What I remember, what I can never forget....

Ive never felt so cold in my life. I stayed in my sleeping bag motionless for hours, too weak from not havent eaten anything, too cold to do anything else. I refused to drink water in case I had to go out of the tent to relieve myself. Someone would come in, fiddle in our 'kitchen' and then walk out to take a smoke. Most of us stayed inside the tent, huddled together around the gas burner, hypnotized by its dying flame.
It was the eight day that we had been here. We had planned on leaving after three. Our food was gone, it was raining too hard for any one of us to go get water from the half frozen spring two hours away and our satellite phone batteries had died two days ago. So we stayed in the small tent, all 10 of us, sometimes singing old filmy songs or nibbling on the nimko that we found in the only village shop, the only commodity that we could get our hands on. Now the shop sat in wet rainy silence, the villagers stayed inside their tents, trying to keep themselves warm by huddling close to each other and their goats and chickens and we stayed in the tent cursing, praying, hoping that the rain would stop. It hadnt for the past 4 days even for a minute and gave no signs of stopping anytime soon either.

After the Kashmir Earthquake in October 2005, a team of students were trainned in LUMS by World Bank staff to conduct surveys and collect vital information from areas accross Kasmir to analyze the quantity and quality of aid going in. Our findings would be crucial for future policy changes and hence all of us were prepared to put in all our effort and energy in this project. We had trainned for weeks now, sometimes spending 12 hours in the classroom and a further five in the field. Within this team, a handful were selected, on the basis of past trekking and mountaineering experience, to go to the most unaccessible parts of the mountain terrain that had been hit hardet by the earthquake. I was one of the two girls selected to go in the team of 10; finally I had a chance to be in the front line in the middle of the action. For months I had been heading a team of disaster relief program whihc was responsible for sending aid and volunteers to areas especially where very little information was available. Many of my male friends and colleague had gone already but it was felt to be dangerous for me to go yet.
Now the plan was to send students who would camp in these areas, conduct the surveys and focus group interviews and bring back essential information that was posing to be the biggest problem for the aid agencies and the government.

We left from Lahore and reached Kashmir where we spent our first night. Nothing had prepared us for the extent of the devastation. Schools, hospitals, shops everything lay there crumbled up like a piece of discarded tissue paper. There were huge cracks on the ground and large tracts of the landscape had just disappeared. Seven feet storied building had collapsed onto the road, one half of the resturant where we had the first meal was gone and we sat there solemnly eating our dinner, thinking of what was to come in the days ahead. There were 36 of us, three of my closest friends were going with me but only one was in the smaller team that would trek further into the areas where no road went. We left early next morning, first on jeep and then trekked for some hours until we reached our target population and after setting up the camp we quickly began our research. There was no houses standing, no infrastructure in sight, just thousands of white tents spread all over the mountains covered with a thick layer of snow. Children, wearing only their shalwar kameezes that were too big for them or too small for them, playing around the debris where their houses laid destroyed. Women were busy preparing the family meal, it was Eid today, they had sacrificed a chicken for the first time in months for the special ocassion. Men walked about waiting for any news about the next aid delivery point or the sound of the choppers coming to drop them a bag of wheat.
Our arrival was a source of great entertainment, young boys with pink dry cheeks quickly rushed to relieve us of our heavy equipement and old women with crow feet around their eyes came to give us a glass of water after the lengthy uphill trek.
Soon we learnt the name of every man and woman in the small village, our sample case study, it was difficult to remember the name of the children since they took great pleasures in changing their names everytime we asked and we would then play along. Our work carried on relentlessly for three days. Sometimes we would become the subject of the interview; the young girls were particularly fascinated with the fact that my parents had let me travel with a couple of single boys to an unknown part of the country. I remember once when a young mother of three children pointed out that their misery was a result of the city girls wearing sleeveless clothes and I tried putting on a sympathetic face without giving up the knowledge that I might have been responsible for their fate as well. But she didnt judge me, she just stated her worldview and carried on the task of feeding her child and at the same time shielding him from the heavy smoke coming from the stove where she prepared me a meal. The deeply entrenched traditional attitude was in one way quite appealing as I had never met more generous and hospitable people, despite the devastation that they had faced and continuted to face everyday. However, on the other hand, it was frustrating at times, while talking to women who had not recieved any form of education and getting information would sometimes become a long difficult process.
Although, I have a horrible memory of recalling faces of people ive met for a short while, their faces are ingrained in my mind. They were beautiful women, some were talkative and loud but most were shy and timid. All of them were exceptionally strong. Washing laundry and dishes in the hard cold snow, preparing meals for the large family in 6 x 4 feet sheds, fetching water in heavy cans on their heads from mountain springs two hours evreyday caring for the sick and old while taking care of their husbands and children's needs. No, I can not forget their endurance even if I tried.

