His mother Hajira Bibi goes back and forth between the infant, aged about 10 days, and her house, from where she tries to remove mud that reaches up to her ankles. This flow had first forced the family to take refuge on the hard shoulder of a highway.
“I took her on the highway when she was only four days old… She was so small,” Hajira told AFP.
“She was sick and her eyes were sore, she also had a fever. My baby was in big trouble because of the heat.”
Similar scenes are playing out across Pakistan, where floods caused by monsoon rains have inundated a third of the country, affecting more than 33 million people.
Unicef estimates that 16 million children are affected and that 3.4 million need humanitarian assistance.
Still tired from giving birth, Hajira had to be helped up the steep incline, when news came that the Kabul River was about to burst its banks due to torrential rains further north.
In his village near Charsadda, the heat was then scorching. They slept on the highway for days with no fan, no water, and nothing to repel mosquitoes.
When the shoulder-high water began to recede, dark mud had covered everything in their three-room house.
“All we want is for our house to be fixed. It hurts to see the children lying here,” laments Hajira, who also hopes that a doctor will eventually come to see her family of 15.
As is often the case in rural areas in Pakistan, the baby’s day of birth was not recorded. Hajira believes her daughter was born four days before the flood and is now around 10 days old.
– Spread of infections –
She’s not sure of her own age either, but she thinks she’s 18. She tells, impassive, to have been about 12 years old when she gave birth to her first child.
The family has now moved their tents to a dry place outside their home, with the children sharing beds of braided rope.
All the conditions are in place for infections to spread soon.
The water pump is broken, so the adults haven’t washed in clean water for almost a week.
Children swim in the same floodwater pools where buffaloes bathe and urinate.
“The flood is over, but the water was very dirty, very muddy. All the children have rashes and their health is deteriorating,” said Hajira’s husband, Naveed Afzal, who because of the disaster lost his farm laborer job.
Adults show sores on their feet and legs that have tripled in size in just two days.
A young boy has red and watery eyes, another has a fever.
The baby, at least, is washed with the few bottles of mineral water received at a donation point. The men have to walk several hours every day to get there. The stagnant water cut off several lines of communication.
“I haven’t given up hope yet, but this little girl is so tiny that it would be better for her to come home,” Hajira sighs as she cradles the infant.
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