Abdul and Abdullah.Abdul Ghafar and Abdullah Pahor are relatives. They are two of the men who speak on behalf of six families who have sought shelter together in a room in a school in Shikarpur town.
Between them they have eleven children, and in the room are about 50 men, women and children, all huddled together on a mat on the floor.
“We don’t want to leave here. Our homes and everything we owned is destroyed, so we have nowhere to go.” Abdullah remarks.
CARE, through its local partner HANDS, is now looking after these six families and the thirty or so others who occupy this school temporarily. It is providing food, water, medical treatment and also education for the children. And these families consider themselves lucky that they are not in tents in the blazing sun, but have the luxury of walls, a ceiling and a feeble fan.
As two of his younger children climb onto his lap, Abdul tells the story of how they all came to be here. “We had heard about the flooding, as some people in our village had received warnings on their mobile phones. We had started to prepare to leave, but we were caught by surprise when the nearby embankment burst.”
As Abdul speaks, others in the room start to chip in. “We had to run very fast,” says one woman, “we left so much behind and also had to watch our smaller animals drown.”
The families left their village, nonetheless, without any human loss of life and made it to Shikarpur town on 10 August. While they are still exhausted and traumatized, at least they are for now receiving the essential support they need. But it is the future that matters now. And neither Abdul nor Abdullah knows yet what that will hold.
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