Pakistan floods: people return home to find nothing left, nothing at all
The monsoon deluge turned mud houses in north-west Pakistan into a sodden mess
Gurdian.co.uk – by Saeed Shah
Gurdian.co.uk – by Saeed Shah
Sirajuddin stares at the shallow muddy pool of water. He had come to salvage whatever he could from his home. There is nothing, nothing at all.
"This was our house," said 30-year-old Sirajuddin, pointing to the pool.
Before the great flood came at the end of July there were some 120 homes in the village of Drab Korona, in Charsadda district in north-west Pakistan. Today, only a mosque, two schools and the odd brick wall of other buildings have survived. The rest of the buildings were made mostly of mud. A torrent of freezing cold water, which eventually went roof-high, had come in the dead of night and by the next afternoon, almost everything was washed away.
The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the first hit by the monsoon deluge. While further south in the country, the floods continue to the eat up more land, in the north-west the waters have receded, removing the danger of drowning but leaving behind the threat of disease and a destitute population. Pakistan's federal flood commission has reported that 178,484 homes were destroyed or damaged in this province alone.
With the flood waters gone, Drab Korona looks like a muddy refuse site, a jumble of battered remains encased in thick sludge. Strewn around are broken furniture, trucks, rafters that had been used to support houses … evidence that homes once stood here.
Sirajuddin had lived here with his wife and four children, and the families of his two brothers, in a three-room mud home set in a modest compound. That had gone and there was a just a trace of his all-important wheat store, where some ruined grain was lying in a heap.
They had bought the house six years ago for 140,000 rupees (£1,080), with money loaned and gifted from relatives. Before the floods, Sirajuddin used to make 4,000 rupees to 5,000 rupees (£31 to £38) a month as a labourer.
"We don't have anything now, even to feed ourselves, so how can we remake this house?" said Sirajuddin, who is living in a tent in another part of Charsadda district. "Our relatives are giving us food but how long can they do that?"
Under a baking sun in sapping humidity, the village air is heavy with the gut-churning smell of rotting flesh, a stench that seems to come in waves. Most of the buffalos and other animals were drowned. Their carcasses lie putrefying somewhere under the slushy mess. Villagers who have returned to search for belongings complain of skin problems. The stagnant water and animal remains have turned Drab Korona into a breeding ground for germs.
A few metres away, Aman Gul, an 18-year-old dressed in a dark vest and traditional baggy trousers, had come to retrieve what he could. Both his home and his father's village shop were washed away. It was a four-room mud house, which had been home to 17 people, including his grandparents. He had managed to find an electric fan and some duvets that were stored in a trunk. A bed, deposited on a pile of mud, marked the spot where the shop had stood.
In the hurry to get away on the morning of the flood, in water that was already neck high, two of Gul's aunts, his mother's sisters, had drowned. They had each been holding a child when the current took them away. Gul's father managed to save the children. One of the aunts, Shahnaz, was carrying the family's savings, 45,000 rupees (£350) in cash and 25 grams of gold. They found her body six days later, though there was no sign of valuables. In all, seven people from the village died.
"Only two of us can work in this family, my father and me," said Gul, who has a job on a building site across the border in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he makes 250 rupees a day (£2). "If we can get some money together, we will make one room, so at least we can live in our own place."
Gul's family are now living in a tent in a camp that has sprung up on the main Nowshera Road nearby, alongside the Flying Craft paper mill, a largely defunct factory that once used to provide much employment to the village. A dozen or so people are crowded into each tent there, on an exposed sitethat appears to receive little or no help from the authorities or aid organisations. There, they rely on the charity of townsfolk, who arrive by car with supplies of food to hand out, these days in the late afternoon before the breaking of the fast. Despite the calamity, all the adults in the camp are observing Ramadan. The north-west is a deeply religious region of the country.
Next to Drab Korona, the adjacent village of Fakirabad Majoki had been a marginally more prosperous settlement of about 1,000 houses, set on higher ground, where many of the homes were made from brick. But, to save money, locals had used mud rather than cement to bind the bricks, which simply dissolved in the flood, leaving mounds where walls had once stood, as if an earthquake had struck. Unlike, Drab Korona, now a wasteland, a few of the residents have drifted back to Fakirabad Majoki. A dozen old men knelt in prayer at the village mosque, which survived.
