Summer Program

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Farah Mahesri
Concern for Children

Kashmir, 2006

I think the best place to start is the ending. One of the staff managers at a clinic near where I worked and I were on our way back to Islamabad where I was going to catch a flight to Karachi—back to civilization, back to electricity and hot water and food, back to family and a home. Muree, the vacation hotspot in Pakistan lay somewhere behind us, and the capital lay no more than forty minutes in front of us. And I was scared. This was not a heart-pounding, paralyzing, horror movie type of fear. Rather, it was a sense of unease in the pit of my stomach. I could not understand it. I was heading home. My confinement in the village was over. I should be excited, happy, elated—not scared. And yet, as the mountains that I had become so accustomed to flattened out into hills and than into rolling hills and I could see flat land in the distance, the butterflies in my stomach increased. I stopped staring out the window for a moment to see how the camp manager and his “uncle” who was driving were handling the descent and I noticed a change in both of them as well—they both now sat up very straight, the shoulders back, the music was turned downed and they were both staring straight ahead. And, as the hills flattened into barren land, I realized something: I realized why people who live so isolated and alone on top of high mountains, who have no access to regular grocery stores, to medical care, to education choose to stay up there. The safety. Even as I sat in the car, I realized how ridiculous that idea was having come from the site of the most devastating earthquake that the world had seen in awhile. The mountains had literally come down in Kashmir. They had attacked the populace, the people who had stored so much faith in them. The most famous site in Kashmir these days is the “jeehl” or the lake that was created by the earthquake when two mountains literally collapsed and dammed up a river. Five villages and several thousand people are buried there. The hills around Muzzaffarad are streaked gray—mountain scars from the giant landslides. Those landslides always gave me pause. I would stop and stare and imagine the incredible noise that must have occurred at the moments immediately following the quake—every building in site, every mountain in the background was falling down in the span of a few minutes. It must have been deafening. Earth-shattering. I would have thought that the world was coming to an end and I grew up doing earthquake drills so theoretically should have known what to expect. And I realized that those mountains that had attacked my friends, neighbors, students and coworkers last October had become a sorts of security blanket for me over the summer months. So, I could only imagine how much the local population needed those same mountains.

This was certainly very different from my original thoughts as I first climbed up the mountain. Then, my thoughts were mostly “when will this misery end?” but a lot had happened in between that first ride in the bus stuffed with wide-eyed interns and overfilled suitcases and the ride down in the small car. For one thing, on the ride up the fear had been more of the heart-pounding, hands sweating, looking for the nearest emergency exit kind. It was the fear of entering the unknown. But, even in my wildest dream I could not have imagined what was in store for me—the heat, the bugs, the lack of electricity or proper bathroom facilities; the kindness, the warmth, the smile of little children and the precious look in their eyes that were filled with trust; the hospitality, the curiosity, the acceptance. Kashmir was amazing.

I’m not an expert on Kashmir. Although I have spent years studying Pakistan, Kashmir was always something I avoided in the same way that I am a student of the Middle East who tries to stay way from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. As a result, I had no mental image of what to expect—less some disturbing images from immediately after the earthquake and from staring at a map the night before. Our lack of prior knowledge came to clear focus about ten days later when our neighbors gleefully reminded us that we were not living in the village that we had thought that we were in (we were actually about two villages over—and we felt really dumb.) Therefore, this is not a scholarly piece. This is simply what I saw when I was there.

I’m not sure if our lack of expertise helped or harmed us in those first few days when we were learning our way around. We were just like the kids around us—trying to absorb as much as we could and focused on carefully putting one foot in front of the other—trying to survive, to adjust, to live. We saw things that made us smile, experienced such hospitality that I am still in awe of it months later, heard stories that brought tears to our eyes and stories that continue to confuse us months later. We saw other things that puzzled us and of course things that upset up.

The destruction around us was absolute, despite the idyllic village life around us. I don’t think anything can explain the experience than some of the stories that we heard. Three stand out more than anything. A few days into our stay, the village women took us to the “chasma” or the natural spring from where they get their drinking water—it really is up a mountain and then a mountain, with a climb that requires you to use both hands to keep falling down. In order to do this, the women balance the water on their heads. We tried doing it and failed miserably, only re-emphasizing my inability to survive village life. The morning of the earthquake, the women were all gathering water and several were killed in landslides as the mountain came tumbling down on their heads. One girl was washed away as a landslide dragged her into the river several stories below; another was trapped under some rubble. Everyone assumed that she died, so they only went to collect her body the following morning, only to discover that she was still alive. Thankfully, she is doing fine and is already engaged (her enagement was an indication of her life having returned to normal.) These women spend about two hours of their day getting semi-clean drinking water from this chasma every day. Every day, they stop on the side and stare down on the river that took one of their friends’ lives. Everyday they go back. They have to. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d have that type of courage.

