A (normal??) day in Pakistan

This morning I woke up stupidly early for a Saturday morning as we were running a reflective workshop, so I had to get to the office to organise things. The workshop was to learn from and review our Early Childhood Care and Development project in Seren valley, which had to close because of the attack on Plan and their subsequent withdrawal from NWFP. Although our 100 ECCD centres and 2500 children are now without a donor, many caregivers are running the centres without being paid. This illustrates the depth of commitment and change that has taken place in the communities.

But anyway, that wasn’t the point of the session, which was to review the whole project, decide what lessons we had learnt and any recommendations for future ECCD projects (particularly relating to sustainability). Quite a tall order for a Saturday when people were fasting. I was seriously wondering how feasible it would be to run an intensive session when people can’t eat or drink, and on their day off. But I was really impressed with the commitment and interest that people showed. It was a definite learning experience for me - we had to cut a lot of sessions because of time issues. Also, I was facilitating one of the groups, which wasn’t exactly one of my strong points. By the end of the day I still wasn’t able to cope when groups of Pakistani men talking loudly in Urdu completely went off on tangents for 10 minutes and ignored what we were supposed to be discussing. Oh well.

So the session finished one and a half hours late, and 5.30 (ye Pakistan hai). We then waited for two hours for Iftar – the breaking of fast. I was able to catch up with people from Mansehra, hear about all the people who I haven’t seen since February, and who I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to. I caught up with someone who was shot twice in the attack on Plan, and heard about what some people have been doing since February. One guy is working in Peshawar with an NGO supportig schools in FATA – I will be writing in more detail about this later as it was a really interesting discussion. (The western media equate Pakistan with FATA with terrorism, so it was really good to hear about dedicated and committed individuals who are working to bring long term change in what must be one of the most difficult areas in the world.)

At the Azaan (call to prayer) we all congregated on the roof of the office and started eating Iftar – fruit, drinks and then samosas. There were even some doughnuts. It was a beautiful sunset, and very peaceful sitting there listening to the call to prayer coming out from all areas of the city, eating and watching the sun go down.

After that the men who wished to prayed on the roof, and then we had a proper meal – chicken biryani.

Twenty minutes later a huge explosion reverberated around the whole of Islamabad, 50 people died and the entire Marriott hotel has been destroyed. When will this end?

A short swim in the Hindu Kush

So Phander…. A small village in the Hindu Kush, five hours from Gilgit, seven from Chitral, and very close to the world’s highest polo ground, Shandaur. What does a village in the Hindu Kush look like, I hear you ask. Well, when I first saw Phander we drove over some terminal moraine and looked down on this large valley which was green with poplar trees and gold with the crops ready for harvesting. The mountains were huge and barren, some were just appearing out of mist and others were bright with sun. The river was a most amazing turquoise colour. And to cap it all there was a rainbow stretching over the whole valley. Talk about a little bit of heaven.

The Phander valley:

The first evening there we met some people who had worked in Mansehra and who were now working at the MIED girls college. They offered to take us on a 20 minute walk, so three hours later we were looking down in the pitch black at the twinkling lights of the village below miles away. OK, so I exaggerate slightly – it was actually a really fantastic walk. Part the way through I was silly enough to ask how people actually walk up the side of the mountains when they consist of scree and are almost vertical.

So one of the guys born and bred in the Karakoram offered to show me how – twas exceptionally scary just going up off the path a little bit and walking on such a steep slope, the Scottish Highlands seemed tame in comparison. I was literally crawling crabwise (slightly inelegant but survival seemed more important).

I survived, and we walked up to a small peak above the village. It was a really bare landscape – people were telling me seriously about witches and things, and I was scoffing, but I can understand how such legends develop in such a vast, inhospitable landscape, particularly because we were out there after dark. So we got to the peak just as the sun was setting, which was beautiful. I was slightly concerned with getting back down again though, looking down at all the vertical slopes below me. But we got back to recognisable footpaths before complete blackness, and thereafter we had to go very carefully down narrow lanes and through fields of crops. To pass the time the guys, who were from different parts of the Northern Areas, were teaching me the word ‘donkey’ in their mother tongues – Khowar, Waqqui, Shina and Burusheski (there were quite a few donkeys around, I don’t think it was a personal reflection).

Walking through the village the next morning was really interesting – there were many women and only a very few men at work in the fields doing the harvesting by hand with scythes. We went to a local NGO where the community are thinking about setting up a second girls college in a nearby village. My co-worker had told me the previous night that we were expected to run a session building the capacity of the Education Committee. The thought of helping to run a session where the participants spoke in Khowar, then having to translate to Urdu and then into English made my blood run cold, so I sat quietly at the back. It was interesting though, especially seeing how enthusiastic the community members were to start their own girls college.

One of my gallant protectors had organised lunch for us at his sister’s house, which was a traditional house over a hundred years old. As a woman, I was able to meet the women of the house, whereas the men had to stay in the guest room. The heart of the house was one large room used as a kitchen, living room, prayer room and bedroom. There were beautiful wood carvings on the wooden pillars, and the roof was very intricately designed. There were seven pillars in the house to represent seven key figures in Islam. There was just one wood stove where the woman did all the cooking.

