IRON LADY AND FLOOD

 If I don't repair my house, who will? Husband and son go outside for work. If the men are in the house, then will they eat?'

Fatima is sixty years old. They have sores on their feet and blisters on their hands, but despite this, they are repairing their mud house by themselves. They told me that there are often thorns or glass from somewhere gets into the soil, which causes injuries. 

She says that there is no money to hire workers, they are barely making ends meet. Repairing the house has caused injuries on the feet, there are blisters on the hands, but what to do, life has to be lived as it is. 

It is village Chaudhwan of Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Here, many mud houses have been completely or partially destroyed by rains and floods.Destruction has happened all over Pakistan, but the same thing here is that the women are doing the repair and construction of these crude houses themselves. 

In Chaudhwan, we went to meet the women who are doing construction and house repairs. We thought that only a few women would be skilled in this work, but when we reached there, we saw that the number of women was much higher. Women were working in every house. The men of these families had gone out in search of sustenance or one had gone to the nearby Tehsil Daraban in the hope that they were told that some aid might be distributed there. 

These women included young and old women, some with a young daughter, some with a grandson or son working as assistants. The wrinkles on their faces were a testament to their hardships and suffering. Their hands were injured, their feet had no shoes, they had plastic bangles in their hands but they were covered with mud. 

These women were so skilled that they knew how much to knead the clay, how much water to sprinkle on the wall first, how much straw to add to the clay and how long it would take to dry. One woman even said that what is the big deal in it, it is our normal. "There is a lot of destruction now. The walls have collapsed, the roofs have weakened, so it took a long time to repair them. 

Here, if you enter a house, the way inside is connected to another house and the whole neighborhood is connected to each other in the same way, where house after house has been destroyed. Elderly woman Islam Bibi said that it was raining continuously, but suddenly one night there was an announcement to pick up what you could carry and leave the area. He picked up whatever he could and left the house. 

“Flood water came from both the back and front of the houses, causing the wall of our mud house to collapse. Here, if you enter a house, the way inside is connected to another house and the whole neighborhood is connected to each other in the same way, where house after house has been destroyed. Elderly woman Islam Bibi said that it was raining continuously, but suddenly one night there was an announcement to pick up what you could carry and leave the area. He picked up whatever he could and left the house. 

“Flood water came from both the back and front of the houses, causing the wall of our mud house to collapse. Now we have placed a sheet here for the curtain. People in this village look at every visitor with the expectation that someone might be coming to help. A lady who was there came forward and asked us if we would get any help. When I asked them why you did not get help, they said that our flour and wheat were washed away in the water. 

"The children are hungry, everyone is saying that the government is giving aid and people are coming. How long have we been waiting but no one has come to us?"