18th Oct

This is my first day in Saharsa district of Bihar. This place is totally changed into the offices of various NGOs working for flood relief. The day I reached Saharsa railway station, I saw lots of banners here and there signaling towards their relief work. Flood affected zone starts towards the east of Saharsa. There are 4 districts affected by flood including Saharsa district where our relief work is going on.

I told Dharmendar of Aid Bihar that I want to get involved into flood relief work. It was 18th Oct when I reached AID Bihar office at Saharsa and when I met Dharmendar, I was quite desperate because I have already heard a lot about dharmendar and his work towards eureka. When I entered the store, I saw lots of people segregating clothes and discussing matters. I just discussed to AID volunteers from Patna and local volunteers engaged in relief work for the past one month. They all were really doing good and was amazed to see their knowledge about the flood situation, which gave me a better idea about the flood.They also told that their area was affected by flood for the first time in their lifetime and almost each of them had lost at least one or more member of their family.

19th Oct

I waked up earlier than I do usually in the city. Today we planned to distribute clothes to affected areas. We had the list of areas and their Panchayats. Panchayats made their list of people who was in need of clothes in their villages. We had to go there and distribute clothes to the people. We had 6 lists of Panchayats where clothes are to be distributed. The first place we went to distribute the clothes was known as senate village. Below is the picture showing a temple where the relief camp was running.

This place was once a shelter for all people from nearby villages

I couldn’t believe that this was once an agricultural field and all the crops were occupied with water. And also that the farmers cannot proceed for the next season as the flood water has destroyed the fertility of the fields.

This road, the only link to the village was also in water. I followed this road and entered the village. The first thing I found was a house half submerged in water. The situation was in such a way that some tornado hit them with full throttle. Then I heard that the entire village itself was submerged in water. As I kept walking I started seeing broken houses and muddy floor and few left cattle of the villagers. When the villagers saw me they thought I was a special person with a camera. They requested me to visit the inside situation of the village. I went inside and saw dump water here and there.

One of the houses destroyed. Clogged water seen around the houses.

A house completed destroyed.

The above picture shows the left parts of a destructed house. Some of the villagers told me that they wanted to show me some more houses broken but they were on the other side of water. So we went in a boat there and I saw more broken houses. After taking some pictures I returned to the site where clothes were distributed. But our team already moved from there to another site to distribute clothes. We started to move to join our team there. The below one is a snap of a destroyed fields of rice crops.

I finally reached the place where our team was distributing clothes among people. It was really hurting to see the critical situation India. Such poor people with such limited means of life! Looking at their faces could easily tell their critical condition of life they are in. There is no food for the people who supply the entire food for the country. For any farmer their land and animals is their asset, which they have lost both in this disaster. We distributed clothes to the people there and left for the next site in our jeep. The road was really bad as it was destructed due to flood. We reached the next site and I noticed broken houses and water around huts.

We soon left from there after distributing clothes. For our next place of clothes distribution we again went to the place with same crap road and then we took a boat to reach the other shore where the village was. I was a bit nervous because flow of water was strong and river was deep. Anyway we reached there and distributed clothes. But what I felt in all places where we distributed clothes was that there was a shortage of our stock and the need was bigger and it will increase as winter was nearing. And people out here don’t have clothes and blankets for winter.

We returned by boat and visited two more cloth distribution sites and after that we returned back to our office. It was quite late in our office and we went into a hotel to have our dinner. I dozed off as soon as I went to bed and this is how my day ended which will be unforgettable for ever. It was seriously unacceptable that people do live in such miserable conditions too and that life could be difficult to this extent.

20th Oct

Today we planned to go to the highly affected place - Madhepura. Situations had not changed still here as the water level was the same from beginning. Madhepura is most affected and I think is getting least relief work and so AID India planned to strengthen its relief work in Madhepura.

Three new volunteers were supposed to join us and we were waiting for them as they were coming from Patna. But due to some reasons they missed their train and were late to join us and so we gave up our plan of visiting Madhepura district and postponed the plan to the next day. Then we opened all the medicine cartons in the AID office and we sorted and listed the medicines according to the distribution lists.

In the meanwhile in other offices of AID, Pratham and Goonj – sorting and packaging of clothes was going on. All head men from Panchayats were here telling their needs of clothes for the people in their Panchayat. Then I sat on with my laptop to write the report. It tokk around 4 hours to complete the report with the photos I took. Now all are waiting for me to go for dinner.

- Nikunj, Aid Delhi