We left Islamabad at 7:30 a.m. this Sunday morning to drive approximately an hour and a half to Nowshera (literally translated: "New City") in the KPK region. There we met with Sadiq, our helper from Mardan. Stories of the people affected are essential, but it is equally essential to tell the story of people like Sadiq. He's a government employee, works five days a week in Islamabad and travels back to Mardan (two hours from Islamabad if you travel by car - public transport takes longer) to be with his family. He makes at least two trips a week to Pir Sabaq, a village on the outskirts of Nowshera where we were aiding in the rebuilding of a couple of homes. Sadiq is not an affluent man; barely middle class, he asks of no rewards and is helping people in a village outside of his neighboring city. With no vested interests in the project, this man was here on a Sunday morning, missing out on his family lunch, to show us around the village and accompany us in surveying the work done and pointing out what needed to be done.
With Sadiq on board, we drove through Nowshera. We saw Internally Displaced camp-sites peppered around the city; in schools, colleges, roadsides, basically anywhere they could find enough room to set up a group of tents. We visited, what the locals call, "College Camp" set up in the local boys college. The government set up this camp when the floods initially hit (we later learn that in fact it took them a couple of weeks to set this up) and since, the government - or anyone else for that matter - had not revisited these people with food or money or supplies to help rebuild their homes. The camp was set up when the college was closed for summer break. It has since opened and is functioning at full capacity – minus a soccer field which now houses some fifty tents housing at least four or five to a tent.
Inside the camp we met with a mother of 12; her eldest 15 and youngest 3; a widow, who had to distribute her children amongst relatives because they were getting sick in the camp, sans food for days. We were told that people in this camp would often purchase goods from local stores on credit; credit they didn't know how they'd repay, or if they could. Another old lady started shouting loudly and pointing towards Val, scaring her just slightly. The lady wasn't upset that we had a foreign female accompanying us; she was upset that she had nothing and was looking to Val to help her [something made me wonder why the lady complained to Val, the obviously foreign female, and not to Farah and myself].
Yet still, there was a man in the camp that insisted I help his mother rebuild her home. When asked why he couldn't help his mother, he said that what he earned barely proved enough for his family, consisting of his two children and his wife. When I saw his wife I suggested he let her work somewhere part time to help out in the house, to which he laughed and responded "Bibi, hum Pathan hain!" ("Ma'am, we are Pashtun"). Apparently that translates into not letting their women earn a livelihood. He had no trouble asking another woman (me) to help out, but his woman - God forbid! When he asked me to photograph his wife, I responded similarly "Nahin bhai, aap Pathan hain!" ("No brother, you are a Pashtun"); I wouldn't dream of dishonoring his wife so.
Shame.
We distributed candy to the children, who all too eagerly held out their hands. I shook their hands, in an attempt to dissuade them from the attitude of begging or pleading, spoke to them (in a language they didn't understand) and then handed them the candy when I thought they were no longer expecting it (I dream). This is what scares me - the hapless attitude adopted by those who have fallen on bad times. There will always be those people that will be all too happy to play the victim and have things fall in their lap. But they are victims; at least right now. How do we turn that frown upside-down and inspire them to go out and seek sustainability again, in a place where nothing seems to be going right and the government’s attitude is only making it that much harder.
When we headed out of College Camp, we drove through the outskirts of Nowshera city and into Pir Sabaq. Driving through the village, just down from River Kabul (the fountain that overflew to cause this state of affairs), we saw sites where houses once stood, various crop fields awaiting their next rotation and many other fields with standing water, now covered in a mossy-gooey substan
ce [note to self: must google technical term]. Yet, there were fields that were harvested with the next rotation and seemingly working well. There were few "houses" that had more than two walls. None had a roof. As we drove further into town, we saw shops and villagers in the market, bustling about their business as usual. A couple of the shops had repainted and many lay shut - possibly on account of it was a Sunday, but we were told that some just didn't have the money to reinvest and reopen.
We pulled into the local boys school where the Lion's Club had set up a Medical Camp for the day. Because my friends carried heavy filming equipment, instantly everyone got up their defenses and didn't want (or wanted, we don't quite know) media there. But we assured them, as did the village elder and our liaison for the place - Baqi Billa - that we were simply there to take a look at where our donations had been used. The "Head Master" of the school showed us around all the rooms, now painted and brightly reflecting the glaring sunlight. Then he showed us into a room that he had not fixed up, as a reminder of how Mother Nature had left the place.
