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Give a goat to the victims of the cyclone

Photo: REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman (BANGLADESH)

“A goat will help the poor families right a way. They are dependent on animals in order to survive,” says DanChurchAid’s programme officer in Bangladesh, Hasina Inam.

Words cannot describe the situation of the most seriously affected families in Bangladesh’s coastal areas, Hasina Inam says. Everything is destroyed.

All trees have been brought down, crops washed away, and all domestic animals have drowned after the cyclone Sidr hit the low-lying Asian country Thursday evening Danish time.

”People sleep in the open, there are no houses left and the drinking water has been polluted by seawater,” she says.

Deeply dependent on domestic animals

The poorest families typically work as day labourers in the many shrimp factories or for the rich land owners. They own nothing but their domestic animals on which they are totally dependent in order to get an additional income.

”Very often domestic animals are the only thing a poor family owns,” says Hasina Inam.

The first 1,000 Christmas goats sold through DanChurchAid’s ”Give a Goat campaign” will go to the most severely affected families in the southwestern coastal districts Bagerhat and Khulna in Bangladesh.

The waves of more than three meters which hit the coast of Bangladesh are feared to have caused the death of more than 10,000 people.

Full picture is unclear

At least 1.5 million coastal villagers had fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations, said senior government official Ali Imam Majumder in Dhaka.

Many parts of Dhaka, the biggest city in Bangladesh of 150 million people, remained without power or water since Friday morning. The storm killed at least nine people in Dhaka.

The full picture of the devastation is still unclear because the storm wreaked havoc on the country's electricity and telephone lines, affecting even areas that were spared a direct hit.

“Sidr spawned a storm surge that swept through low-lying areas and some offshore islands, leaving them under water,” said Nahid Sultana, an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management.

The field staff of DanChurchAid’s local partner Dushtha Shasthya Kendra, DSK, said many surviving families were living under makeshift tents or sheds made out of the remnants of their straw and bamboo homes, while many others had to go back to the official shelters.

DanChurchAid through its Bangladesh Office has started collecting information on the damages by the devastating hurricane through keeping constant contact with their partner in Khulna and Bagerhat districts.

The field staff of the partner organization has already started the initial assessment of the damages caused by the cyclone. As the road condition towards the remote areas like coastal chars are not accessible, the DSK field staffs are using motor bikes and bicycles to reach the remote areas to do the needs assessment.