By Myra MacDonald and Kamran Haider
JALAL WALA, Pakistan, Aug 29 (Reuters) - When the waters came, Allah Yar and his family ran for their lives. Now, four weeks later the 67-year-old has come back to his village to see what is left of his house.
All that remains is a hill of bricks, the brushwood once used for the roof tangled up within it. A few scraps of coloured clothes stand out among the rubble.
"I never saw such a flood in my life," says Allah Yar as he looks at what was once three houses for him, his two brothers and their families in the village of Jalal Wala in southern Punjab.
"We had to rush out and run for our lives. There was no time to collect our things, even our clothes."
Now he hopes to build just a wall and a roof for now so he can bring the rest of his family home.
It is a story repeated across southern Punjab, one of the worst-hit areas in the flooding which swept down from the north-west and then south towards the Arabian Sea, leaving one fifth of the countryside behind it under water.
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With the waters receding, those families who can return home are beginning to do so, trailing along embankments across the region in bullock carts loaded with children and goats, driving their cattle before them.
Others are still stranded, dependent on boats or helicopters to bring them food and medicine.
The road to Jalal Wala is still partially under water - so much so that villagers can catch fish in it. The land around is still submerged, trees and a few houses rising above the waterline, crops rotting in the fields.
But it is accessible by truck or jeep and the villagers who have come back are trying to make the best of what little they have left.
Some grains have been rescued from gunny sacks and spread out in the sun to dry, giving off a powerful stench of fermentation.
The electricity is back on and the mobile phone networks are functioning -- Allah Yar is able to call his son in Karachi to tell him about the damage.
MOSQUITOES AND MALARIA
As the water recedes, it is also leaving behind vast lakes of stagnant water, and with it disease is spreading.
In the nearby village of Lassori Khar, the army has set up a medical centre in a local school, men, women and children queuing outside. About 700 people a day come to these centres.
They show no clear signs of malnourishment and the children still manage a shy smile. Sickness, however, is on the rise.
They suffer from skin diseases, dysentery, respiratory and ear infections, anaemia, fever, malaria and depression.
"Every patient is depressed," says a young army doctor as she dispenses medicine and advice to a crush of women and girls.
A tiny baby, his limbs flailing violently, wails on his mother's lap, but is too weak to cry loudly. Young girls lift trouser legs to show skin lesions turning into welts.
Many come just for comfort, and the doctor hands them packets of oral rehydration salts.
"We have to give them something," she says. "If we send them away with nothing, that will make them more depressed."
It is too early to say how many cases of malaria there will be -- at the moment the doctors have time only to diagnose a fever -- but they all say it is one of the biggest risks.
With their houses destroyed, many people are forced to sit outside next to pools of stagnant water where the mosquitoes are multiplying.
"There are lot a mosquitoes, all around," says Zehra Mai, an old lady. "Children are getting sick because of the malaria."
Another army doctor, Waqas Sheikh, says that water-borne diseases are also on the rise.
People don't boil their water, he says, and they are also suspicious of water purification tablets, believing these to be part of a covert sterilisation programme.
"We need more doctors, we need more manpower, more medicine, because the number of patients is rising," he says.
Only about 20 people died in southern Punjab, whose fertile lands are usually watered by far smaller seasonal floods, making it the country's breadbasket.
But the devastation is enormous. You can drive for hours across this region and keep finding huge areas under water.
In Jalal Wala, Allah Yar has little hope of help from the government, instead making his own plans to rebuild.
"I can't wait for the government. What can I do? Whatever happens it is from God." (Editing by Ralph Boulton)
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