We saw the remnants of school records [unless you could now pull something out of the records of the Ministry of Education, let’s just say - chances of you applying to college are few and far between] and library books. Sports supplies had dilapidated and lay in a pile at the back, with fragments of left-over tinsel that probably decorated classrooms. A chair hung on the wall near the door; it was elevated to that point by the water and now just rested on some rusty old nails. You could see watermarks on the walls, close to the ceiling and books hanging by the fans. Farah and Val said the site reminded them of what they saw of New Orleans after Katrina.
Across the street from the school was the local Mosque. Inside, the quarters for the Imam were completely destroyed, but the rest of the Mosque had been restored to a more usable state - whitewashed and new prayer rugs provided and a new water pump was being installed. A heavy log of wood, practically a trunk of a small tree, had been washed here by the power of the floodwater and now rested on the tin roof of one of sections of the Mosque. We were dumbfounded, imagining how terrifying such a force must have been, coupled with the helplessness that comes with a natural disaster that strikes with such urgency.
Moving around in the village, from house to house - or what remained or didn't remain thereof - we saw the adversity of the affects of the flood. There were some who were very blessed and had the entirety of their homes standing, looking slightly grey, but standing nonetheless. One such family called us into their home to show us cracks in their ceiling (directly on top of their refrigerator and television set) and pleading to fix it because they could not afford the same; all the while their neighbor's house was now a pile of rubble. I don't know whether to label that "ungrateful" or sheer "self-centric".
There were homes with one wall standing, some with three and so me with nothing. People had moved out of their "houses" to live with family and friends around the village or in a tent, balanced on the rubble that lay where once their home stood. The most unfortunate had to resort to living in a camp, just outside the village. What we saw amongst the people of Pir Sabaq was a bond - each spoke to the next like one speaks to family. Baqi Billa told us that when people brought vehicles and boats to pull people out of the village to dry land, they didn't come in search for their loved ones; they took who they found and paddled them to a village slightly elevated on a nearby mountain. Baqi showed me the electrical cables that ran on poles above the homes and said "we floated our boats above those cables". I'm not even going to get into how dangerous that possibly was.
We visited the two homes that have been reconstructed with your donations. One belonged to a lady that was not home because it was her daughter’s wedding in the neighboring village; she would now live here with her frail husband, who was disabled and could now not work. The second home belonged to a widow - who, when we went to visit, was herself visiting the Medical Camp at the boy’s school we saw on our way in. We managed to catch up with her later and she showered us with prayers and appreciation.
We also met with two other women whose homes we were beginning work on. One is a widow, mother of three; two of her three are drug addicts and the third is mentally unstable. She, definitely pushing her mid-sixties at this point, provided for the three of them. The second lady was a widow who lived alone and helped with her brother’s family and his work. He could not provide for her himself because he could barely provide for his nine children. Nine. Another brother of theirs had twelve.
We sat down with Baqi Billa and his family to talk of the work they had undertaken in the village - about how everyone gave so generously of themselves for the benefit of their neighbors. We were astounded at how selfless most of these people were. Their hospitality is unprecedented; when we couldn't eat the fruit offered to us at Baqi's home, they bagged it for our ride home.
After our interview with Baqi, his sister-in-law came to visit and we were able to sit her down for a talk. She had previously worked as a Lady Health Worker with the government. [These are the people that go door to door to educate women on family planning.] This lady was very eloquent and highly educated. She did her Masters in Islamic Studies from a local university after she got married. She was the mother of two daughters, the youngest of whom was accompanying her today’ the eldest was at medical school in a nearby city. When I asked her if she'd educate her daughter on family planning before she got married, she shied away; "she'll learn on her own - I can't tell her things like that." Confused, I asked whether she considered it apt to be friends with your children, as I was with my mother. "I'm friends with my daughter, but we can't talk about such things. And I know she won't ask anyone else. She's sensible like that." This nonsensical sensibility would miraculously ensure that these girls know about family planning and ensure her health and that of her children. Miracles happen every day.
That said, it was refreshing meeting someone so educated and someone whose husband promoted her education. I just wish they'd break these cultural idiosyncrasies while they were at it. She did tell us that women used contraceptives without their husbands knowing because they would not approve. They told us that many were tired of not having enough to feed their existing children and continuing to have more. Still, the average family in this village alone must consist of 5-8 children.
One battle at a time, I guess.
