Umair Ilyas spent his 21st birthday in the air.

The first day in September was important to Ilyas — not because it was his birthday, but because he was leaving behind his family, friends and the rest of the people of Pakistan.

The rain started at the end of July. There was normal rainfall, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for light flooding to occur. No warnings were issued and all the predictions from the meteorologists were wrong; no one saw it coming until it was too late.

“It was a complete surprise to all of us,” said Ilyas, senior in electrical engineering. “My sister was the first one to tell me about it. Water was everywhere, cars were getting stuck. We live on an incline in Islamabad, and that’s when I realized that things were getting worse.

“I called my friend who lived in Charsadda which is fairly close to where I live, and he told me that the water in his house was rising 1 foot every five minutes until his entire house was flooded. He was lucky enough to be rescued by boat because he got on his roof.”

The United Nations estimated that more than 20 million people have been affected and 2,000 Pakistanis have been killed by floods that ravaged Pakistan in August.

Almost one-fifth of the country is under water and continues to wreak havoc, especially on the northern part of Pakistan, as well as the rest of the nation, with the growing threat of water-borne diseases and the lack of food, clean water, medication and proper shelter.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Pakistan said that 160,000 km — an area larger than England — has been damaged; 1.8 million homes and at least 10 million Pakistanis are without shelter because of the flooding.

“I will never forget the destruction and suffering that I have witnessed,” said Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General. “I have visited the scenes of many natural disasters around the world, but nothing like this. The scale is so large: so many people, in so many places, in so much need … these unprecedented floods demand unprecedented assistance.”

The flood hasn’t been the only disaster Ilyas has experienced while living in Pakistan. Pakistan suffered a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in October 2006 that polarized the country and its people. Ten hours after the earthquake occurred at the epicenter in northern Pakistan, Ilyas went to the site where a 10-story building collapsed in his city. After seeing the chaos that ensued from the earthquake in 2005 compared to the flooding of 2010, Ilyas said with confidence that the current conditions are much worse than in 2005.

He feels very lucky that his family and home weren’t extremely affected by the flooding; Ilyas’ family owns 64 acres of now-flooded agricultural land of bananas, peanuts and fish and dairy farms in Sanghar, Sindh, a province of Pakistan, that is 13 hours away from Islamabad.

Ilyas, his parents and two older sisters are just happy that they are safe and said they know others have lost much more.

“My father has visited the bad areas,” Ilyas said. “He said there is no safe drinking water and that people are drinking dirty water in order to survive. The infrastructure is down. Women are having miscarriages and premature births. I cannot stop thinking … how are these people going to sleep, how are they going to eat, how are they going to get their medicine?”

Ilyas and six other Pakistani ISU students make up the Pakistan Student Association. The PSA is doing everything in its power to help support the effort in raising awareness of the flood and how people and students can help the victims from miles away.

With a goal of $28,000 — $1 donated for every ISU student — the PSA has started a fundraiser for the people of Pakistan by setting up a booth selling Papa John’s pizza and select beverages in front of Parks Library on campus. Although many people pass by the booth in the afternoon and either ignore or donate to the effort, Ilyas said that even $1 can buy three meals for a family in Pakistan.

Converted to 85 rupees — now 86 because of rising costs on meat and other products — the American dollar is more valuable to those in Pakistan than in America, and Ilyas assures that those who visit the booth have the power to save multiple lives.

With the small amount of people, the PSA hopes it can garner support from other international groups and the rest of the student body.

“The more help the better,” Ilyas said. “People have been donating their items, time and money to organizations such as the Red Cross and UNICEF. We want to show people that we, ourselves, are taking the initiative and that we are doing this, and they should join in.”

After arriving 10 days late into this semester on his birthday because of the flooding, Ilyas immediately began planning the pizza fundraiser for the PSA that would help the victims of the flood when he left the Pakistani ground. With help from the others in the PSA, Ilyas contacted James Dorsett, director of international students and scholars at the Memorial Union.

Once news of the flooding hit Ames, Dorsett immediately contacted all of the Pakistani students and spoke with them about their safety, attempted to console them and tried to tell them how they could help the people of Pakistan recover.

“In the past, during times of natural disasters, we have tried to help out the internationals students by working with the accounts receivable office and treasurer’s office and offer other support services to help with their financial burdens,” Dorsett said. “If they had other issues where this impacts their studies then they could reduce their course load and work with their departments, and we ultimately help them from a financial, academic or mental health standpoint. These are all things we do to help out students.”

Ilyas later spoke with PSA about what the next course of action should be. Dorsett sent out a mass e-mail to more than 3,000 international students, and Ilyas still hopes that number will grow rapidly and eventually reach all students.

Dorsett received several replies back to his e-mail, asking how they could help with the flood relief efforts and responded by linking sites for Oxfam, UNICEF, the Red Cross and other organizations aiding in the flood relief. Dorsett said he was appreciative of the international student community helping out other international students.

In addition to the PSA’s efforts, the International Student Council on campus is working in coordination with the PSA to host programs during International Week in November that will support the flood relief effort.

“Several avenues of the campus are responding which is a very good thing in times of trouble that we are reaching out and are able to help one another,” Dorsett said.

Although the PSA has only hosted two pizza sales, Ilyas said they are trying to raise their profits and especially the awareness about the catastrophic conditions back home.

Using the PSA’s funds to buy the first event’s pizza for $111, the organization made a profit of $268 which went directly to the Red Cross.

Ilyas and the PSA hope more people can become aware of their organization, but he still feels as though the attention to this disaster is a little less than it should be.

“Yesterday, I went to the Red Cross, and the guy was comparing the flood to the Haitian disaster,” Ilyas said. “We all got the impression that the response to the flood was weaker than that in Haiti. One of the reasons I’ve thought of is that Pakistan, being a Muslim country, people perhaps are more reluctant to give their money because they think they are aiding a terrorist organization.

“There are issues with transparency. We want everyone to contact the organizations directly if they feel more secure doing so, so that they know that their money is going to the right place. It’s unfortunate, but the image of Muslims is not portrayed in a very good way in America.”

As soon as Ilyas landed in Des Moines, he was picked up by other Pakistani students from Iowa State.

The drive up to Ames was filled with conversation about what was happening in Pakistan and how the PSA could help the flood victims.

“We just received good news this morning,” said Alex Gomez, customer service representative for UNICEF in a phone interview Wednesday, Sept. 15. “The water levels are receding a little. This is good news because we know that fevers are not going to spread as much as well as other diseases.”

Gomez also spoke of UNICEF’s efforts to assemble temporary recreational centers for victims of the flooding. Approximately 200 centers are housing more than 20,000 children, and each center is getting a “School-in-a-Box” kit that contains pencils and other supplies as well as building blocks for the younger children to play with.

“The building blocks were included because they’re still children,” Gomez said. “They need to learn, but they still need to live.”

Selling pizza for the second time in front of Parks Library on Wednesday, Raja Imtiaz, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering and member of PSA, stood next to a board with pictures of the flood victims as he struggled to find the right words to express his feelings for what he and his organization were trying to accomplish.

“This picture of this woman with her bowl waiting for food … this very well could have been me, you know?” Imtiaz said. “I feel like I owe something to these people. They’re my countrymen, and being here provides a good opportunity for me. All of this is for the sake of humanity … it could happen to any of us.”

 

Organizations accepting donations for Pakistani flood relief:

• Oxfam
• Save the children
• Islamic relief
• World Vision
• Red Cross
• Edhi Foundation
• Pakistani Embassy in the US