About 8 million remain homeless following Pakistan’s worst flooding in living memory People stand outside their tents at a camp for those displaced by floods in Sukkur, southern Pakistan, 4 October 2010. Aaron Favila / AP

By AARON FAVILA, The Associated Press
updated 10/4/2010 5:01:22 AM ET SUKKUR, Pakistan — The call to prayer echoes through the tent village at dawn. Muhammad Mosa wakes up and checks on Tikry and Baghee, his buffalo and goat. They are prized possessions, one of the few reminders of the home he fled more than seven weeks ago when floods swamped his village in southern Pakistan. About 8 million remain homeless following the country’s worst flooding in living memory, many staying in hundreds of relief camps. Mosa, his wife Shali and their children live in an 8-by-10-foot canvas tent, one of 500 families in a dusty camp set up by a Pakistani charity. Relatives live in neighboring tents. Shali is due to give birth next month. Two straw mats are spread across the uneven floor, and donated blankets cover the family’s food rations. Kitchen utensils and clean clothes are kept padlocked in a metal trunk. Mosa has only two sets of clothes. His young children wander around half-naked. “It is like dying here,” he says. “Dying once is better than dying every day. This is not life.” The 40-year-old rice farmer fondly remembers his two-room mud house 55 miles away, in a village now head-high in water. He misses morning tea with friends and family. “A half sip of tea over there is better than having a full cup over here,” he says. …

‘Dying once is better than dying every day’