The fifth grade teacher at one of the schools we worked in has two of the cutest little kids in the world. The older one, a daughter who has a smile that can light up the world, went to nursery school about half an hour away in the town of Chinari. The teacher’s younger brother was responsible for taking her to school everyday—a chore he relished. On the day of the earthquake, he had just dropped his precious niece off to school when the earthquake occurred. He died. His niece was in a school that collapsed. In this tiny town, 150 students died in that one school alone. Her teacher was one of the few teachers who stayed in the building as it was collapsing to help her kids get out—this little girl did; her teacher did not nor did her best friend. Luckily for this little girl, her uncle worked in that town. He had just been leaving his store to run an errand when the earthquake occurred—he literally had one foot out the door causing him to lose one shoe under the rubble. He went to collect his niece and found her crying on top of rubble, covered in blood. He took her home just as some of her other uncles arrived on the scene. Desperate to find her, they started digging and kept finding dead bodies. They dug until 5 pm that day and couldn’t take the heartbreak anymore. They slowly made their way to their sister’s house to tell her that they couldn’t find their precious niece only to see that she was as safe as possible. But she, and her little brother were traumatized. To this day, they often visit the grave of their uncle and ask when he will come back. The fifth grade teacher was known in the village and the surrounding areas as a women who supported education, especially for girls (one of her neighbors had actually given her one of her daughters, saying that she could not provide an education or a future for her daughter, begging this teacher to take her. The mother died in the earthquake. I paused when I heard this to imagine what it took to hand your daughter over to another woman in hopes of having her live a better life. I paused thinking of how that sacrifice was rewarded by her death and the fact that she'll not see her daughter grow up to be that something more. I paused further as I looked around the tiny 5 tent school where the children sat in dirt all day and thought--was this really the great education that she made the ulitimate sacrifice for? My heart broke a little more), but now even she admits that the thought of sending her children off to a school is too difficult to endure—she keeps them with her, despite the lack of facilities, equipment or proper teacher training at the small village tent school in which we were working. She cried when she asked us to help her in anyway to give her kids a better eduction. We were struck speechless. And angry at our circumstances.

The last house in the village we were living in belonged to one of the nicest families I’ve ever met. One of the little girls in that house was at school on that fateful day. She survived and had to walk for several hours to get back home. She saw several schools that had collapsed and nine months after the quake, still has so many nightmares and mood swings that her family is afraid that she has gone crazy. I can’t even begin to imagine what she saw on that day to cause her little, sweet mind so much distress. I know that we tried to help her. I can only pray that we made some difference.

These are the stories that are repeated time and time again.

During the orientation, we had been visited by officials from three embassies who had described their own embassies’ efforts in the earthquake relief effort. I admit that I had not known exactly what each country had done. We heard how the DART team was the first on the ground; we heard that the British team was on the ground 22 hours after the earthquake and walked to the impacted areas. We learned that the embassies had run on emergency status—running around the clock—for three months. Then, I heard about the Chinok helicopters for the first time. We started discussing them because I had asked a question. After the earthquake, I remember hearing and voicing criticisms of the United States Army because they had such a large presence in Afghanistan and yet they lent only a few helicopters to the relief effort. I thought that demonstrated America’s lack of real interest in the region beyond our goals of fighting terrorism and utilizing Pakistan as a source of intelligence and a base of operations. I was told, by all the embassy officials present, that in the days following October 8th, 2005, Pakistan was a logistic mess. The Pakistani military was able to admit that they were in over their heads and handed over a great deal of logistic control to the international aid effort. The problem wasn’t the will to commit resources, rather it was a lack of information on how to distribute them. There were no complete maps of the area (once I got to Kashmir, I understood why.) There was no clear sense of where aid was needed. The initial fly-bys of the areas showed roofs intact—what pilots had no way of knowing was that the walls of houses had collapsed outward, letting the roof fall straight down. Looking from a bird’s eye view, it looked like the house was still standing. The term ‘village’ applied only loosely to some of the more mountainous areas as houses were sporadically scattered across mountains that took hours to get to when roads still existed. The international effort had to not only deliver the aid, but they had to figure out where the aid was supposed to go. They also told us about midnight shipments landing in Islamabad where American soldiers would help unload Iranian planes and hand supplies over to the large contingent of Cuban doctors who set up a camp in Garhi Dopatta—some twenty minutes from where I would end up. That left a remarkable image in my mind—a moment in time in which not only was all of Pakistan united to help the victims, but the whole world was putting aside political differences in order to accomplish one thing: to save as many lives as possible.

