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Thursday, 2 September 2010
Spent the day today in Thatta, a village 120 kms west of Karachi in Sindh Province, southern Pakistan, the latest area to be hit hard by flood waters. As we were driving from Karachi to Thatta you could thousands of people fleeing Thatta headed for Karachi, a city of 18 million, hoping they will find help. Many people were just walking along the side of the road with whatever they could carry. Some packed whatever they could along with as many as 15 family members into a pick-up to make the journey. Many more simply decided it was too far a journey and simply set up camp on the side of the highway. It looks like something out a movie, something you only see on TV, not in real life. Thatta is a town of 800,000 right on the Indus River, already more than 200,000 have been forced to flee and that number is expected to increase and the flood waters continue to rise as the Indus flow into the Arabian Sea. As we got closer to Thatta all you could see was water. At first I didn't think anything of it because I thought it was the Indus River, but I was told the river is still a fair distance away, these were crop fields. It was unbelievable. wherever you looked was water, and people on the move. We distributed food packs to about 315 families of persons living with a disability in a makeshift camp. The packs would feed a family of five for seven days. It doesn't seen like much in the face of hundreds of thousands, but it matters a lot to those families. Perhaps the most impactful part of our journey however occured on the way back to Karachi. We saw one family sitting on the side of the road with nothing but a sheet to sheild them from the sun. When we turned around we discovered they were a family of 15 that had fled Thatta two days ago. They rented an ox cart and fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They need the cart because two of their daughters had Muscular Dystrophy and one of them is a wheelchair user. Unfortunately half way to Karachin the driver said he wouldn't go any further and kicked them out of the cart. When we found them, they had been there two days, without any food or water or proper shelter. We had nothing to give them as we had already distributed our food, but we could offer them a lift. So we packed them into the back of our truck and drove them the final 60 kms into Karachi. We took them to a government run camp for displaced people. At least now they will be registered in a camp, given a tent, some food and water and the daughters will receive medical attention. Its 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 managable, and you feel like you are actually making a difference in the lives of survivors. Off to Peshawar in the north where the flood waters have receded and people are starting to make their way back home, or back to what is left of their homes. Thanks Brian Hatchell CBM - Emergency Communications Coordinator |
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