Tragedy in Pakistan, through a child’s eyes

The young boy needed wisdom beyond his own. While he could make a plan for himself and his older brother, a harder question was beyond his ability to solve. His mother. An older woman, and diabetic, she could not manage to climb those stairs in the face of the swirling waters. Inamullah sought help from his brother but, at 12 years of age, he was not much bigger or stronger and, try as he might, she proved too heavy to carry. 

For the two children, the risk of losing her was not only horrifying but, as events had it, hauntingly familiar. Only five years earlier, they had lost their father to the earthquake in Pakistan. Neither brother would forget the terrifying shudders of the earth that day, nor the sickening moment of realisation that their dad would never come home again. Surely, now, they could not lose their mother as well?

Disaster events, though, strike where they will. They are no respecters of persons. In the end, the two could only gaze in abject horror as the relentless waters swept their mother away from their grasp and out of their lives.

All that remained for them, in their shocked state, was to try to cheat death themselves.

Somewhere in the dank waters, Inamullah found a rubber tyre and hung on to it with what little strength remained. It bobbed and ducked in the violent waters, as he tried to avoid the floating debris they carried, at terrifying speed, in their raging path. It was thirteen hours before rescue workers found him and took him to safety.

There he was reunited with his brother and the two, now orphaned, later spoke of their battle. “We can’t sleep at night” they said, in what we would probably call post trauma response. “We are still scared of the floods. And we are all alone now that our mother has gone. She was all we had.”

Inamullah’s mother is just one of the rising death toll following the devastating floods. The latest body count stands at 1,600, but that statistic hides the true human cost of this disaster. 20 million people in Pakistan are estimated to be affected. Even though most of these displaced people are now beginning to return home, each day now holds countless perilous risks. There  is a very serious lack of clean water, with many people forced to drink from dirty canals and other sources. Already, there are reports of widespread cholera outbreaks, as well as dysentery and diarrhoea. These illnesses can be fatal and threaten, in particular, 3.5 million children, many of whom were already malnourished through a life of poverty.

Schools have been hit too. Children have returned to find that, along with the rest of the buildings, their schools have been washed away. The UNHCR estimates that around 10,000 schools have been destroyed by the flooding, as well as many that are currently unusable because they are serving as temporary shelters for people who have lost their homes.

We have been in consultation with people in Pakistan who are working with those affected. The kind of help they need varies with each stage of the recovery process, but, for the load we recently sent, they asked us to gather hygiene kits, kitchen sets and school supplies. Many people in Hong Kong responded generously by donating funds and running collection drives to help the flood victims. The container is now on its way to Pakistan and the goods inside will begin reaching people re-starting in new homes and those living temporarily in camps and shelters. For privacy, the name of this child has been changed. We have sought to be faithful, however, in the telling of the facts which, unlikely as such a coincidence may be, are true. If you would like to donate to help the ongoing pain in Pakistan, and other countries hit by disaster, click here.