this is especially the case for the area’s women and children.
“We can say [it’s] like living in the old days,” she told Dr Kelly.
“Our grandmothers and grandfathers were farmers - now we are doing this.
“It’s like going back in time; our grandmothers told us [about it] and now we are living it with our children.”
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One of the key aims of international aid agencies is to get children back into the classroom and minimise the disruption to their education.
However, that is easier said than done when so much infrastructure is still unrepaired and many teachers perished in the earthquake.
One camp visited by Dr Kelly is home to 450 children but 1,000 attend school there.
“The most important thing for children is to get back to normality - which means that they have to go back to education,” Sema, Chief of Communications for UNICEF in the region, said.
“Because if you are a child, the most important thing that you do is you wake up, you have your breakfast and you go to your school.
“Which means this is the way back to normality.” 
A 7th grade teacher in the camp told Newstalk her class is “very good” but the impact of the disaster lingers on.
“They are affected by the earthquake,” she said.
“So, we are trying to recover their psychological situation… They are coming from different areas.
“We are the only school here in this area, so we have a lot of students.”
The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimates it will cost €80 billion for the region to recover and take several years.
If you would like to donate to UNICEF’s appeal for the region, you can do so here.
Main image: Dr Kelly in Turkey.
