INDIA A long time to heal

By Nalini N. Paul, CARE India

“I will never forget 25th May for the rest of my life, especially how my life changed within a matter of few hours,” says Sheikh Ahmedullah, reliving those moments when his entire household and his meagre belongings were swept away.

Natural disasters can leave bitter memories amongst those who face them, and sometimes it takes years to deal with them. The recent Cyclone Aila which hit West Bengal devastated many lives and has left many bitter memories amongst the survivors. Sheikh Ahmedullah is one of the survivors. He works with CARE’s Integrated Nutritional Health Project in South 24 Pargana.

“Everything was fine in the morning, but all of a sudden around 10:30 am I heard people from my village shouting. I ran outside to see what was happening,” said Ahmedullah. “It was then that I saw water coming towards our side and I could immediately make out that water was approaching our area at a great speed. People started running here and there not knowing what to do. From a distance, I could see that the place where my relatives were staying had already been inundated with water. I managed to gather courage and went to that section of the village along with a few villagers to get my relatives to our house as the water had still not reached there.

“Realising that sooner or later even our house would be flooded with water, I grabbed my land documents and decided to take my family (my wife, two children and my father) and my relatives to a safer place. We waded through waist-high water and walked approximately 1 km to take shelter in a comparatively high building. And just as my father had predicted, half an hour later, the waters destroyed everything we had. After staying at the temporary shelter for one and half days, we came back to our village, when we realised that the water level was receding.”

Regarding the damages and the losses, Sheikh Ahmedullah says, “It has taken me some time to accept the loss that people in my neighbourhood and I have incurred as a result of the cyclone. While the water has now receded it has destroyed all the fields because it is saline. The village has only one pond that has safe drinking water and while there is some safe drinking water left there is no clean water available to wash utensils. As a result many people are suffering from diseases like diarrhoea. Lack of proper disposal of carcasses has only compounded the problems.

“Earlier whenever there were floods we knew that we could survive somehow because our livelihood resources were not threatened. But this time around people are not sure how long it will take for the situation to improve as Cyclone Aila has literally washed away all our crops, all our livelihood resources. The villagers used to grow Betel leaves but all that has been destroyed. Sheikh Ahmedullah used to sell fishes from his pond once a year and earn at least 10,000 Rupees ($212 or 150 Euros). All the fish are dead now. In fact the fish in all the ponds died instantly perhaps because of the force with which the waters came in.

The embankments, constructed by the villagers, have also been completed washed away. People live under constant fear as the monsoon is yet to start and some of them are not even willing to return to the village until they are sure that they are safe.

“I am not sure of what life is going to be either for me or for people in my village,” said Ahmedullah. “But I certainly do know that the scars of the cyclone are so deep that it will take a long time to heal.”