Farman Ali's home has a surviving, but badly bowed, compound wall. But inside, the rooms are gone. He's pitched a tent on his plot, where he and his seven children now live. It is better than sleeping on the side of the main road, where they had been staying. Over the last 25 years, Ali had slowly converted the original mud-built rooms into brick. Earlier this year, he took early retirement from a lowly job at the state electricity company. Now, the home is wiped out and has hasn't started to receive his pension.
"We got out when the water had reached over our heads," said Ali. "At least we're alive. How we'll live, I don't know. We have faith in God. He will do something. Send some angel perhaps."
Amid the fatalism of some, there is also burning anger, at the authorities, in particular the provincial government which is run by the secular Awami National Party. Charsadda district was the party's base but in Fakirabad Majoki, residents spat expletives at the ANP, praising instead the mildly Islamist party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which they said had come to their aid or at least shown concern.
"The ANP is not here, it doesn't exist for us," said Hameedullah, a 55-year-old villager. "Asfandyar [Wali Khan, the ANP leader] hasn't come here, even to his own area. If I saw him, I would become a suicide bomber against him myself."
According to a senior official in the Charsadda administration, Kamran Rehman Khan, the floods affected 74,000 families in the district, roughly 500,000 people, with 54,000 of those families now housed in schools or tents.
"The whole catastrophe is overwhelming," said Khan. "Whatever we do, is not enough."
The flooding began at the end of July, in the mountains of the north of Pakistan, caused by very heavy monsoon rain, with the flood waters moving southwards since then, inundating new areas of the southern province of Sindh this week.
Ø Flood facts
• Pakistan estimates that 2.5%, or nearly $5bn, will be wiped off expected growth this year as a result of the floods. Growth will also be hit next year. Infrastructure damage will also have an adverse effect on GDP
• Some economists believe the inflation rate could spike to 25% in the short term
• President Asif Zardari says recovery will take at least three years
• Population affected: approximately 20 million in more than 11,000 villages
• Area affected: 100,000 sq km – almost the size of England
• Cultivated land affected: 2.6m acres. The floods have destroyed an estimated 23% of the current national crop, including much of the cotton crop, which is Pakistan's major export driver
• Deaths: 1,539
• Houses damaged or destroyed: 1.2m
• Agriculture lost: 200bn rupee (£1.5bn)
• International aid pledged so far: $815m (£527m)
25/08/2010
"This was our house," said 30-year-old Sirajuddin, pointing to the pool.
Before the great flood came at the end of July there were some 120 homes in the village of Drab Korona, in Charsadda district in north-west Pakistan. Today, only a mosque, two schools and the odd brick wall of other buildings have survived. The rest of the buildings were made mostly of mud. A torrent of freezing cold water, which eventually went roof-high, had come in the dead of night and by the next afternoon, almost everything was washed away.
The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the first hit by the monsoon deluge. While further south in the country, the floods continue to the eat up more land, in the north-west the waters have receded, removing the danger of drowning but leaving behind the threat of disease and a destitute population. Pakistan's federal flood commission has reported that 178,484 homes were destroyed or damaged in this province alone.
With the flood waters gone, Drab Korona looks like a muddy refuse site, a jumble of battered remains encased in thick sludge. Strewn around are broken furniture, trucks, rafters that had been used to support houses … evidence that homes once stood here.
Sirajuddin had lived here with his wife and four children, and the families of his two brothers, in a three-room mud home set in a modest compound. That had gone and there was a just a trace of his all-important wheat store, where some ruined grain was lying in a heap.
They had bought the house six years ago for 140,000 rupees (£1,080), with money loaned and gifted from relatives. Before the floods, Sirajuddin used to make 4,000 rupees to 5,000 rupees (£31 to £38) a month as a labourer.
"We don't have anything now, even to feed ourselves, so how can we remake this house?" said Sirajuddin, who is living in a tent in another part of Charsadda district. "Our relatives are giving us food but how long can they do that?"
Under a baking sun in sapping humidity, the village air is heavy with the gut-churning smell of rotting flesh, a stench that seems to come in waves. Most of the buffalos and other animals were drowned. Their carcasses lie putrefying somewhere under the slushy mess. Villagers who have returned to search for belongings complain of skin problems. The stagnant water and animal remains have turned Drab Korona into a breeding ground for germs.
