I applied for my visa on a Friday, and the next morning the earthquake struck. When I went to the embassy Monday to pick up my passport and found they had still issued me a visa I decided I should still go to Pakistan and see if I could find a way to be of help.
Back through Amristar I ended up at the Pakistan border at Wagah. It’s the only crossing between the two countries, and is fairly busy, as all of the imported goods from Afghanistan also cross through here. The trucks that carry things around Pakistan are fantastic and amazingly decorated, far more than those in India. The strange thing about that border crossing is that the trucks aren’t allowed to cross into India, so each one pulls up to the border and is unloaded at customs, and then carried to the Indian side by dozens of porters whose sole job is to shuffle goods between the trucks on their heads. So much work, surely there must be a more efficient way of importing goods.
No problems at the border, so I found myself in Lahore, at the infamous Regale Internet Inn, where pretty much every single traveler stays. It started as an internet café, but if he called it a café then the locals would come in asking for food, so he called it an inn which lead to many travelers coming in asking about accommodation. He started letting them sleep on mats on the floor, but soon found at least 8 or 10 people there at any one time and decided to start a hostel. So I got sucked in and spent several days adjusting to Pakistan, relaxing on his rooftop, meeting other travelers, and waiting for Ramadan to break at sunset so we could find food and ice cream. One of the hardest things so far has been Ramadan, which is a nice time to be here except that you cannot eat or drink in public between sunrise and sunset, which is difficult for me at the best of times, let alone while traveling all day and exerting a lot of energy… so now that it’s over we’re eating everything we can get our hands on.
While in Lahore debating what to do about the earthquake and how to help I met a guy named David, who was headed to Islamabad to meet a Pakistani friend of his and travel around the north. We went to Islamabad together, and once meeting his friend Ali and waiting for another friend of ours Nick to catch up to us from Lahore, was convinced that I should go with them for a week up to the Swat Valley, before coming back to Islamabad and volunteering. At this point that was a lifetime ago and hard to even bring up now after the last few weeks, but here’s the condensed version…
Swat basically goes up the center of northern Pakistan, and is incredibly beautiful. The areas I REALLY wanted to visit are Chitral to the west, and head up further north to the Hunza Valley and then the Khunjerab Pass, which is the border crossing into China. It’s was too late for all of that now as the snow is coming, so I’ll most definitely be back another time; it’s supposed to be some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere in the world, and the people in the northern regions are absolutely incredible. I’ve seen lot’s of photos from other travelers of that region, and can’t wait to get there myself.
A lot of the north, especially in the North West Frontier Province, is tribal land and not subject to Pakistani law, meaning that if you were kidnapped, etc, there’s nothing the police can do. Everyone talks about this, and it’s in all the guidebooks to invoke fear, but I found that the deeper we moved into those areas, and the more at ‘risk’ we supposedly were the friendlier the people got. Hospitality is a major tenet of Islam and I found that to be true in 99% of the people that I met. 1 week in the Swat Valley set each of us back about $20, which was mostly just on transport. Everything else was given by the local people… We stayed in private homes every night, were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner, and were pretty much not allowed to spend any of our own money. Even walking into a store to by a bottle of water would end in someone shoving money in front of me to the cashier and refusing to let me pay. When we were in more ‘dangerous’ areas, the people were incredibly protective of us, and would accompany us wherever we went, usually armed. Upon arriving in Buner, we were immediately met by a kind young man who wanted to escort us to our destination since he had a gun, and was distressed when the police drove by and asked where we were going, telling us that the police had no authority here and we should watch out for them, they were were bad people.
David and Nick both had somewhat of a gun fetish, so there were no shortage of those being brought to us to hold and take pictures with. And no shortage of chai either, I finally had to start telling people that I don’t drink tea at all since my body can’t handle 8-10 cups per day. I feel much better now that I’m ‘sober’.
I wish that I had had the time to write an update to you all right after that week, as I could have written an entire book on Ali (the Pakistani man that took us around)… quite an interesting character. He’s a great man, with a good heart and an incredibly wild imagination that kept us very entertained and sometimes frustrated thoughout the week.
Firstly any reference to time in Pakistan is to be taken with a grain of salt… if someone says they’ll meet you in an hour, you’ll likely be waiting 4 or 5. And a mention of “in sha’ Allah” (God willing) can mean that it might never happen. Ok, that’s harsh, you hear in sha’ Allah all the time, which is great, and a good attitude, if it’s meant to be it will be… but when I heard Ali say that our first destination was about 2 hours outside of Islamabad, in sha’ Allah, I was hardly surprised that it took us more than 2 days to reach it.
