Eidi Trip to Kot Mithan

Food provisions


Food provisions


Packed and ready

Year after year, I’ve spent Eid at my home-town Multan, eating sawayyan, offering prayers at Jamia mosque at T-chowk and then getting back home to find ways to distract myself. Or later, whiling away the rest of the day sleeping. Eid gets that boring after a few hours.

This year, however, I spent an Eid that I’m sure will be one I’d remember and cherish for long. Continuing the relief efforts I’d initiated from the forum of Azm-e-Nau, I decided to take an ‘Eidi’ trip to Kot Mithan, an area already covered by us in a 3-day medical camp earlier. This time, however, we intended to carry food provisions. We decided a list of much-needed items that included flour, sugar, ghee, milk, sawayyan, biscuits and toffees, bangles and clothes and mineral water.

Some may rightly point out here that some of the aforementioned items can’t be regarded as ‘much-needed items’ and may as well be termed a luxury for those trying to stay alive amid the lack of food availability. To that, I would like to reply that this trip carried more of a symbolic meaning to it. I’d been advised, sometimes rather aggressively by my own family, that I ought to take the trip before Eid and deliver the Eidi packets a day earlier so that people can actually use them on Eid day.

But what they missed here was that the whole point of making this trip, of spending the Eid day with flood victims and of delivering them cash and food right on Eid day was what we wanted to do. To send them a message that in these desperate times, we haven’t forgotten them and that we can abandon our happy abodes for them in times of both, misery and joy. To let them know that they must not feel left-out even on the joyous occasion of Eid and must know that there are those who wish to share the day with them, stand by them and affirm their conviction to help them and build anew from scratch what has been devastated by the deluge. That was precisely the basic idea that worked behind this trip.

So, we campaigned through our social circles, friends and family, online and offline and were successful in gathering a handsome donation to the tune of some 150,000 rupees. The plan was to disburse the ‘family Eidi packets’ to some 250 families. The families had been registered with Dr. Najam-ud-Din, a local representative at Kot Mithan and a very well-respected personality in the region.

We bought our food items from wholesale, some of them directly from production units. By Thursday eve, we were joined by two volunteers from Islamabad, Ahmad Dildar and Jahanzab Malik. We started packing things by night and were nearly done when the clock struck 5 in the morning.

It was very tiring yet very fulfilling. There were a total of some 225 packets and some surplus food items that we decided to simply hand over. After a few hours’ sleep, we were all back at our base camp, which was my home, and embarked on the journey at about 2:00 p.m.

The journey was rather uneventful since the deluge has withdrawn more or less from all parts of the road to Kot Mithan and we were able to reach our destination without any detours or delays by 8:00 p.m. It was a house with a small warehouse. We unloaded the goods at the warehouse and checked out the lists that had been maintained. The names, NIC numbers and family NIC numbers had been jotted down. All arrangements were set. After a quick dinner, we went to sleep, taking the needed dose of rest after a tiring journey and before a hectic day.

Next day, after Eid prayers, we started with the disbursal. A registration desk was installed in front of the gallery to warehouse. Everyone with the ID card was allowed onto the desk, cross-checked through the maintained lists and if found registered, was lead to the gallery where me and other volunteers handed food packs and clothes.

I must say I was very pleased to see the arrangement since I’d long been fuming about the lack of an organized relief disbursal procedure. It was time-consuming, though but rewarding. Every person’s name had to be checked through the lists and having started at about 10:00, we concluded the setup at about 3:00 in the noon, dog-tired and consumed. About 220 families had been handed over the packets. We then had a brief lunch, headed immediately to Murghai, handed some cash and the remaining food items.

It was about 5:00 in the evening when we headed back. Being late already, we had a few hurried byes and after a brief tour of Khwaja Ghulam Farid’s tomb in Kot Mithan, we embarked on the journey home.

It was a memorable Eid day for me indeed and every time a person would get a food packet and smile at us, it seemed like the best Eidi ever. And even though I admit it wasn’t much, it was just a short-term measure to sustain the flood affectees and that we still need to do lots, lots more, I am still satisfied with the very intent of the trip – which was to spend the festive occasion with out fellow-countrymen who are in no state to celebrate. It also was a reminder to us of the immensity of the task of rehabilitation that lay ahead. And with all plans to continue the efforts, Azm-e-Nau will now be chiefly concentrating upon long-term rehabilitation projects of the affected families. One at a time. Join hands with us to rebuild Pakistan.

- Salman Latif