As a child Falak Sher dreamt of completing high school and joining the army. That was only natural for a child physically fit who from age ten was a kabaddi player. Though a contact sport, kabaddi is non-violent involving tagging and tackling and serious injuries are rare. However, that rarity struck Falak Sher when he was about twelve and in grade 4 of primary school.

During a match, he was tackled and brought down as had happened several times before. But this time the pang of shooting pain told him something had gone terribly wrong. Though his village Mehr Veesar lay some 50 kilometres southwest of Khairpur town, there were nearby hospitals as well. But Falak Sher was carried home rather than being taken to a proper medical centre.

His family called in the local bone-setter, an untrained potter who boasted knowledge passed down to him through several generations of bone-setters. Using splints and bandages, the man claimed to have set the bone right, but when two months later the dressing was removed, the leg was deformed. For the next five years, Falak Sher was bed-ridden because of persistent pain and inability to walk without support.

For the youngster the dream of being in military uniform faded away and even education seemed to have come to an end at grade 4. Time heals all, however, even badly set bones. After a break of five years, Falak Sher was able to walk back to school with the help of a staff. Though the military career was out of the question, yet the young man continued his schooling to complete matriculation. In a society where able-bodied men with degrees sometimes spend years seeking suitable jobs, there was no opening for a matriculate with a disability.

Already in his twenty-fourth year, Falak Sher apprenticed himself to a master weaver of the charpoy, the wooden bedstead. Within a year, he was sufficiently trained to independently turn an empty frame into a proper bed in under five hours. In 2023, at age thirty-eight, he was a highly proficient charpoy weaver who got calls on his cell phone when there was work.

“Life was getting along all right and I would get three to four charpoys every day,” said Falak Sher. That was enough work to keep him busy through the day and at Rs 400 per frame, he was a satisfied man.

Then came the floods of the summer of 2022. Whole communities lost everything they had and if Falak Sher’s house collapsed, he could hardly say Nature had singled him out for punishment. Flood-affected or not, people needed furniture to sleep on and if he thought that the broken charpoy frames would be repaired and he would be called to do the weaving, he was mistaken. No one had the money even to procure food for their families, and getting their bedsteads repaired was a very distant priority.

“For four months, it was a very difficult time because there was no work. In this village and a couple of other nearby ones, there are four other weavers like me, and we were all without anything to do,” reported Falak Sher.

Like many others, Falak Sher and his family lived by the generosity of a kind landlord who provided flood-affected families with one meal a day. Those were three months when he, the sole bread winner for his family, forewent meals so that his two year-old son was fed. His wife too needed to be fed as she was nursing an infant daughter. It was a very hard time.

Slowly work began to trickle in. However, because of his disability, Falak Sher had to hire a motorbike taxi to take him to the work site. That cost money. For short trips the fare was PKR 30, but longer ones set him back by PKR 100 (Approx. USD 0.3). Unlike the old days when he would get three to five pieces to work on in a day, now there was never more than one and subtracting the fare from his wage of PKR 400 (Approx., USD 1.4) hurt. But the man never gave up and assiduously kept at it.

In January 2023, Falak Sher received the first instalment of Cash for Food from Community World Service Asia (CWSA) with the support of Presbyterian World Service & Development(PWS&) and Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB). Falak Sher spent the entire sum of PKR 12,000 on the purchase of food rations. For the first time in four months, he had a square meal, said the man. The following three months were the same pattern.

Being a talented craftsman, Falak Sher had not lost hope. And that paid off for in February he worked on twelve charpoys netting PKR 4800 (Approx. USD 15). The Cash for Food aid bolstered his hope and his ability to provide for his family. With work slowly picking up pace, the man was thinking of beginning to rebuild his collapsed home.

Asked how he would have fared without the cash grant, he remained silent. He had no idea how he and his family would have survived the hard months when there was so little work to be had.

Pakistan’s 2022 monsoon season produced significant rainfall, devastating floods and landslides, affecting millions of people. At the beginning of 2023 and several months after one of the worst flooding experienced in the country, an estimated 4.5 million people remain exposed to or are living close to flooded areas. Displaced people have started to return to their places of origin, but they are returning to challenging situations and almost zero infrastructure.

During these floods, Hafiza Bibi, a single mother of four children, not only saw her home crumbling down in front of her eyes but also experienced the grief of two dear family members passing away. “My husband was suffering from cancer. We could barely afford his medicines. He passed away in August during the middle of all the heavy rains. While I was struggling to get over the loss of my husband, my daughter also suffered from a nervous breakdown in October due to the trauma and stress of the floods. It took us a whole day just to reach to the nearest hospital when she fell to the ground. She stayed in the hospital for ten days but did not survive. She was only 21years old.”

Hafiza’s husband worked as a farmer and a labourer. Hafiza stayed at home, taking care of her four children, dedicated to household and care-taking chores. She watched water daily and ensured the family consumed their meals. “Our relatives would sometimes help us by giving wheat or money as charity. However, after the floods everyone suffered badly and no one we know was in a position to help.”

Many homes were washed away in Muhammad Fazal Khokar village where Hafiza lived. And her house was one of the many totally destroyed. She now lives with her brother-in-law in the same village but she knows that this living situation cannot not be continued for a long time. “I live in a makeshift tent just outside the house. It scares me that one day my brother-in-law will ask me to leave his place. This thought terrifies me as I have no money to build a place of my own”. Hafiza and her children have struggled to survive and slept for days on an empty stomach since everything she once owned had vanished within a blink of an eye.

“We went door to door assessing flood affected people who were in dire need during our visits to the most remote villages of Khairpur district. That is when we came across Hafiza Bibi. Members of the village committee were kind enough to inform us that a widow with four young children was in urgent need of money and assistance,” shared Hassan, Community Mobiliser in Community World Service Asia.

Community World Service Asia (CWSA) with the support of Canadian Foodgrains Bank(CFGB) and Presbyterian World Service & Development (PWS&D) is supporting flood affected families with Cash for Food (CFF) in some of the most remote and climatically vulnerable villages of Khairpur district in Sindh, Pakistan. Under the initiative, flood survivors are provided cash to meet their immediate food and other essential needs.

Hafiza Bibi received PKR 12,000 in three tranches under the project so far(a total of PKR 36,000). “I bought essential food items such as wheat flour, rice, sugar, tea, milk and vegetables. This assistance has provided me some relief and allowed me to put food on the table for my children. At least for now. The rising prices are a huge concern and we do not know how we are going to make ends meets with no source of livelihood. I wanted to save some amount in case of emergency but I could not. A small packet of rice costs in hundreds these days. We need opportunities to revive our livelihoods.”