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04th November 2006
Like every year from the end of October till midst of December there are monsoon rains in India. But this year there is more rain than it has been the last 40 years. The heavy rains flooded whole areas. Many houses are under water, some of them broke down completely. The re are villages which are still inaccessible from outside; in some the only means of transport is via boat and in other villages people had to get evacuated.
It is raining now since 10 days and some of the people have not eaten for a long time. Food is at the moment the most urgent need.
The Salvation Army India Central Territory saw the need and reacted quickly. In an assessment trip 9 areas were selected in which the relief work should start. John Kumar the local Emergency Relief manager formed 9 teams. All the heads of the THQ department willingly volunteered to go, get their feet wet and uniforms dirty and help the people in need. They joined the local field and corps officers.
As an employee for the IHQ Emergency Services I was in India for some documentation about past relief work when the monsoons came.
When the teams spread out I was sent together with Major Rathan to Matchilipatnam to support Major Prakashrao and his wife who work in this area since the Tsunami as field officers. Matchilipatnan is one of the areas which are most affected by the present situation. Only yesterday I read in the news that in this area 10400 houses are completely and 25600 are half destroyed. 37715 people already live in 300 different temporary shelters. According to the local paper 120000 people are affected by the monsoo n only in Machilipatnam area. There are still some villages we couldn't reach at all.
After purchasing the rice we hired a tractor because the roads to the Chinnapuram village are barely visible because of too much water and it would be impossible to drive there by car.
Our first stop was in Saradanagar village, where we left some bags of rice to be distributed the following day. Because of the short time this was not possible anymore at the same day. One lady took me to show me her house. The roof broke down when the heavy rains came. Javeamma's husband is deaf, dumb and blind. Neither he nor his elderly father will be of much help to Javeamma with the repairing of the roof. She is glad to have her sons though. "Please don't forget the people of our village" she begged when we had to leave.
The trip to the next village, Chinnapuram took us more than an hour. We drove through unreal scenery. Where there used to be fields there were now lakes, little canals were now rivers. Sometimes you couldn't even sense where our road was. It felt like floating through a sea.
Finally we made it to the village where our tractor was immediately was surrounded by several people. The beneficiary's name (head of the family) was on a list and every family would get 5 kg. I was told that this would be sufficient for maybe 3 days as rice is the main staple of the people in India. We filled the rice in the bags and vessels. I spoke to Mr. Prasad, a 62 year old man who told me that around 70% of the houses in his vill age are under water. Most people in the comunity work as agricultural day laborers. Farmers would hire them on a daily basis. But there will be no work in the nearer future. The entire crop in this area is destroyed and the farmers themselves suffer a huge loss.
Jandalu Koloni a woman who looked more like a girl took my hand and gave me her 4year old son Kaliani to carry. She wanted to show me the situation in the village and took me around. Even if it was a tragic picture wherever i looked the women and especially the children were lovely, taking my hand and asking me about my name. That was about the only sentence they could speak in English but we smiled at each other and there was an understanding that went beyond language barriers.
We had to leave because it was getting dark. The full moon was shining when we drove back. That was the only light for the whole area is without electricity since these haevy rains.Today the sun was shining but there might be another rainy day tomorrow. Everything was dark and silent around us and I felt a bit shaken and moved by the experiences of the day.There was still so much to do, still so many more hungry people. It was very sad to realize our limitations.
But for some people there will be a warm meal tonight.
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