A few metres away, Aman Gul, an 18-year-old dressed in a dark vest and traditional baggy trousers, had come to retrieve what he could. Both his home and his father's village shop were washed away. It was a four-room mud house, which had been home to 17 people, including his grandparents. He had managed to find an electric fan and some duvets that were stored in a trunk. A bed, deposited on a pile of mud, marked the spot where the shop had stood.
In the hurry to get away on the morning of the flood, in water that was already neck high, two of Gul's aunts, his mother's sisters, had drowned. They had each been holding a child when the current took them away. Gul's father managed to save the children. One of the aunts, Shahnaz, was carrying the family's savings, 45,000 rupees (£350) in cash and 25 grams of gold. They found her body six days later, though there was no sign of valuables. In all, seven people from the village died.
"Only two of us can work in this family, my father and me," said Gul, who has a job on a building site across the border in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he makes 250 rupees a day (£2). "If we can get some money together, we will make one room, so at least we can live in our own place."
Gul's family are now living in a tent in a camp that has sprung up on the main Nowshera Road nearby, alongside the Flying Craft paper mill, a largely defunct factory that once used to provide much employment to the village. A dozen or so people are crowded into each tent there, on an exposed sitethat appears to receive little or no help from the authorities or aid organisations. There, they rely on the charity of townsfolk, who arrive by car with supplies of food to hand out, these days in the late afternoon before the breaking of the fast. Despite the calamity, all the adults in the camp are observing Ramadan. The north-west is a deeply religious region of the country.
Next to Drab Korona, the adjacent village of Fakirabad Majoki had been a marginally more prosperous settlement of about 1,000 houses, set on higher ground, where many of the homes were made from brick. But, to save money, locals had used mud rather than cement to bind the bricks, which simply dissolved in the flood, leaving mounds where walls had once stood, as if an earthquake had struck. Unlike, Drab Korona, now a wasteland, a few of the residents have drifted back to Fakirabad Majoki. A dozen old men knelt in prayer at the village mosque, which survived.
Farman Ali's home has a surviving, but badly bowed, compound wall. But inside, the rooms are gone. He's pitched a tent on his plot, where he and his seven children now live. It is better than sleeping on the side of the main road, where they had been staying. Over the last 25 years, Ali had slowly converted the original mud-built rooms into brick. Earlier this year, he took early retirement from a lowly job at the state electricity company. Now, the home is wiped out and has hasn't started to receive his pension.
"We got out when the water had reached over our heads," said Ali. "At least we're alive. How we'll live, I don't know. We have faith in God. He will do something. Send some angel perhaps."
Amid the fatalism of some, there is also burning anger, at the authorities, in particular the provincial government which is run by the secular Awami National Party. Charsadda district was the party's base but in Fakirabad Majoki, residents spat expletives at the ANP, praising instead the mildly Islamist party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which they said had come to their aid or at least shown concern.
"The ANP is not here, it doesn't exist for us," said Hameedullah, a 55-year-old villager. "Asfandyar [Wali Khan, the ANP leader] hasn't come here, even to his own area. If I saw him, I would become a suicide bomber against him myself."
According to a senior official in the Charsadda administration, Kamran Rehman Khan, the floods affected 74,000 families in the district, roughly 500,000 people, with 54,000 of those families now housed in schools or tents.
"The whole catastrophe is overwhelming," said Khan. "Whatever we do, is not enough."
The flooding began at the end of July, in the mountains of the north of Pakistan, caused by very heavy monsoon rain, with the flood waters moving southwards since then, inundating new areas of the southern province of Sindh this week.
Ø Flood facts
• Pakistan estimates that 2.5%, or nearly $5bn, will be wiped off expected growth this year as a result of the floods. Growth will also be hit next year. Infrastructure damage will also have an adverse effect on GDP
• Some economists believe the inflation rate could spike to 25% in the short term
• President Asif Zardari says recovery will take at least three years
• Population affected: approximately 20 million in more than 11,000 villages
• Area affected: 100,000 sq km – almost the size of England
• Cultivated land affected: 2.6m acres. The floods have destroyed an estimated 23% of the current national crop, including much of the cotton crop, which is Pakistan's major export driver
• Deaths: 1,539
• Houses damaged or destroyed: 1.2m
• Agriculture lost: 200bn rupee (£1.5bn)
• International aid pledged so far: $815m (£527m)
25/08/2010