by Cedic Hadjadj — October 2008

Photo of the front page of a national daily newspaper: Firemen having to canoe in Ghardaïa It is difficult to imagine that this is taking place in the midst of a desert.

On the day of the celebration of the Aïd el Fitr (Idul Fitri), very strong flooding took place in all the towns of the valley of the oued (river) Mzab, of which Ghardaïa is the capital city, at around 600 km south of Algiers in the middle of the Sahara desert. This was a historical flood because such a one had not been seen since more than one hundred years ago.

I went there three days after the start of the flooding, and I was able to observe by myself the magnitude of the damage, the disarray of stricken population and the apocalyptical landscape that followed. Material damage is tremendous. According to official statements, there were around fifty dead only in the city of Ghardaïa, but the figure of a hundred dead and missing people is certainly closer to reality.

Happily, there have been no dead or wounded among the Subud members of this area; however, two of them had their houses severely damaged.

This photo of Hamid (right) and myself was taken in the district where Hamid is living. We are far away from the bed of the oued, but we can very well see the traces left by water on the wall, they are located over shoulder-height.

The most severely stricken is our brother Hamid Zergoun from El-Ateuf, a village located 7 km from Ghardaïa. Waters very quickly invaded the cellar of his house and its ground-floor have been by and, even though he was there, he was unable to salvage anything. All he could do, with his family, was to escape to the second floor to save their lives. So, Hamid and his family have lost EVERYTHING: furniture, clothes, personal belongings, documents, cars, etc. They have kept only the clothes they were wearing. They had to live without phone for several days, without electricity for a week and, twenty days after the catastrophe, they are still without drinking water and have to live off the few supplies delivered by the emergency services or the army.

The second stricken member is our brother Bahmed Rechoum who is living in Berriane, a village located at 43 km from Ghardaïa. He had left his home in the early morning to go and do the Aïd prayer in the village mosque that is located in the heights. After having completed the prayer, he was unable to go back to his house that was in the flooded zone and where his wife and children were staying. He and his family found themselves separated and without any news from one another because the phone lines were cut. It was only at the end of the day, after the beginning of the drop in of the water level, that he could rejoin his home and see that fortunately the members of his family were unhurt because they had taken refuge at the second floor of their house. On the other hand, material damage is important because water had filled the cellar and gone up to around 50 cm above the ground-floor level. So, this brother too has lost most of his furniture and personal belongings. He had to temporarily move and does not live any more in his house while waiting for the rehabilitation works.

A friend's house (not in Subud) close to the bed of the oued. Water level rose till half the height of the second floor The inhabitants survived by taking refuge on the terrace.

In addition to moral comfort and psychological support, our two stricken brothers' needs are mostly material. They have got to buy for a second time all the furniture and the goods they have lost; but also and mostly they need to have heavy repair work done on their houses: masonry, plumbing, electricity, painting, etc. You have to know that most of homes are not insured in Algeria, and this is the case of our two Subud brothers. The Algerian State decreed the Ghardaïa Zone as a Stricken Area and promised to help the victims but, when will this be done and to which extent? Nobody knows it, yet.