September 2010

Brian Hatchell, CBM’s Emergency Communications Coordinator, recently spent time in Pakistan in the wake of last month’s devastating monsoon floods. Here is an account of his travels.

As I sit in the comfort of my own home, all I can think about are the people in Pakistan who lost theirs. I met so many people on my trip: young, old, male, female, rich, poor. And they all have one thing in common—they lost everything to the floods.

Mother Nature doesn’t discriminate. But neither does the spirit of survival.

Everyone I met, from the four-year-old boy who lost his father, to the 50-year-old man who lost his saw mill, to the widow who doesn’t know where she will live once the waters recede. All they want is a chance. A chance to return home, a chance to rebuild their lives, a chance to regain their independence.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the size of a disaster affecting more than 20 million people. But when you look at it as one family at a time, it seems more manageable. You feel like you are actually making a difference in the lives of survivors.

In one particularly hard-hit area in a village north-east of Peshawar, we visited a mother/child health clinic run by the Diocese of Peshawar, one of the eight dioceses of the Church of Pakistan and one of CBM’s local partners. Though the clinic was very basic, the health care being provided was truly life saving. The doctors see about 30 to 40 patients a day, and most of them have skin disease, tuberculosis, diarrhea, gastro-intestinal illnesses and even some cases of cholera and malnutrition. The staff working in the clinic were truly dedicated. Many of them had lost their homes in the flood, but continued to come to work to help those less fortunate.

I met one woman, Laviza, is who 35 years old and married with 6 children between the ages of 6 and 20. She is blind in one eye. When the floods came in the early hours of the morning, she awoke to the sounds of screaming. When she and her husband jumped out of bed, there was already water on the floor of their house. Because she could not see well in the darkness, she could do little to help. Terrified, she could only depend upon her husband to take their children to safety.

The next morning, the family traveled to a Diocese relief camp where they were given life-saving supplies of food, water, shelter and medical care. Yet after a month, the family desperately wanted to return home. What they saw when they returned was devastating. All of their belongings had washed away, the foundation had shifted, and all of the walls had large cracks. However, the family decided to stay there. “It is our home, where else could we go?” Laviza said. With no money to rent a house or repair the damages, Laviza and her family literally had nowhere else to turn. Despite having lost everything, Laviza told us that she feels incredibly blessed. No one in the family was injured, and the Diocese has been a tremendous help. They’ve been given basic clothing, household items, and cooking supplies. The Diocese hopes to help them repair their house or rebuild if they can raise the funds needed.

In our travels throughout Pakistan, everywhere you looked was water. Under this water were some of the best crop lands in all of Pakistan. In its wake, the water spared no one, rich or poor. Natural disasters devastate everyone.

By nature, all of us are grateful for assistance when we need it, but the basic human instinct is to make one’s way in this world. The residents of Pakistan are no different. Their will to survive and start over is strong.

When I arrived in Pakistan and saw the magnitude of the floods, I honestly thought, “How will Pakistan ever recover from this?” But the more people I met, the more stories of hope and courage I heard. The country, and its people, will recover, rebuild, and be better for it.

If you’d like to help, please give now.

 

 

 

 

 

Some officials in Pakistan say that the economy has been so badly damaged they worry even micro-enterprise projects won’t be able to help as no one has any money to purchase goods. For now, they may have to go back to the barter system while people try to get back on their feet and reintroduce money at a later date.