On Wednesday and Thursday I visited Tarnab, a village on the outskirts of Peshawar, Charsadda and Risalpur. Along the roadside there were a number of relief camps and piles of mud that had been cleared from roads that had been underwater. Fields were covered in mud and silt and many crops, even trees were flattened. Hundreds of houses are uninhabitable. A team from the diocese is assessing the damage to the homes of Christian families in preparation for repair and rebuilding. This will be a huge task and mobilising resources will take a monumental effort.
 |
Entire streets were flattened in this part of Risalpur |
In Tarnab a number families are currently sleeping in the church hall, itself damaged as their own houses are too badly damaged or unsafe. Everywhere flood waters have undermined the foundations and as the buildings settled the structures cracked. I saw house after house with collapsed or cracked walls and roofs, broken floors, ruined furniture and some rooms that had been swept away. As the ground dries out the houses will settle further causing even more damage. The floods have not only damaged buildings. Government offices and schools have been wrecked and important records have been lost. Children have lost school books, ministers’ libraries have been destroyed. Cooking utensils, bedding, clothes are buried in mud or destroyed by flood water. Businesses have suffered as stock and equipment has been lost to the onslaught of water.
The people I met were extremely resilient and thankful for the assistance they had received. I didn’t encounter any hostility towards me or the people from the diocese. I did hear about people who have been unable to return to their homes to try to rescue anything from the wreckage, the emotional stress of seeing their family home destroyed being too much for them to bear. Many will carry emotional scars for a long time as these communities rebuild their homes, businesses and lives.
 |
| Pervaiz Ghauri in the wreckage of his house in Charsadda. "Everything we worked to make this home since 1977 has been destroyed in one night." |
In Charsadda I joined diocesan office bearers to deliver relief goods to Muslim families and Bishop Humphrey Peters has appeared in press conference with Muslim leaders showing common cause. Building interfaith relationships and cooperation is important when tensions are running high but this itself is building of several years of interfaith work initiated by the diocese following the 11 September 2001 attacks by al-Qaida and the wars and invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
 |
One of four trucks being loaded with food supplies and non-food items. This consignment was being delivered to Muslim families in villages near Charsadda. |
