Fwd: Flooding strikes close to home
Noman Baig
Flooding strikes close to home
Graduate student works to provide aid to family, survivors in Pakistani village
Published: Friday, October 15, 2010
Just days after UT Anthropology PhD student Hafeez Jamali returned to Austin for the fall semester, his home village in southern Pakistan had been flooded, and was under several feet of water. Since then he has worked collaboratively with other UT students to raise money to assist those affected by the flooding through a group they started called Fighting the Flood.
Hafeez Jamali smiles when he describes Chowki, the southern Pakistani village where he grew up. He led a simple life growing up with his extended family playing cricket after school and running home from the onion fields to his mother’s arms for a snack of sweet bread and yogurt milk.
The corners of Jamali’s mouth turned down as he said Chowki is a ruin of the vibrant home it once was. After August floods that displaced 20 million people and destroyed 4,700 villages in southern Pakistan, only eight or 10 structures still stand of the 150 that once crowded Chowki.
“I was hoping to go back to Pakistan in the winter, and I’m thinking what am I going to go back to when our village is destroyed?” said Jamali, who is now an anthropology doctoral student at UT. “This is just a temporary place. When I think of home, when I think of the center of the world for me, that’s my village. I’m at a loss, disoriented, without the center.”
Jamali left Chowki for his second year at UT on Aug. 17, just three days before flooding hit the village. He said he felt powerless as his family evacuated to nearby towns or to the higher ground of a nearby canal bank. His younger brothers and cousins who live in the city of Karachi, which did not have heavy flooding, have actively worked to provide relief to their displaced kin and friends.
The water flooding the village has receded from 7 feet to 2 feet, making it easier to assess the damage but harder to deliver supplies to those stranded on the canal, said Jamali’s brother, Aziz Jamali, who is leading relief efforts. He and a small group have distributed hundreds of bags of rations, but challenges continue to mount.
“The fear now is that the water is not so high that I can travel by boat to visit the people but it’s not low enough to restore the road connection,” said Aziz Jamali, who made his first trip to the village Sept. 1 by way of a 25-kilometer boat trip. “Food and transportation are expensive here, but we are managing and we have some help.”
Aziz Jamali reached out to Hafeez Jamali and other family members who were outside the country for resources and support, and so far, they have sent more than $7,000. The contributions help cover food and medical necessities, but Aziz Jamali said he does not know what to expect once he starts cleanup and rebuilding projects in Chowki.
Although he said he wishes he were in Pakistan to help directly, Hafeez Jamali has helped coordinate the efforts of Fighting the Flood, a UT student group that works to raise awareness and funds for Pakistan flood relief. The group tables every Thursday on the West Mall, sharing Pakistani/Indian music and offering henna tattoos and food in exchange for donations. So far, the group has raised more than $9,000.
“Working with Fighting the Flood has been an empowering experience for me,” Hafeez Jamali said. “Students are so energetic and they have really shown a lot of commitment and heart.”
But such grassroots efforts cannot sustain the relief aid needed to begin rebuilding Pakistan, he said. Its government cannot support such an immense task, and the international response has been unexpectedly slow, said Mohammad Nadeem, the Consul General of the Pakistani Consulate in Houston. The property damage and number of displaced persons far exceeds that of any other natural disaster in at least six years, according to a report from the consulate.
“The international response has not been in line with the enormity of the disaster, perhaps due to the slow-moving nature of the catastrophe,” Nadeem said in an e-mail. “The exact cost of damages has not yet been determined, as water has not yet receded. Once that has taken place, hopefully the international response will gain momentum.”
In addition to Chowki’s destroyed homes and road infrastructure, fields are unusable because of saturation levels, which means tenant farmers and landowners have little opportunity to work. These workers may be forced to beg or steal in cities that cannot sustain the sudden population influx, Hafeez Jamali said.
The brothers said rebuilding plans for Chowki and other villages must include preparation for future natural disasters so damage is less catastrophic.
“There has to be a long-term plan and the government needs funds and technical expertise to rebuild these communities,” Hafeez Jamali said. “We must take this opportunity to think of ways in which we can rebuild the communities to make them less vulnerable. You can never predict but you can always take steps.”
Grassroots fundraising, government support and improved infrastructure hold hope for a better, safer Chowki and Pakistan. And that, he said, would be something to smile about.
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/content/flooding-strikes-close-home
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www.fightingtheflood.org
Help Save Pakistan Flood Victims.
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www.fightingtheflood.org
Help Save Pakistan Flood Victims.
