Lalhatoo Khaso, who was made homeless in the Pakistan floods, with one of her five children. © CARE / Claire SayceOn the six month anniversary of the catastrophic floods in Pakistan, imagine what life is like for Lalhatoo Khaso, one of the hundreds of thousands of people CARE has supported throughout the aftermath.
Try to imagine you are Lalhatoo Khaso...
You were born 40 years ago in a rural Sindh, Pakistan. You have lived most of your life in the same village, in a small house built of mud, no health centre or school nearby. You have had the luxury of an intermittent electricity source and a limited fresh water supply. Your days are spent caring for your five children, working in the rice paddies or passing time with other women like you.
In August last year your whole world changed. After heavy monsoon rains, rivers burst their banks and floodwaters arrived at your door. With your family and other villagers you fled just before the roads were cut off, finding yourself eventually in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. There you sought refuge, like so many others, in a temporary camp.
Surrounded by strangers
In the camp your family received plastic sheeting, food, clean water and basic medicines. But for three months you were trapped and afraid. You were surrounded by strangers, weakened by poor health and exhaustion, and longing to go home.
And now here you are back in your village, or what is left of it. You get what sleep you can through the bitter cold winter nights under the plastic sheet you carried back from Karachi. This sheet is attached by rope to the ruin that was once your house. The crops you planted before the flooding have been destroyed and stagnant water still clogs the fields. It may be difficult to plant again in March.
Your husband occasionally goes in search of manual work so that he can buy food, but he is rarely lucky. Even when he finds work, employers these days will pay the bare minimum, knowing others will accept less. You worry about how you will continue to feed your family, let alone get back to the way things once were.
CARE is staying to help rebuild
It is not all that easy to imagine, is it? But CARE is there to listen to Lalhatoo and support her to get back on her feet.
Over the past six months, CARE has focused on providing life-saving support to hundreds of thousands of people like Lalhatoo. Now, as families return to their homes and start to rebuild their lives, we are staying to help.
In Lalhatoo’s village CARE is restoring damaged water systems and, at the same time, educating the men, women and children on better hygiene practices that will make them less susceptible to disease. CARE is also providing medical support through mobile clinics and training parents in child nutrition and family planning too.
The hardships that people like Lahatoo face are hard for us to imagine. With many millions more so badly affected by last year’s flooding, the challenge of reaching them all with the support they need is huge. But CARE has been there from the start and is there to stay. We are listening and we can make a difference.
