A day at Razzakabad

From last two weeks, a friend of mine was asking me to join Soar team at razzakabad camp but for some reason or the other I couldn’t join them but on Thursday I actually made it and I am glad that I went there.

The day didn’t start well as I waited for like 20 minutes in a really hot weather waiting for the SOL bus to pick me but as I step in the bus, I really loved the atmosphere; even though I met these people for the first time but there was peace and love and everyone was there with entirely pure intentions of doing something for the flood victims.

When we reached Razzakabad, I saw like around 3 dozen people surrounding our bus and saying Salam to us with great love (shows how well Soar Team have worked there); At that moment I was a bit confused and was trying to figure out what actually am I required to do but somehow soon I found myself working and enjoying with the kids.

We started with kites flying for boys and mehndi (heena) for girls and at that time it was like crazy atmosphere there, they were like 1000 children in those camps and at least at least we had 600 children around us who wanted to fly kites and apply mehndi on their hands but again Soar team did a really good job, we tried making lines and distributing kites to boys and the girls in our team did some excellent job with mehndi thing. Those kids lived every bit of it which I guess was our intention. It wasn’t like a real perfect thing because some children didn’t get to fly kites as after some time, spools were finished but I believe that the job was done pretty good. Oh! I forgot to mention even uncles of all ages, believe me even uncles with age of 50 or 60 joined us to fly the kites; but the best part was the lovely smile on the faces of these children when they saw their kites flying in the air...

As the distribution finished we jumped in the bus and travelled near the entrance to relax but I was surprised to see the team standing up again in just around 10-15 minutes to set up a “Mela” for these people. People were called in the bus one by one and were given stuff (shoes, jewellery, chocolates, and toys) to sell to other IDPs. The stuff was given to them free, however they were required to share half of their revenue with us and keep the other half with them. I really liked this idea as there was no cost to setup a stall and IDPs were earning with pure hard work; also the price for each item was decided by Soar team.

We’ll be going Inshallah again on 2nd day of Eid, I hope we can again bring smile on the faces of these children again...