Flut in Pakistan: Verängstigte Kinder und frustrierte Väter

Save the Children hat seit der Flut im Juli neun Kinderschutzzelte in Swat, Pakistan aufgebaut. In den Zelten können die Kinder mit ihren Freunden spielen und reden. Ein Ort an dem die Kinder wieder Kinder sein können. Von unseren Betreuern werden sie durchgehend psychologisch begleitet. Hier erzählen Raheel und Imtiaz, wie es ihnen geht und wie sie mit ihren Erlebnissen umgehen.

“I was very scared. I was so scared I cried. The adults cried too. “

Sixteen-year-old Raheel describes the terrible days when the river flooded one month ago. He sits at one of the child-friendly spaces that Save the Children is providing in a small remote village of the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan.  He sits down while the other kids play vividly because he cannot walk on foot the way other people do.  To move forward he uses his hands. Still Raheel Ahmed participates in the playing with his friends but on his own conditions.

All the children here are one way or another affected by the floods.  Raheel remembers how it began. The rain started and continued without interruption the whole day, night and the next day as well. Then, in the afternoon, the flood was a fact and the water came closer and closer to his house.

“I was afraid that water should take away our home. It stopped 10 meters from our house, but it took all our fields and the garden,” he said.

Next to Raheel there is 12-year-old Imtiaz. He was stuck on one of the river banks together with his father and three other men when the water suddenly started increasing rapidly.

“My mother told me to bring lunch for my father who was doing the farming. When I got there the water started rising and rising and not one of us could go home. The water came on all sides of the bank and it was so frightening. It kept on increasing and I cried because I was so afraid. My dad was furious with me because I brought him lunch. ’Why did you come here? “How could you be so stupid you came to me?’ he kept on screaming at me. It was awful. I tried to hold him and I cried. The water stopped five meters from us. We had to spend the night and day there. The next day the villagers managed to get us back by rope,” he said.

Imtiaz, like many of the children at the child-friendly space, is having troubles with nightmares after the floods July 28 . A lot of the children have fears and feel anxiety.

The number of children attending the child friendly spaces has increased from 100 to more than 160 after the flood. They can, if they want, talk about the awful things they been through. The children decide themselves. Imtiaz wants to speak, and when he explains about how it was to come home again after the dreadful day and night, five meters from the raging water and his frustrated father, and finally met his mother again he starts shining:

“She hugged me and she was so happy! I thought a lot of my mother during the night on the river bank. My father later asked me to forgive the way he treated me on the bank. He said he was so afraid of losing me that he became mad at me,” he said.

The children here in Swat have suffered a lot. The recent conflict in Swat left them with very bad memories of family members being killed, homes torn apart by bombs and blasts, and friends being injured. Opening the center was one way meeting the psychosocial needs of the children after the conflict, and the purpose is to prevent and respond to neglect, violence, abuse and exploitation of children in the area. Each spaces is created together with the community, and the villagers have discussed together with Save the Children staff what the needs of their children are.

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