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Visiting with Displaced Families: "The World is Here"
CWS staffer Shahzad Hashmi, left, with Muhammad Zahre, 40. Zahre and other family and friends are living in tents provided by CWS. They are unable to return to the Sheshal region because their village was destroyed by the Oct. 2005 earthquake.
Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS
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In Balakot, near the Bissian Construction Training Center, are a small number of tents left from a village that grew after the quake.
Led by Saima, the Psychosocial Support Team leader of the CWS Mansehra office, at the end of April a group visited with women who live in the disbanding village, to hear of their experiences.
Nine women gathered in thes tent, and children peeked in the flaps, the younger of them seemingly anxious around a fair-skinned stranger wearing glasses and taking notes. Plastic sheets and blankets were folded in piles in the corner of the tent. Everyone sat on the ground, and the facilitator gestured for people to expand the circle as others came in. Bigger children minded the small ones outside.
Donna Derr, CWS Director of Emergency Response, asked questions of the women and Saima interpreted. Parveen and her elderly mother provided most of the answers. They were still in the tent village because there has been snow and resulting landslides in the region where they lived, making the roads impassable.
As she held a toddler in her lap, Parveen described how she was inside her home when the earthquake struck six months before. She ran outside, without even her shawl or her shoes, and the home was subsequently destroyed. They stayed in their mountain homes almost a month before coming down to the tent village. When they arrived there, she felt like "the world is here."
Now, as the tent villages are meant to close down, she knows she has approximately twenty days left to stay here. She says there are no facilities where she lives in the mountains, and it is still very cold. All the six remaining families in the tent village are from the same mountain town.
She says that she's been told government officials are in the villages to do assessments. She knows that one person has to be there in order to be eligible to receive the government stipends for reconstruction. Since she and the other women have small children, it is likely the husbands would return for one to two days, hoping to meet with the officials. But she wouldn't like to be left for longer than that. The security and other resources of the tent village have now been rescinded.
Saima explained that CWS staff were able to provide basic health services and visits until the end of March, because of government decisions. Parveen said, "It is now hard to be here, too, because it has changed again."
She asked that she and the other families be helped with the reconstruction they must do when they return to their home sites. She said they understood what the government plans were, and that they were intended to receive assistance.
Derr told Parveen and the women, "We want you to know there are people thinking of you." Parveen's mother held her hands together, touching her forehead, and then her heart, in the traditional Muslim conveyance of warmest thanks.
Contributions to support earthquake survivors can be sent to:
Church World Service
Southern Asia Earthquake --#6979
P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.
Contributions can also be made online or by calling 800.297.1516, ext. 222.
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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