Floods

Today I witnessed first hand, what devastation the floods of India bring its people. In the morning around 8:30 I left my room, it had been raining heavily all morning. At the moment I live in the guest house which is on the second floor of a small building. I walked over sloshing through the mud, donning a rain jacket, to the office and lounge area. I was there for about 10 minutes and people started to give the rain a lot more notice than usual. Clifton came past me saying that there was flooding starting to happen further up and that the river was starting to overflow.

Within the 15 minutes that I had come from my room to the lounge area, the water had risen at least 30 cm and was starting to flood into the girls houses. The school was flooded by now and all the kids started pouring out and headed towards the dining room and the older boys all went to rescue the grain stores from the gushing water. I was informed that one of the damns had broken at the river and so the river was now overflowing and gushing into the farm and the town. I have never seen so much water in my life! For the next few hours I sat under the verandah watching the water rise, watching the kids slosh through the water, avoided all the creepy crawlies that had suddenly appeared seeking sanctuary from the wet, and kept one of the littler boys entertained and out of trouble. There were a few snakes that had appeared around the boys side of the farm, a cobra and something else poisonous, so that had us all on guard. The water started to subside by around 12 o’clock, but not until it caused areas around the town to become waist level.

Apart from the flooding in the girls and boys dorms, which is by now swept out and drying, there wasn’t huge damage to the orphanage. However the houses that belong to staff members and are on the farm property are well and truly flooded and all possessions are soaking wet. They are having to sleep in some of the vacant rooms in the boys hostel tonight. From the verandah I was on I saw people wading through water to reach the dry safety. There was a few older people who came in violently shaking from cold and were rushed towels and hot tea.

It was only really at tea time, when Clifton started to talk about his day, that I realised the extent of the devastation that this flood caused. For one thing, hardly anyone here knows how to swim. The mission kids are lucky because they are all taught from a young age how to swim and spend their entire summer holidays in the pool. However clifton told of countless incidents where they had to swim people to safety or they would have drowned. The houses around the area that are made of mud have been swept away and all possessions buried deep in the mud. Around 100 people, in this area alone, are thought to be homeless tonight. I just cant imagine what that would mean. There is nowhere dry to sit on the ground, let alone sleep. The entire place is one huge mud bath. They are most likely still wet and cold, its all dark (not too many street lights out here!) and the creepy crawlies and snakes are seeking the same sort of dry areas that the people are. Much livestock will be lost tonight, last time this happened (and the flood wasn’t even as bad as it was today) Clifton said they pulled about 40 dead cattle from around the area. Many of the poorest people have now lost the chickens they relied on as well as their homes which is devastating. And compensation is absolutely non existent for them.


The politics of the floods has also really only come to light for me now that I am here as well. Like, today, when Clifton and the others where helping to save people and their animals the police and rescue came up to them to thank them. They were completely drunk. They were so wasted even the simple things like closing the doors of the houses that had been left open by panicking families, to prevent beds and other possessions from floating away, was completely beyond them. The other major thing that annoys Clifton is that this happens most years (not as badly as this one) but still no money is spent on engineers coming to examine the river to see areas that need blocking and stabaliseing to prevent extreme disaster when nature strikes. And it is like this everywhere in India that floods.

Today, as far as we know, no one in the town drowned in the floods which is such a blessing (last year a few died). But for all those people who are tonight living outside homeless, i am in prayer and complete sadness and devastation for them. What a life to be born into.