November 12 to 22, 2005
North-West Frontier Province
I arrived in Lahore on the 11th of November and was briefed by Tayyab Syed immediately upon landing. At 5:30 am on the 12th we left for Islamabad to meet up with the other members of the team and leave for Muzzafarabad, intending to meet with a local journalist and carry out a 10-day reconnaissance trip on foot in the Neelam Valley since the roads were still closed. We had been informed that a previous attempt had been made by three men but that they had not returned or given any signs of life. Upon arrival, we learned that the military thought they would be able to open the roads within the next three days so we decided our efforts would be best made elsewhere. That very evening we drove down to Balakot (much more affected than Muzzafarabad and set up camp there in a field). Our team of nine (I was the only woman) had about a hundred tents (these were a donation to our local partner from Tetrapack) sent down and began the assessment process in Ghari Habibullah area and higher up in the Jared area. After the assessment and compilation of names and identity card checks, these tents were distributed over the course of a few days. During the course of our two relief missions, we also met and exchanged information with other organizations, such as the University of Lahore , who have been distributing tents, blankets etc. and supporting the reconstruction of a school, Peace Winds, a Japanese NGO, NRSP, and Al Khidmat foundation. Upon running out of tents we returned to Islamabad where the French Association purchased 125 tents. I took advantage of this return to Islamabad to see a doctor since I was suffering quite badly from flea bites.
In the meantime the World Food Program had contacted us, telling us that they urgently needed qualified men to carry out assessments in other areas, dropping small teams of men by helicopter to carry them out and picking them up two days later. All of the Karavan Leaders volunteers decided to accept this one-month assignment so Tayyab used our few hours in Islamabad to find three volunteers to accompany me on the next relief mission the following day.
That evening we formed a new team of four: Sardar Ali (from Chitral), a driver from Karavan Leaders, Imran Schah, an independent mountain guide and travel journalist, Nawaz Ali Khan (from Hunza) who runs his own trekking company, Higher Meadows, which organizes yak safaris, and myself. Tayyab returned to man the office in Lahore .
Upon arrival in Ghari Habibullah (near Balakot) we set up camp in the same field, owned by a former Karavan Leaders employee, Banares, another extraordinary man who proved of invaluable assistance, together with his brother Selim. Basically, we were now operating with a team of six. Over the course of next five days, we carried out our assessment process and an increasing number of men and in particular women actually came to see us at our camp base. In fact, from the time we woke up in the morning we were surrounded by affectees, all of whom wanted us to visit their village / field where they were at times sleeping out in the open with no protection whatsoever from the cold. Their patience and understanding, considering the circumstances, was absolutely astounding. In reality, we were so far outnumbered by them so had anyone actually decided to simply take the tents from us we would have been entirely incapable of stopping them. Not a single person did.
We also went to Nakian and Bari villages (access by foot only). To get there we drove a couple of hours up to Jared village, at times stopping for an hour or so while sections of the road were being cleared, at times picking up our speed since we were told that there was a risk of rocks dropping/landslide in certain sections. From Jared the hike up to Nakian is about an hour, walking quickly, and from Nakian to Bari another hour.
In Nakian, which is completely destroyed, only one old man, some female villagers and their children and a young male (deaf and dumb) remained. To our surprise, Nawaz Ali Khan, spoke sign language (in addition to many more) and was able to communicate with him. These people indicated they would be leaving within the next few days once they had collected all of their personal belongings from the debris under their collapsed houses. In Bari , where two of our men went, conditions were even worse, but in this village the men reported that they did not wish to leave.
During the course of our relief efforts we met what we came to call many "in-betweens", people whose homes higher up in the mountains had been destroyed and who did not wish to settle in a tent village camp but to remain in clusters with relatives living lower down in the valley. In some villages, people customarily spent the winter months lower down in the valley, where they also owned houses. Very often, these houses had also been destroyed by the earthquake.
We also met many people who could not go to tent villages since most, if not all, refused animals. For people whose future relies on their few head of livestock abandoning their animals was simply not an option for most. We did, however, hear that some families had sold their livestock at very low prices so as to enter tent villages. One lady we met refused to go to a tent village because she had a dog and would not abandon what to her was a member of the family.
We returned to Islamabad/Rawalpindi on the 22 nd in the evening having no tents left to distribute and I spent the next morning meeting with a local NGO before catching a bus back to Lahore and catch my flight back to Paris on the 24 th.