Ali is from Kashmir, where the earthquake hit, but has lived a lot of places, including the US for over 10 years. He’s fought wars in Afghanistan and Russia, spent time in a KGB prison for speaking too many languages (which in their mind meant he was surely a spy), spent a couple more years in a Malayasian jail for standing up to a customs official who was harassing his wife, been offered a job at the CIA and about a million more things that are questionably believable. But I couldn’t think of a more interesting person to have spent the week with. His most charming story was about how he caught a thief a couple days before we arrived in Islamabad, and as punishment he and his friends stuck a spoonful of butter and hot chili sauce up his ass. So we now affectionately call him Rambo Ali the Spoon Rapist. Again, I could have written an amazing story on him a few weeks ago, but on to more important things…
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Back in Islamabad I met up with a group of travelers and a few Pakistanis and headed up into Kashmir to see what we could do to help. We were taken up by 2 doctors (Imran & Ahmed) who had been the first doctors to reach the villages that we’re now working in, Surul and Bani Minhasan. They arrived two weeks after the earthquake and began treating wounds and broken bones that had been left untreated or, in some sad cases, treated by a veterinarian with no qualification to be working on humans. One little boy had had a finger amputated by this vet, who didn’t leave any skin to fold over the wound and thus wouldn’t heal, so even a month after the quake he was still coming back to have his bandage changed and it was bleeding like it had just been done yesterday. The doctors continued with their medical work, and the goal for the rest of us non-medical volunteers was to come up with a model of a cheap shelter that would help people survive the winter.
Backing up a second, at the time I arrived here in Pakistan all you heard about in the media was a great need for tents - that there was a huge shortage and they were in dire need. Nowhere did I see it mentioned that Pakistan is one of the largest (if not THE largest) tent manufacturers in the world, and that they are found here in great abundance. Different people suggest different reasons for this, but a popular belief is that the government here wanted people to come down to the tent villages that were being set up in Muzaffarabad, Abbottabad, Bagh, and several other larger cities, perhaps for ease of distributing aid, perhaps to gain tighter control of the Kashmir region, I’ve heard lot’s of opinions. What I do know is that tents were sitting everywhere, and being held up at borders and airports. 4 of the people on our team were also in Delhi at the time of the quake, and started a huge drive there in the hostels asking people to donate money, tents, etc for Pakistan, and then hauled a huge load via bus, rickshaw, wooden push cart, etc, had to fight a huge fight at the border to be allowed to cross with the supplies, and then arrived in Islamabad to find huge amounts of tents, blankets, etc for sale in the markets.
The initial groups of volunteers and NGO’s were delivering ‘winterized’ tents to the affected regions, but after a couple of weeks began realizing that these ‘winterized’ tents were far from able to keep people warm in the winter, or even alive for that matter. The focus has shifted to building structures made of various things, but mostly sandbags, CGI (corrugated tin roofs), and wood. The sad and inevitable part of this disaster is that many view it as an opportunity to make money. The first group that we met with before going up to the mountains is a California based company that was going to build sandbag igloo shaped houses, which looked nice, but were going to cost at least $700/each, and the guy running that operation was not very kind. So we decided we could do much better on our own, and take 100% of the money that we had and are able to raise and put it all into building structures.
Armed with about 1,000 sandbags and some more medical supplies for the camp we headed up to Surul for the first time, unsure of what to expect, but all motivated to do as much as possible to help these people survive the winter, and stay out of the tent villages, which we view as mini concentration camps, and hardly suitable for people as independent as the Kashmiris. The last thing this country needs is a culture of dependency, which I witnessed the effects of firsthand in Uganda… it’s an ugly thing.
What we found was breathtaking destruction, so much more vast than I had imagined. The further north we got the more destroyed the towns were. The roads were lined with buildings either collapsed or on the verge of, and some with people in them still trying to keep there shops and livelihoods running. The nearest large town to where we are is Bagh, which looks like a warzone and is quite an experience to walk through. Walking down the sidewalks involves dodging huge boulders that have fallen, and often climbing over rubble and even entire flattened rooftops to get to your destination. Yet the town is still trying to function… it doesn’t have much choice, especially considering that it is the transport hub for that district and for all of the relief work that is going on in the surrounding villages.
Surul itself is a very sad sight. There is hardly a house standing at all, and those left standing are seriously damaged and unsafe to enter. All 3 of the schools were leveled, as was the mosque. Yet the people, while traumatized, are as hospitable as ever. One family in particular, who’s land we’re living on at the moment and built a shelter test model on, has been cooking us food 3 times a day next to their tent, and serving us tea all day long. We all feel guilty accepting it, but refusing or trying to give them food to cook would only insult them; so we’ve gratefully accepted, and are happy at least in the knowledge that they’ll get to keep our test model.