Then, we got to Kashmir and the stories just grew from there. Let me first describe where I was. We lived in a village—Dani Bakalah on Srinagar road. We were about an hour from Muzzaffarabad, about two and half from the Line of Control and about twenty minutes from Garhi Dopatta. Four times a week, we worked in a school in Bandi Chakkan in the Union Council of Chakamah. Twice a week we worked in a school in Chikkar. Bandi Chakkan was about as remote as you can get—it was seven kilometers from the Line of Control and the school was only accessible by a 4*4—even after the road had been rebuilt. About fifteen minutes before we reached our school, we passed a camp set up by the Agha Khan Development Network. The story we heard about that camp was this: AKDN in Islamabad had asked the PM of Kashmir what the hardest location was in Kashmir in terms of getting supplies and personnel there. AKDN said they wanted to set up a three year camp in that area to help with the reconstruction effort. The PM had pointed them to UC Chakammah. That’s where we worked. There were no homes left standing that we ever saw. There were no bathrooms. There was no running water. Drinking water came from the ‘chasmas’ or natural springs that were not necessarily safe in monsoon season. The school we were at had several deaths when the old school had collapsed on their heads and a boulder had come tumbling down—deaths caused by the fact that the students had run back into the building as the earthquake happened because they thought India was bombing.

Chikkar was about an hour up yet another mountain from Dani. It was a so-called “no man’s land” where the government had little to no presence. It was feudal territory—a fact that became very clear as we heard more and more stories about the area, cases of near battles and roadside beatings over questions of honor. We spent our first day of work visiting schools in Chikkar. I was talking to a 9th grade science teacher about his school and he began to tell me about October 8th. He said that the school had collapsed on top of his students and as he ran out of the classroom, all he saw were collapsed buildings. And so he walked—he walked trying to find help for his town (population: 40,000.) He walked down his mountain—an hour’s drive. He then walked along the river to Muzzaffarabad (another hour’s drive.) All he saw was nothing. Nothing was left standing. No one was there to help. So, he turned around and walked back and started pulling rubble off of people with his own hands. Canada’s DART team was the first one to reach them. The first ones to bring food. The first ones to bring help. But mostly, they had to help themselves--a fact quietly noted in a green and understated monument erected on the side of the road in honor of the five villages washed away when the new lake was formed right behind Chikkar.

We had several other volunteers working in Garhi Dopatta at a clinic run by Operation Heartbeat. They were doing public health work and as part of that were doing some ‘art therapy’ techniques in a school across the street from their clinic. Since none of us were trained in anything close to what we needed to help people through this kind of trauma, it was mostly an excuse to give these kids some paper and crayons and let them draw and play. Once, they asked their kids to draw a place where they felt safe—among many generic landscapes and pictures of the stereotypical house, they got a picture that sticks out in all of our memories. One student had drawn a Chinok helicopter, complete with an aid package, soldiers in the window and flags. That helicopter saved his life with the aid that it brought. He now associates it with safety. President Musharraf was just in Washington, DC and at a speech that he gave at the George Washington University he was asked about international help after the earthquake. He mentioned then that the Chinok helicopter was referred to as the “angel of mercy” in the aftermath of the disaster because it was the main way that resources were moved around.

No help reached Bandi Chakkan in a sustained way beyond a few initial food drops. Those citizens had to travel down to the nearest town to get supplies—a town that was half an hour away by car and across the river that no longer had a safe bridge going across it. But, the first one to survey the area came in a Chinok helicopter to see if there were any survivors.

I was conducting some interviews about the process of education reform going on in Pakistan at the moment. One of the questions that I asked at the end of my interview was about how events can change perceptions—and so I asked how the earthquake changed perceptions of Pakistan and the international community. Some individuals who believe strongly in Kashmiri independence said that their views on Pakistan’s political control over Kashmir was unchanged. Kashmir should be free. But, even they thanked Pakistan for all that it had done. Everyone else I talked to said that it changed their views on Pakistan because before that Pakistan was a distant entity that controlled politics, but had very little daily influence or impact. After the earthquake, they realized how much Pakistan had done, what it could do and now supported Pakistan. But, almost everyone thanked the international community without reserve. People understood that there was no real reason for me, my co-workers or any other individual who had traveled from another country to be in Kashmir doing what we were doing. So, they were thankful. If the great battle being waged on the global theater is for the hearts and minds of the Muslim populace, I can say this: the Kashmiris I talked to, the Kashmiris—their hearts and minds had been won. We—as members of the international community—touched their lives in a positive way and that has not gone unnoticed. Now, there was still animosity—still grafitti that declaring that the United States is the “enemy of Islam” and people who still cling to the old memories of old wrongs, but the new generation has new memories, has new ideas, has new tangible proof. I firmly believe that this positive contact—by NGO workers, by volunteers and doctors and by military personnel can only lead to good things in our collective future.

