August 20, 2010

The baker from Lower Dir can’t forget the night flood waters that took away his home.  

“The roaring waters made a deafening sound,” shares Shah Izzat Khan. “The pouring torrents from the sky made a frightening rebound to the quietness of the night.” There was a big splash and dust swirled up as the row of rooms fell into the river. When the muddy mist subsided, there was nothing left of his house.
 
Those rooms had represented a happy life in which 18 years of marriage brought the arrival of 10 children. Now, Khan could only watch helplessly as his whole life's work slid into the river.

All he could make out with his unbelieving eyes were huge trees helplessly rolling and being tossed around by mad waves at thunderous speed.

No stranger to calamity

It’s not the first time Khan has faced tragedy. He and his family were among the 2.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) rendered homeless in May, 2009. That’s when Pakistan's armed forces carried out an operation to clear the districts of Swat, Buner and Dir from Taliban extremists.

He and his family spent a very painful six months in Jalozai camp for IDPs before returning back to his home and what he thought would be a peaceful and secure life. His house had five rooms, a large courtyard and a boundary wall next to three acres of agricultural land, making the baker a proud land owner.
 
Then on July 28, the torrential rains began. It didn’t take long for the Bajaur River to overflow its banks.  Khan was alarmed when the outer boundary wall fell into the river after waters eroded the land below it. To his horror, he noticed the river had started to erode the land under his house with a ferocity beyond human imagination.

Children accustomed to trauma

He moved his children and all his belongings to his elder brother’s house next door.  The families huddled together having put the children to sleep. Having gone through traumatic experiences of internal displacement, the children have learnt to live in the midst of a crisis. They fell asleep or just remained unnoticed by the elders.
 
“I sat watching helplessly praying to God to spare the roof over my children's heads”, he tells of the night of August 2, 2010 when the river took away his house. There was more rain and an even more ferocious flood than the first wave.
 
The water soon thundered through the five-room walled brick house and then the whole house fell into the river.
 
“There was nothing left to indicate that it ever existed. It vanished as if it never was,” mumbles the dazed owner trying to cope with the stress of how to rebuild his lost life. "It would have been better if I had died in the floods as the compulsion to rebuild a new life is much more painful," says Khan.

Needs almost incomprehensible
 
According to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, there are more than 875,562 flood-damaged houses across Pakistan, affecting more than 5.2 million people.
 
“The scale of the response needed is almost incomprehensible,” said Anita Cole, Programme Development and Quality Director for World Vision Pakistan. “World Vision is moving quickly to mobilize the human and financial resources needed to scale up programs so we can respond as soon as the immediate danger posed by the flood passes”.

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