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October 26, 2005
Further report（The situation of the earthquake on October 8th） -Shafiq ur Rehman
Dear Friends,
How are you? Today we received tents and cloths from Japanese friends. We
will send them to the proper places.
I was sleeping the moment that dream were shattered. As the eye opened the
home was swinging. Everything was ready to more from its center. The
ceiling fan started working without electricity. The voice of earthquake was
like the helicopter flying.
It was a dooms-day. I crossed my threshed. Everybody was crying in
sorrowful manner. I started calling to my friends at Milestone Society for
the Special Persons. The roof of Asim’ house completely demolished and
Akmal’s mobile was not connecting, but thanks to God that Ashar, Hamid
(Atif) and other friends were safe.
The news on T.V was that the earthquake had high intensity. But the
destruction was shell not published, the news in this connection were
troubling to all of us. Thousand of people died. The destruction in
Islamabad was visible to the world. I called an emergency meeting of
Milestone Society for the Special Persons. The every member of Milestone
was ready to sacrifice even his life for earthquake victims.
We were penniless. But where is will there is way. We went door to door,
asked for blankets and eatables from people. Till evening we had a truck
full of blankets, warm clothes and food. One of our sister organization
contacted us from a village named Sesar where is located near Bagh Azad
Kashmir District. We started our journey at the night towards Kashmir. We
placed our wheelchairs on the truck and sat on the back. Milestone is known
as a revolutionary organization that is always ahead in welfare works. As
we reached Sheela Butt, the destruction was the order of the day. A dog in
a demolished house was tearing a child’s corporeality. At one side there
was a destroyed village and on the other side there was raining like
thunderstorm. We were thinking that we may not have been able to go back
home in such a dangerous situation but God had written more life for us. So
we started our mission in rain. We distributed food and blankets among the
needed people. But we had no tents to offer. People were dejected but they
were astonished to find that disabled people came to help. We were
encouraging them with sitting in wheelchair, there were disabled people
under those broken houses. People came out running when the earthquake
occurred, but our disabled friends were buried alive. No one could help
them out and neither they could help themselves. Perhaps they did not want
to come out, they did not want to waste this precious moment to die. They
might have thought that it was better to die for them than to be alive with
having hard time repeatedly. An old woman said that her son is also buried
under this demolished house and he had no such cart (Wheelchair) like you.
I thought perhaps soul does not need wheelchair, but life demands much that
people I was familiar with in Muzaffarabad, Balakot and Bagh all were
martyred. Now thousands of people have become disabled. Some lost their
hands and some lost their legs and many of our friends have got spinal cord
injury. But we do not have to leave these people alone; we have to make
them live happily even if they have disabilities. We must tell them that
being disabled is not some thing unnatural, that disabled persons are not
aliens in society, and that knowing our rights is our basic right. With so
many sentiments and pathetic moments, we came back Lahore. Everybody was
silent on the way. Everybody was thinking to come back again to help our
needy brothers.
The next day we planed to go the destroyed area again. Now our target areas
were Pattan Kalan and Pattan Khurd we have heard that no one had reached
there. In this trip we had 500 blankets, medicines for 3500 people, 800
milk packs and numberless rusks packets. First of all we reached Abbottabad
and shifted these things to trucks. We started our journey towards Pattan
Kalan and reached Pattan Khurd from Thundyani. The destroyed city of
Muzaffarabad was quite visible. The smell of dead bodies was in the air.
There were destroyed houses everywhere. There were children, old people and
young ones on roadsides waiting for help. But no one knows who should be
helped first. We decided to distribute things among children and women
because the young can help themselves. A woman denied accepting help, she
was carrying a dead child on her lap and said that she will eat if her child
is fed first. The homes turned into graves. The people are homeless and
dejected. The army has given speed to their relief works. We had no
courage to see these homeless affected people and have determined that we
will fetch some life for these people. Silently, covered in prayers ・・・
folded in dreams. We are now making a very solid action plan for the
counseling of newly disabled persons. Our real responsibility is to have
empowering program for the new disabled persons.
The second thing is that we have to use our skills to educate the government
to make barrier free constructions in re build process.
I will continue reporting on the behalf of my great team.
Shafiq
Posted by jicafriends at October 26, 2005 12:02 PM