“Waters sprang up to the top of the trees. We don't know why we are still alive.”
Monira, a housewife from Southkhali village in Bagerhat district, does not care about relief. She does not go around telling everyone how badly her family has been ravaged by cyclone Sidr. She just stares blankly at the people visiting her village.
Still numb with grief of loosing a son, she seems to have trouble speaking. But she tries to let it all out when we ask her what it was like when the cyclone hit the coast of Bangladesh the 15th of November.
“We do not have television or radio. There was no warning for us of the impending doom so we did not grasp the severity of the cyclone and stayed put,” she says.
Shivering with cold and fear
It was raining hard and the weather was getting rougher as the day approached dusk, explains Monira. She was in her house with her two sons and husband until the evening.
When she saw waters rushing towards her house, the family decided to leave and look for a safer place. But the moment they got out, a giant wave swept them away.
“My elder son Babu was with me while Jihad, the younger one, was with his father. Within seconds, I saw the waters leapt halfway up those betel nut trees,” says Monira pointing at a bunch of trees not less than 30 feet tall.
The family had no alternative but to swim towards the trees.
“Soon I stumbled across a trawler passing by and helped my son onto it. Suddenly a heavy swell drifted us apart. After some time, I managed to take shelter on the top of a tree,” she continues.
“By the time I got to the treetop I found I had nothing left to cover my body. Branches whipping against me had ripped off all my clothes. I was shivering with cold and fear. I felt like I was dying,” Monira says and adds;
“It was like a never-ending nightmare, like the end of the world.”
Lost her son
Monira managed to hang on till the dawn. But she still wonders how she survived the longest night of her life.
“As the day broke, I heard my husband Masud Mia calling me.”
The joy of meeting her husband soon evaporated as he told her that Jihad could not make it. Babu, the other son, however, was lucky as the trawler he was on managed to keep afloat and got stuck in a dam along Baleswari river.
“Before we could give ourselves some time to grieve for the son lost, we had to rummage through the dead bodies for some cloth to cover us,” she says.
DanChurchAid’s local partner Dushtha Shasthya Kendra, DSK, is distributing blankets, food and soap to the most vulnerable families in the districts of Bagerhat and Khulna.
DanChurchAid is also providing tube wells because the remaining wells are contaminated by salt water.
About one million people are affected by the cyclone. 3,5 million people have lost their home and around 250.000 livestock have drowned.
The story is written by Pinaki Roy from the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star.