Family's plight exposes cracks in aid

 

 

All 25-plus members of the family have been here ever since.

It's been nearly three weeks since the flood took away their homes and livestock and covered their land.

Their problems are multiplying. The heat and lack of sanitation has the place swarming with flies. The children are covered in them. The mothers in the group are beside themselves with anxiety.

"Look at her," Mussamat Islam Jatoi, said while holding her two-month-old baby girl covered with sores. "She is already dead," 20-year-old relative Arbab Jatoi chimes in matter-of-factly. No one disputes him.

Little Shehnela is lethargic and she rarely opens her kohl smeared eyes. No one knows what is wrong with her.

But everyone one knows what is wrong with Hurmat Jatoi, another of the group's mothers. She is pale and moves ever so carefully.

"I am sick because I am always thinking about my little girl." Her sickness is grief. Her two-year-old daughter was the only family member who did not survive the raging floodwaters.

"I have no more children. She was the only one," she said.

The depth of suffering in this one Pakistani family cannot be adequately described in words. But one look at their faces and you can almost feel it. "Surviving is very hard," Hurmat Jatoi said before shuffling back to her cot to continue mourning.