Two Pakistan flood survivors face rebuilding homes and lives where swollen rivers swept away houses and destroyed crops and bridges. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

When floodwaters rose in his village in southern Pakistan, Muhammad Idrees spent the long, hot days floating. Sleeping on a raft built from tree branches, watching over his waterlogged house, Muhammad battled mosquitoes and snakes. His wheat crop was gone; so was some of his livestock. He piled household goods in the middle of the raft, determined to keep what he could.
Muhammad’s wife Sharifa had already fled their village by boat with their three children.

“I was shouting because the boat seemed unbalanced,” remembers Sharifa, 30. With other women and children, they stayed away almost a month.
(more…)

CRS is responding to July flooding in Pakistan with kits containing jerry cans, water purification tablets, soap, detergent, towels and cookware. Photo by CRS staff

“I was offered a glass of the brown river water yesterday,” says Lisa Beyl, a Catholic Relief Services program manager in flood-stricken northern Pakistan. “It literally looks like mud. It is the dirtiest water I have ever seen in my life.

“I can’t believe that people are drinking it, but they are, out of necessity.”
(more…)

A man wades through waist deep water with his child while escaping floods in Risalpur, located in Nowshera District, in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Photo by Reuters/Adrees Latif, courtesy www.alertnet.org

Catholic Relief Services staff in northern Pakistan are unhurt, but cut off from homes or the CRS office due to massive flooding. Rains that began late Tuesday have turned parts of a major road, the Karakoram Highway, into a raging river.

“Staff from our office in Besham had to go sleep in a house on higher ground at night instead of their normal guesthouse,” says Carolyn Fanelli, Head of Programming and Acting Country Representative for CRS Pakistan. The flood washed away an important bridge in the town, cutting the CRS office off from the market. “We have our head of office on one side of a bridge, and the office on the other.”

“Local people say they have never seen this much water in this stream in the last 50 to 60 years,” says Husnain Abdullah of CRS Besham. “At the moment, the office and staff house are some distance from this worst of the flood and look safe.” Though cut off from the market, stranded CRS staffers were able to buy rice, milk, and beans to eat for the next few days.
(more…)

Following June violence, some residents have returned to their burned-out homes and are living in their yards or porch areas. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

At first it looks like a picnic—a group of men are sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk of a leafy neighborhood. The only incongruity is that some of the leaves closer to the house gates are burned, curling blackly in on themselves.
(more…)

Marguba Kamabarova sits near a burned home in her neighborhood in Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan. Her own home was burned as well. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“We went to my aunt’s house when the war began,” says 11-year-old Shaumuhammad. “We didn’t see it when they burned our house. We hid in the basement and I heard the ta-ta-ta of the guns.”

“Then they burned my aunt’s, so we went to my older sister’s house.”

It wasn’t an official war, but it seemed like it to the children. When violence broke out in southern Kyrgyzstan in mid-June, families fled over roofs to safety or huddled in basements. With their Central Asian country—not far from Russia and next to China—in crisis, many women and children from towns went to the border and stayed in any place they could find. “We slept in a horse stable for ten days,” says Shaumuhammad’s neighbor.
(more…)

A young resident of the village of Bulit and her grandmother look on as CRS staff and partners visit the community of about 2,500 people in the Kotabato Province of Mindanao. Photo by David Snyder/CRS

Just finishing up a few days out in Central Mindanao with CRS, visiting with some of the people who have gone through their peacebuilding trainings out there. Many outside of the Philippines perhaps don’t understand just how much conflict the Central and Western parts of the island have seen in recent years, as Christians clash with Islamic and non-Islamic indigenous groups. It’s a conflict dating back to the late 1960’s, but flare -ups of violence, particularly in 2003 and 2008 most recently, have often been brutal.
(more…)

17-year-old Vuthy, who lives in a slum of Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh, takes part in a CRS-supported project run by Youth for Peace. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

Seventeen-year-old Vuthy’s life in a slum area of Cambodia is about duty. Not exactly a fun word for a teen, but there’s no other way to describe the rounds of cooking and caretaking this young man handles every day.

With five brothers and sisters, and parents who work long hours far from home, the meals and babysitting fall to Vuthy. He’s up at 5 a.m. to make breakfast for his mother, who works a 12-hour shift at a toy factory in the city of Phnom Penh, and his father, a construction worker. Then it’s time to dress and feed his youngest siblings and make sure they get to school. He himself goes to school, and during the traditional long lunch break, he makes more food. Then he cooks again in the evening—several times, because his parents get home well after he’s fed, bathed, and studied with the little kids.

A lot of distractions surround Vuthy. In the shacks that make up his litter-strewn slum, people are playing cards for money, drinking rice wine, and sniffing glue. When too much alcohol has been downed, they also fight; sometimes knives, saws, or even samurai swords appear.
(more…)

Survivors of a severe storm that hit West Bengal and Bihar on the night of Tuesday, April 13, in India. CRS is distributing shelter kits to survivors. Photo by CRS staff

A severe storm struck parts of West Bengal and Bihar states in India on the night of Tuesday, April 13. Over 100 people were killed in the storm and tens of thousands lost their homes, crops, and livestock.

CRS teams report that the poorest families are most affected because they had easily-destroyed thatched roofed houses. People are trying to repair their houses with locally available materials such as straw and bamboo.

CRS is distributing over 4,000 prepositioned shelter kits to survivors. The kits include tarps, plastic mats, rope, matchboxes and candles. Because poor sanitation after natural disasters can lead to disease, CRS is also giving out 1,500 hygiene kits (laundry detergent, bathing soap, disinfectant, sanitary cloths, and bucket) in West Bengal. The kits will help 9,400 people in West Bengal and 18,000 people in Bihar rebuild.

Reported by Laura Sheahen, CRS regional information officer for Asia

An ethnic Tibetan speaks to his sister on the phone amid the rubble of his collapsed house in the earthquake-hit Gyegu town in Yushu County, Qinghai province. Nearly 1,500 people have been killed after a 6.9 magnitude quake hit Yushu county. Photo by Reuters/Alfred Jin, courtesy www.alertnet.org

A week after a deadly earthquake struck the region of Yushu in China, CRS’ local partners continue to treat the wounded and are now distributing food. Staff from Jinde Charities and the Xi’an Catholic Social Service Center arrived in the quake zone on April 16 and immediately went to the two major camps where thousands of survivors are now living.
(more…)

Tribal children in western Bangladesh can attend school in their villages thanks to CRS partner Caritas Bangladesh. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

I’ve rattled over a lot of dirt roads in trucks to get to CRS projects. We work in very remote areas—we’re everywhere Visa doesn’t want to be. But Bangladesh topped the list when it came to modes of transport. It took no fewer than five different kinds—planes, rickshaws, motorcycles, cars, and ferry boats—to get me and my colleague where we were going.

Bangladesh is one-third water and contains Asia’s biggest delta, so reaching coastal areas involves crossing dozens of rivers. On our way to visit cyclone survivors, we took a tiny seaplane towards the coast, landing smoothly on a river. On its banks, villagers lined up to see the newcomers.
(more…)