'Gori' Goes East
Tuesday, 31 October 2006
Lyndall Stein, Director of Concern Worldwide UK, travelled to Pakistan a year after the earthquake to find out how Concern has been helping survivors to rebuild their lives.
I checked with Hamza on the way out of Islamabad. "Do you have a word that is the equivalent of Msungu?" (the African word for any random white person), and he laughed: "Yes! Gora. And that would be Gori if you were a girl". Well, I am an old kinda girl but I guess "Gori Girl" it is. It is a good start - visiting Pakistan: a country so misrepresented, a culture so marginalised, to harvest a word from them, that generalises rather than presents the individual.
This was on the way to Kotli Sattian, a small village just 2 hours from Islamabad, so difficult to reach that it might as well be hundreds of miles away. Hamza explained how the earthquake had hit whilst everyone was on the Ramadam fast - that was just a year ago. This village, though not as severally affected as those nearer the red zone, had lost houses, its school and water as the movement of the mountain had displaced precious waterpoints.
The whole notion and discipline of a month long fast seemed incongruous to "Gori Girl" as I sat in the meeting room of the Concern office, overlooking the spectacular peaks, the beautiful mountains of the North Western Frontier Province, eating delicious curry prepared by the tall, dignified, and bearded cook who despite fasting himself, cooked and served with the greatest solicitude. He laid the table, while the others worked on, leaving me to eat alone. Fouzi, the local project worker who was pregnant, delicately left the room to continue working only after making sure I had everything. She had been assigned by Hamza to look after me, to make sure I would not be lonely whilst he and the other men all went to Friday prayers.
It was a strange dissonance during my trip to Islamabad and then to Mansehra and the Red Zone - the area so devastated by the earthquake - the solicitude with which everyone ensured that we, the Gori and Gora (Pete, Concern's Regional Director for Asia) were fed and watered despite the fast - bottles of water slipped to us discreetly, take away rice and chicken appearing in the tented office, boxes of nuts for us on the long drives though the terrifying mountain roads that sent blood pressure and adrenaline soaring.
The Concern team, our partners, the villagers of the mountains and valleys working the animals, the fields, rebuilding the paths and roads, scrambling up the mountains with huge sheets of corrugated zinc- kept the fast. They ate and drank nothing from a meal before dawn at 4.30 till the breaking of the fast, the ritual meal, Iftar, composed of date, fruit somosas and other tasty morsels at sunset.
Of course greedy "Gori Girl" got to have both! The eating and drinking all day, and then, the breaking the fast with our colleagues, alongside 20 schoolboys, wild with hunger, 50 grown men with growling tummies. Then there was Alia, the young Concern program officer with quiet dignity claiming her place as a fellow colleague, on our table of twenty men, in the crowded restaurant, where amongst a hundred men, other than "Gori Girl" she was the only woman.
We were in the small town of Mansehra, the only undamaged town near the devastated earthquake zone. When the earthquake hit this wildly beautiful part of Pakistan, Mobishar told me how those affected, and those helping kept the fast, even when they were only able to break it with a bit of dry biscuit. In the Sarin valley in the village of Devli people were completely cut off for 20 days, only a few helicopters drops over that period bringing them a small amount of supplies.
When we arrived these extraordinary, strong, and resilient people were scrambling over the hillsides carrying 7ft sheets of zinc to rebuild their homes and animal shelters. The distribution was taking place under the watchful eye of one of the local people - surprisingly a tall red head- we had seen another tall striking redhead working with the team rebuilding the road, both projects supported by Concern and our partners Haashar, who had been the first group to enter the valley after the earthquake. The work of reconstruction has been organised to enable the villagers to earn money. The redhead told us that 3 percent of the villagers have red hair, and pale eyes, a quirk of genetics, a reminder of a long-ago migration from across the Russian Steppes perhaps. He looked like my cousin Stanley, the same red hair and high cheekbones the same heritage from the high mountains of the Urals?
All over the valley and the mountains the zinc sheets gleamed, in this area thankfully, there were no tents, but the struggle to build permanent homes is hampered by many difficulties: access to materials, the faulty administration of government grants to families, the demanding nature of the new building requirements, which rightly, want to ensure that in future earthquakes or cyclones, it will not only be the homes of the rich which will survive.
When I asked Saed, whose dark eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, about the most important aspect of how to deal with emergencies he quickly answered "your preparation!".
The team explained why it is so important, in witnessing the devastation of a terrible natural disaster, to understand, that human preparation and planning, can mitigate the effects in a profound way.
Work is being done now in all the areas affected by the earthquake to teach villagers the key preparations - duck, cover your head, leave the building, use the door frame for shelter if you cannot leave in time. The preparations individuals can make are only part of the story, regulations and buildings must be strong too, to protect the people inside them.
