By Tabinda Sadiq, CARE International, Village S.K. Berohi, 54 kilometers from Shehdadkot, Sindh
The villagers live in mud houses. Every monsoon, water would enter into the village and in the houses but not more than 2 feet. This time they didn’t even imagine what monsoon was bringing. Sanjar Khan, 52 year old farmer, heard from a relative from a nearby village that everyone is leaving for Balochistan (the neighboring province) as deadly flood is coming towards their village. He has been living here for 25 years. Has mother, wife and 2 children in family. “All we could do was to tie the ‘charpoys’ (rope beds) on that tree’s upper most branches (while pointing towards the tall tree in the centre of the courtyard we were gathered) and run for our lives”
They all went to the main road to get on to a tractor which took them to their relatives in Balochistan. They remained there for 10 days and then shifted to tents distributed by the Government. “When I came to know that water had almost receded, I decided to return as I was already indebted due to cash borrowed from relatives for 2 months”. When they were leaving for home, government agency wanted to take back the tents. “We refused to give back the tents; I feared and knew that there would be nothing left of our belongings in the village”. Indeed, only for the charpoys hanging with the tree branches, nothing was left.
There is no electricity, no gas for fire, no water for irrigations, land still under water anyways, and no school for children. Little Arbab used to study in grade 1 before the floods, which is no more there. The government school building had been swept away by the water. She and many other village children liked to go to school and she wanted to become a teacher. It’s almost 6 months that they have not been to school and village elders say it’s not going to open this year, when I asked why , their reply was “no one’s settled yet, we are thankful to you for providing us ration, other than that we have nothing. We pray to God to help pass the winters”.
According to them the village gets completely dark in the evening as they are saving the fire wood for cooking purposes only. CARE with its partner, provide ration for 2 months to 41, 20 families of 143 villages in 2 Union Councils of district Qamber Shadadkot, Sindh. Reaching to these small far off villages is indeed a great step but seeing these people and their sufferings, it feels that emergency has not yet ended. There is lot more to be done.
Meero Khan
Dr. Fauzia Abbasi, 36, visits this camp in Meero Khan, District Shahdadkot, Sindh every two weeks. There are 98 families living in this camp and are provided with healthcare services, NIFs (tents, jerry cans, water coolers, life straws, shawls, mats and sports kits). These 762 people comprise of 481 Children, 161 women and 120 men. There are 13 pregnant women out of the total female population. Most of these pregnant women are anemic. “Men in some communities are not into helping women in house chores, rather, women are responsible for doing everything for them and children and that’s a major reason” says Dr. Fauzia. For this, CARE is about to set a trend in building Women Friendly Spaces (WFS) along with Child Friendly Spaces (CFS)which we have had successfully done in the relief phase.
According to Dr. Fauzia there are so many cases of Acute Respiratory Infection in children for which she always tells her patients and camp residents in general to keep themselves warm. Cold weather is one cause of ARI and other infections in winters. To help reduce the impact of harsh winters, CARE provided blankets to 23,175 families in 3 Districts of Sindh. I told her that she is doing a great work and requested her to share some case she feels really good about while dealing with the flood victims, she said “recently I met a woman who came for a minor checkup in a village’s Mobile Heath Unit, she had twins, it was strange that the 6 months old girl twin was extremely malnourished but the boy child was healthy, I referred her to a hospital in Larkana and visited her to follow-up after a month, when I went to that village again and saw that the girl child was in good health and completely recovered it felt really good”. She also told us of another case of malnourished girl child who recovered as well.
26 year old Ghulam Shabir is a social counselor and provides psychosocial support to the flood victims. He is proud of his work “in this very camp, madam, I met a woman who according to her husband wanted to commit suicide because they have lost everything in floods, I spoke to her individually for an hour and she promised that she will never consider committing suicide again and will learn to live. After dealing with this case I feel that I have learned to live”. Everyone seemed to know him in the camp. Ghulam Shabir is in the Mobile Health Team. There are 15 mobile health teams providing healthcare, psychosocial support and medicine to flood victims in 5 districts of Sindh (Kahsmore, Shikarpur, Qambar Shahdadkot, Sukkur and Dadu).
CARE, while designing a program considered both land owners (who lost their crops) and people without land. Total 1200 families will be given agricultural support (seeds and fertilizer) for 1 acre of land each. There is Cash for Work activity for those who had/have no land and will be given CFW for one month each. 1200 families have been identified for the activity and one member from each family will be paid for work. This activity will help revive the livelihood of 1200 families.
People in villages usually live in mud houses and have lost these houses in floods. In Qamber Shahdadkot 550 families will be given a shelter material for one room (roofing material, wooden bars, nails etc). Same families will also be provided with house hold non-food items kits including kitchen sets, bed sheets, 4 blankets each family, shawls, hygiene kits, mosquito mats, plastic mats etc). Both shelter material and NFI kit cost 23000 each and will spend 126, 50,000 PKR on these 550 families.