I just could not believe it when they bought out rice, chappattis, two meat dishes and a vegetable dish for about ten people. How it was possible on one stove I do not know, and it all tasted delicious, particularly as it was cooked over wood. The women of the house did not appear at all though – it was the younger men who bought us the food and served us, and none of the family ate with us except the father. The family eat after the guests.

After that, as Phander is famous for fishing, one of my travelling companions got hold of a rod, so we went down to the river. Both my protectors had assured me before that they were well practiced with fishing, so I was expecting a good haul. Hmm, half an hour later they were saying that the rod was a big problem. I had a go as well, but with no more success, so then I became more interested in paddling in the freezing cold water. I had more or less decided against swimming as it was so cold, but then I slipped on some mud. It was rather embarrassing – all the women doing washing on the other side of the bank and the kids were laughing at me, but then I showed them the true grit of the Brits and actually swam (in full shalwaar kameez). It was flipping freezing, so I didn’t last long, and then ran back to the hotel with a see-through duppatta draped delicately around my sopping wet shalwaar kameez. Back at the hotel, facing a shower where the water seemed to come straight from the glacier, I did have a moment of homesickness, but that was only transitory.

The next instalment will be coming shortly…

To Gilgit and beyond.....

When I was leaving the UK I knew that I would be going up to the Northern Areas once back in Pakistan, which made getting on the plane at Heathrow a whole lot easier. Even so, whilst I was sitting at Heathrow I was going through all the cities it could be worse to go to than Islamabad – Baghdad, Kabul, Khartoum, and then I got stuck on the capital of Somalia (Mogadishu). But I cheered up when I got on the plane as I was upgraded! I never thought that happened in real life.

Anyway, the trip up to the Northern Areas took three days, and I went to a village called Phander between Gilgit and Chitral, where MIED has a girl’s college and runs some ECCD centres. We left Islamabad one day, spent overnight in Mansehra (don’t worry parents, was perfectly safe). We had to leave Mansehra at 5 o’clock the next morning, at which time I wasn’t at my best. It was dark and raining and I was told that there were two routes to Gilgit – either the Babasur pass or the Karakoran Highway. My two trusty companions told me we could go by the Babasur pass if I felt like taking a risk – otherwise we could go by the KKH and they would disguise me under luggage. Hmm, I think (hope) they were slightly joking. But at that time in the morning either seemed little short of a death wish and the idea that I was capable of making a decision which route was laughable. Anyway, my companions decided to go the ‘risky’ route over the Babasur pass. We hit the mountain roads a little after dawn, almost quite literally as soon there was a landslide covering the road. This didn’t daunt either of my trusty companions who jumped out of the car with unreasonable energy for that time in the morning and shifted a few big rocks.

There were a few tense minutes when the 4x4 tried to climb over the rocks that remained but that was successfully achieved and we were soon on our way again. I felt quite remarkably better after a breakfast of trout by a mountain stream, and it all seemed like an adventure again. We had breakfast at a tiny café / tent in the rain. There were two boys asleep in bed in the café / tent with a howling gale outside, which reminded me that I didn’t have things so bad really.

The rest of the morning up to the Babasur pass was a whole lot better. It was a spectacular route through the Kaghan valley and up to Naran, it was just a shame it was raining. The roads continued to be bad though, I couldn’t count the number of landslides and lakes we had to pass through. We had a lunch at Naran which is a known tourist spot, but then we really hit the unknown. On the map a proper road was marked up to Naran, after that it was just a dotted track. Given the states of the roads we had been on, I wasn’t particularly sanguine about what was to follow. But happy surprise – there was a proper road for quite a few kilometres. After that, things went steadily downhill (but going uphill!) In places there was no road and we had to pick our way around mud and boulders, and work out which general direction we should be heading. We gradually climbed to 4000 m, and passed cattle with coats on, camels, and houses made out of stone where families spend the summer with their cattle. We were practically the only vehicle on the ‘road’. We had to negotiate ‘bridges’ when I preferred to get out and walk, though that was almost as scary. Unfortunately it was really cloudy when we got to the top, and it was completely freezing. I had been v intelligent and bought a fleece with me but my two gallant protectors were shivering slightly. But we did have some of mum’s amazing chocolate brownie at the top of the pass. When we got over the top we started descending into Chilas, which is quite a conservative and tribal area. It is one of the areas in Pakistan where people openly carry guns.

The road got a whole lot better, and it took about three hours between Chilas and Gilgit, but we stopped at various places on the way to see a hot spring and some Buddhist carvings. We got to Gilgit a whole lot quicker than going up the KKH as the road was so much more direct. It was really an amazing journey – we went from being absolutely freezing through Babussar to about 40 degree heat in Chilas, through an area destroyed by the earthquake, a tourist attraction, 4000m mountains, an area so conservative and tribal that they still have gun towers in use, past ancient Buddhist carvings, past the point where the Hindu Kush, Himalayas and Karakoram mountains meet, and finally the bustling city of Gilgit. I have to say I was pretty shattered after that, so I don’t know how the driver felt.

The next instalment (trip to Phander) will soon follow….