Near Balakot, in the Red Zone - the area most at high risk of further earthquakes - is Survai a village of 329 households. 52 villagers lost their lives, along with 85 buffaloes and over a thousand goats.
We drove up the mountain, a road too narrow and treacherous, for the powerful Toyotas, which had carried us to the bottom of the village. We were transferred to what are affectionately known as "moon buggies", so called, because they can, with amazing local skills, be coaxed high up the mountains. They are 30 years old, open Jeeps, lovingly restored, painted red or gold.
Our amazing driver had golden eyes, I felt sure this meant that he had a gift of special powers, I certainly hoped so! I shut my own eyes tight as we edged along precipitous drops and horrifying gashes in the mountains, torn away by the earthquake.
The painful rebuilding has been advancing step by step over this last year. We have worked with a local organisation called Rural Development Project to bring in new goats - a delicate process, acclimatizing them to a new environment, vaccinating and monitoring, so they will thrive in the high altitudes and cold winters. Vegetable gardens planted, schools restarted, and new initiatives - groups for women, sewing classes down in Balakot.
On the mountain road into Balakot hotels are advertised, painted on to rocks by the side of the road,"the Fairyland hotel" - Best views!, all gone now, replaced by zinc sheeting and canvas, but shops are starting up, the market bustle is back.
You can take shops for granted, but it one of the first things that had to be done in Survai, to subsidize the tiny shop, so it could be restocked, the shopkeeper gave away all his supplies to his community after the earthquake. How else was anyone to get the basic essentials - salt, soap, oil and matches - on top of a mountain if the shopkeeper had no money to re-stock?
Samir, a widow, had been selected by the village to benefit from one of the goats we are distributing. She lost her husband under the huge landslide, still visible at the edge of the village, a gaping hole in the mountain. She had been pregnant at the time with her second child, a son, she proudly pointed him out, sitting contentedly by the side of a pile of corn husks.
With the help of her community, she will have to be mother and breadwinner, tending her garden with tools and seeds we have supplied - the love and protection of her husband, buried forever, under the awesome and terrible movement of the mountain.
Nasir had been severely injured, had lost her mother, father, brothers - yet still was smiling , thanking me for our help, the vegetable garden, that her sister and neighbours must work for her. Her temporary zinc sheet home, which she had prettily decorated with strips of red paper. She was still smiling when I asked her if she was in pain, "Yes" she said, "But this village has no health center and we have no money for drugs. I had medical help after the earthquake but not now." Still she smiled. Fortitude, resilience, courage and absence of self pity, her regime.
We saw a field and houses still intact, but now 5ft lower, the very geography of the village changed, the water courses disturbed, new pipes and pumps now needed. I saw the shattered home of one of the villagers, huge gaping cracks in walls and floors, the house entirely unusable, but still you could see the cosy fireplace, the charming painted decorations, of what had been, a much loved home. In front of the house a huge walnut tree, the shopkeeper and community leader pressed a bag of walnuts into our hands.
These walnuts, a small token of the grace and generosity of everyone I met, the villagers who insisted on carrying my rucksack worried at my un-surfootedness, as I scrambled on the mountain tracks. I was wondering why I felt the need to carry around not just sensible necessities, but all the detritus of my ‘Gori Girl’ life: spare water, food, chewing gum, sunscreen, lipsalve, lipstick, mobile phone, facial blotters, two different varieties of sweeties, box of biscuits, handwipes ect...
We went back down the mountainside (even scarier than journey up) but I had faith in Golden Eyes by then. Into the fat Toyota, and up the tarmac mountain road, out of Balakot, back to the main road, and the terrors of the beautiful painted lorries , rushing, speeding, hurrying, hurtling recklessly by, in order to get home for Iftar- the breaking of the fast. Our charming driver prepared with a plastic bag of fruit on the dashboard, dates in the glovebox, and his prayers and Iftar, by the side of the road - so we could get back to Islamabad.
The people of Pakistan gave so much in the earthquake, in Pakistan and internationally. Critically, it was the bravery, dignity and altruism of the local communities, those directly affected that counted most - but also our local staff and partners, who worked relentlessly, with no regard at all for official hours, for weekends or holidays. Remarkable networks, all over Pakistan and the world ignited to ensure skills, resources and expertise could be targeted to the disaster zone.
The international community who gave money, the Pakistani diaspora here, who supported us and our partners in Muzzafrabad - Islamic Relief.
A network of common humanity, connecting - Islamabad, and Iowa, Isleworth, and Istambul - with those terrible moments when the mountains in Mansehra and Muzzafrabad moved.
