I am a migrant: Shakhihad

My name is Sakhidad, I am 62 years old and I from Tai Kamar village. Our forefathers have been living there for 400 years.

It happened three months ago. Around 11 am, it started raining and one hour later a flood stormed our village. We quickly escaped up a hill to save our lives. Then a second flooding came, it killed four people and injured five more. It damaged our mosque, killed our livestock and destroyed our homes. In my entire life, I’ve never seen flooding with such violence.

We collected what we could, the few necessities we could find and left. We decided to leave as a family, as a village. We decided to walk to the villages in the area, not knowing what we could find. We relocated to a remote area near Shinwari district.

A few days later, some organizations came and helped us. They gave us tents and cooking kits to survive. I am living with my family of 12 members in a tent and I am using blankets that my wife made from sheep wool to warm my children, including my one-year-old child.

I used to be a Technical Manager and it’s been two months since I don’t have a source of income. I studied and worked for 20 years and now I am jobless. Some of us have relatives in Iran who are sending help but the rest of us have no-one. The locals here [host community] are giving us bread but they can’t continue helping us forever. IOM has helped us a lot but we can’t always rely on assistance.  

We are temporarily on this plateau and the wind is strong. Temperatures are going lower and lower and we might need to relocate to another place to survive this winter.