Pakistan Floods Aftermath

In August and September 2010, three separate floods from three different directions, swept Sindh province in Pakistan. 20 million people were affected by the flooding, 1.6 million houses were damaged or destroyed and more than 5 million jobs were lost. It was, in terms of lives touched, the most devastating natural disaster to hit the world in modern times. All down the great river-plain of the Indus valley, farms were suddenly underwater. After the floods, sharecroppers and labourers gradually returned to their homes, and hardly a household is not in debt or hungry. Farmers, returning to their land, finding them largely still underwater, became fishermen in order to survive. Tens of thousands languished in tent cities, waiting for their lives to come back…

Commissioned by Oxfam, Published in the Saturday Times Magazine and the Guardian.