Our work here just expanded temporarily. We were recently notified of 17 houses, in three different neighborhoods that burned down. Because the roof of the house is made of grass, when one house in a neighborhood catches fire, the fire can easily spread to the surrounding houses. It hasn’t rained here in about 5 months, so as you can imagine, everything is ridiculously dry and ready to burst into flames if given a chance. One of the neighborhoods we went to yesterday had 7 houses grouped together and 5 of them had burned. Apparently a dust storm (basically a tornado funnel made of dust) blew into a house while the cooking fire was lit. The blast of oxygen caused the fire to ignite and from there the roof caught on fire. The families said that all 5 houses burned within 30 minutes. They lost everything and by everything, I mean everything. One of the men there was wrapped in a blanket because he said that his clothes had burned up in the house. I saw way more leg on him than I have seen on any guy in a while due to his blanket-(less) covering. The families were obviously devastated and were grateful for opportunities to share their stories of loss.
As an NGO, we are in the process of providing building materials for new houses (ones with a tin roof), seed for this season’s planting, fertilizer, cooking oil, and grain to eat. All of their seeds to plant with were burned and all of their stored grain was burned. Those things were their bank, their supply for the coming year. Although we are hoping to get the supplies in the next couple of weeks, once the funding is approved, we were so moved by the guy wearing the blanket that we went back today and brought clothes, school supplies for the kids who had to quit school because all of their notebooks burned up, and some veggies to help the families out meal-wise.
Please remember these families in the midst of their loss. Please ask for wisdom for us that we would know how best to help them. #gallery-757-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-757-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 100%; } #gallery-757-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-757-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