Now, for the bad news. The initial relief stage is over and there is still a lot of work to be done. And, it’s not happening. Kashmir’s year, as I understand it, is divided into three units—winter—where as President Musharraf said, “snow is measured in yards and meters not feet”—mansoon and the precious moments in between. It is in those precious moments that the essential work of reconstruction can be done. It is that moment of time that has passed this year and no reconstruction has happened. There were no trucks laden with building materials slowly going up the mountain side while I was there. There were no foundations being dub, no building plans being improved and worst of all, no provisions for those families who either had no winterized tents last winter or whose tents—after a year of constant use—were in no condition to survive another winter. And, international organizations were pulling out as their mandates ran out—MSF, UNHCR and others either all left this summer or were scheduled to pull out by the end of it. IDP camps and tent cities were being dismantled even as people had no place to go. The school in Bandi Chakkan was five tents. School was usually cancelled after a night of rain because each tent was literally coming apart at the seams and so classrooms would flood. Each tent was caked in mud that the children were never clean and we ourselves gave up the battle. That school will not survive another winter. But, the children have no place left to go. I fear that many will not survive this winter, despite surving the earthquake and last winter.

As I understand it, there are supposed to be three stages after a major disaster—the immediate relief and recovery stage, an intermediate stage for temporary living and then the long term reconstruction. The Pakistani government, with the help of the international community, helped Kashmir through that initial stage. Tents were handed out in all the major areas and in areas like Bandi Chakkan, where help never came, those who could went down and got help and those who couldn’t survived as best they could. The reconstruction phase is being planned with the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency working to develop earthquake proof plans and zoning to avoid the major fault lines. But, the intermediate stage has not happened. The government has essentially stopped the construction of temporary structures with complicated requirements for NOCs and land (you can’t build a temporary structure on the same land that the permanent structure will be—forcing villages to either buy two plots for schools or suffer through another year of tent schooling) and confusing and vague plans to move entire villages that are either too remote or too close to the fault line. With so much left to do, there is so little being done and the winter is quickly approaching. My last few days in Kashmir were spent in a clinic in Chikkar and we already needed light jackets in the evenings and blankets to sleep in and this was early August. Can the government of Pakistan do more? They have to. Can the international community do more? They should. Can the ‘angels of mercy’ provide more relief? Yes. With so much going wrong in the world, its easy to turn away from disaster areas once the worst is over. But, commitment to rebuild is the only way that we can ensure that the region will recover. Without that, we are only prolonging the agony. Once we commit, we have to see it through. We have to. There is no room for negotiation on this, no room for wavering.

So, how to help. Sadly, there has been a lot of corruption and a lot of money has been misused. But, when I was there I saw several organizations that were everywhere, that were doing good work and were being highly praised by the local populations: The Turkish Red Crescent bar-none, hands down did the most work. READ Foundation was setting up schools everywhere. The Citizens Foundation was one of the few that was actually rebuilding structures. Daikoine was purifying water, working on women’s issues and building temporary structures. UNICEF and WFP and WHO were just doing amazing work—a lot of coordinating to ensure that all the NGOs that were working on the ground were actually helping communities. They were also the ones who were setting up the schools and clinics. Sadly, I would not recommend the organization that I was there with.

The scene that I want to leave you with is this: in the village that we worked in, we started a day camp of sorts for the village kids mostly because we were living there but not really helping the community and we wanted to give back. One of the other volunteers had set up a soccer tournament for the older boys, but we wanted to do something for the girls and the younger children. The children were incredibly cute and incredibly eager—they used to show up an hour and half before they were supposed to. Unsure of what to do on many days, we tried to try teach them our favorite nursery rhymes. The English was too hard. One of the volunteers knew this one really random Urdu song from an old Hindi movie and so we taught them this song—it was short and easy. The kids latched on to this song and so everyday when we would tell them to go home, they would disperse through the village loudly singing this song as they went. I think that’s the image that I will always carry with me…little kids running down the road happily singing “lakri ki kathi, kathi be ghora, ghora kid um pe cho mara hatora…..” It represents the one thing that I think I accomplished this summer: I put smiles on the faces of some very sweet, very deserving little children. I hope they remember me because I will always remember them.