It took us about 3 days to build it, but was slowed a lot by our continuous debates and problem solving. We’re estimating 2 days for the locals to build it, considering they are a lot stronger and more resourceful when it comes to construction. When we first started digging and filling bags, they immediately came over and showed us the proper way to dig a ditch, and could do it twice as fast as us. Yet most of the villagers will just stand around looking bored as we work. We asked one guy why this was, and he told us that most of these people are still so traumatized that they don’t care about what may happen to them in a few weeks. Some people just lost their homes, but many lost family members, and some were the only survivors. One girl in the village (who hangs around us almost all day) is 18 and lost both her parents, so is now raising her siblings on her own. Ultimately we see what we’re doing here not so much as showing them how to build, but trying to motivate them to want to survive the winter. Life goes on, and as hard as it may be for them, they have to pick up the pieces and take care of themselves. We built one shelter, but it’s not possible to build 450 more in Surul without their help. If you look around at the amazing mountain scenery and squint your eyes you get the sense of what it was like here before the earthquake, a truly beautiful place. But as you start to pick out the houses dotted throughout the hills and look closely all you see is a roof sitting on top of rubble… as far as you can see, hardly a structure standing. School is now held on the lawn next to the destroyed and eerie mosque.
After our first week up there we decided to hold a children’s festival to help get their minds off of things for a while. Unfortunately I was sick that day so spent it in the tent, but the others said it was a lot of fun, with face painting, tug of war, and potato sack races. The bouncy castles never showed up, but it was fun nevertheless. Later that day came my favorite moment, when Katie, who is a nurse from Scotland, and is trying to learn as much Urdu as possible to help in treating the women and children, asked a little girl to keep her wound clean… unfortunately in Urdu the words for ‘clean’ (gande) and ‘homosexual’ (gandu) are a little too close.
I’m really grateful to be in such a peaceful and serene village, staying there has really been an amazing experience. It’s far off the tourist routes in Pakistan, and for many of the villagers we’re the first westerners they’ve ever seen in person, and certainly the first to ever spend time in their village. The food people are cooking is incredible. There’s a fresh water spring that we get water from every morning, and which is pretty much the center of village life… women washing their clothes, etc. And then sitting around a fire with some of the local men every night all add to truly unforgettable memories. We have very limited supplies in the village that we have to carry up, so we’ve been making do in some interesting ways… after getting water in the morning and washing we fill the water container with cool water and store the tetanus shots in it, since they are supposed to be refrigerated. Hardly ideal working conditions for a mini hospital, but doing the best that they can. We were all taking turns staying up and doing night watch so that nobody would steal sandbags or medicine from the camp, but after the first week a nice man offered to do it for us, who we later found out is supposedly affiliated with al Qaeda. He couldn’t be nicer, and I think our camp is now about as safe as it can get. On the truck ride up the second time, the driver had his brother with him who had a smile ear to ear the whole way. Later they told us that he had been in prison for murder for 15 years, and had escaped during the earthquake when the prison collapsed.
Anyway, after building the walls of our structure we were left to figure out a roof, which is by far the most costly and difficult part. The CGI is about $18/sheet, and requires 4 sheets. Unfortunately it’s the only option since these areas will be covered in 6-10 feet of snow. I’m now back in Islamabad where I’m organizing and buying the sandbags and CGI, but am running into even more assholes, this time Pakistanis themselves, who are looking to profit from this disaster. The UN and some NGO’s have also decided that CGI is the way to go, and now the prices are going through the roof. Sandbags are much the same… I bought 10,000 on Friday for Rs 8.20/bag, and called back Saturday to order 50,000 more and was told that they are now Rs 12/bag. One day later!!! The trucks that we use to deliver the materials were once charging us around Rs 5000 for the trip, and have now gone up to Rs 9000! It’s truly amazing the balls that some people have. But I won’t stress these negatives too much, because they are so heavily outweighed by the rest of the population here that are so warm and incredibly nice and helpful. Most people we encounter are very thankful that we are here helping, and offering to do whatever they can to help us achieve our goals.
We will hopefully begin handing out bags tomorrow, and within a couple days we should see how effective our project will be. Unfortunately it started snowing for the first time yesterday, so time is running short and the weather is interfering with building. The doctors have already been treating cases of pneumonia and that was before the snow started, so time is becoming a serious issue.
You can see pictures of what we’ve been doing here…
Wes's Earthquake page... http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesolson/sets/1420826/
Imran's Bori Shelter page... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghettop/sets/1364283/
Imran's Earthquake page... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghettop/sets/1245113/
And a couple of articles have come out that mention us…
http://www.thesaturdaypost.com/news_15_adprsd.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1123/p01s01-wosc.html
Apparently a couple of my photos were shown at the huge UN conference that was held in Islamabad last week. I also did an interview with the BBC a few days ago, so I’ll forward that article when it comes out. We’ve been pressed to give ourselves a name since we’re not affiliated with any NGO’s, so we’ve called ourselves Nomad Volunteers, as most of us are in the middle of long travels.
If you had told me a couple of months ago, while I was lying on beaches and scuba diving in Mozambique that I would soon be climbing mountains to build sandbag houses in Pakistan...
I hope that you are all well.
Wes
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