Over the course of my work with the earthquake affectees in the past couple of months, I had become extremely interested in accounts of witchcraft reported after the earthquake, especially among the women. The village women too affirmed their suspicions; the witches, the ugly half women half-beast creatures had been heard calling their names from the dark forest on the mountain hills in the middle of the cold nights. But if any women went out of their tent or roamed outside the village, the witch would come and scratch out their faces or worse take them away to where they lived among the wolves in the mountains. It was quite logical; no one had disputed their existence since no one had ever seen a witch in flesh but no one had not seen them either. For generations, the witches had lived among them and the earthquake had now opened the cracks in the ground and many more witches had come out. However, one of my most memorable interview was with a man who was involved in the Kasmir militia and sat there with his family of three girls and one boy and his beautiful young wife, narrating his heroic tales of the past. He had lost everything and since he was not recognized as a citizen by either India or Pakistan, he had no one to turn to. I remember that he had been very hopeful that our research would conclude to something substantial for him and his fellow brothers in arm. Unfortunately we didnt include those interviews since we were never meant to be in that area; his voice on the recorder, his picture in my camera, his words in my paper meant nothing. He had become invisible.

We finished our research, I organized the interviews of the women that I had conducted and packed my bags, ready to leave the next day. Then it started raining. We got up the next morning, the rain was coming down hard and fast. By afternoon, our waterproof tents gave up. By nightfall, we all shifted into the biggest tent that had been generously donated by the villagers and which we had been using as our kicthen. We coulldnt leave because as we sat perched on a mountain top, the land around us started sliding down. After every few hours, we would hear a rumbling and find a large piece of terrain missing from the mountain in front of us. So we decided to wait for the rain to stop. It rained for 6 days and six nights without more than a minute's stop and that when the rain turned to snow. Our stocks began to deminish and we started rationing but the most difficult part for me was to go to the loo, which basically was out into the fields. In the daytime, I had to hide behind a mountain or a tree, hoping no one would walk by and during the night it was better in terms of privacy but that meant that I could not see where I was going myself and had to stop myself a number of times from falling into a ditch or worse off the mountain itself.

On the ninth day, at the height of our frustration, we quickly packed our camp as soon as there was a moment of relief from the rain and made our long journey back to the army camp that we had seen on our way up 9 days earlier. We were welcomed, with reserve, enjoyed a good warm meal and mdae quick calls to our families to assure them we were OK. Mom burst into tears as soon as she heard my voice, partly since she didnt really know that I would be going to the middle of the nowhere and parlty cause she had been watching the tv reports of massive landslides and blocked roads.
Although we had come down from the mountains, we were still stuck in Kashmir as long as the roads remained blocked. I was emotionally, phyically and mentally exhausted by now, especially when we saw hundreds of helicopters come, drop off their load and fly away empty. They were only following protocol, since they couldnt take any passengers back with them. Now that i think about what I did, I feel ashamed but at that time, even though I was aware of acting selfishly perhaps, I felt that calling my parents to arrange for someone to send us a helicopter, which were in any case taking the route that we were on, seemed justified at that time. Miguel, the faculty member and someone whose opinions were important to me, and I had a falling out at this point. He went on his way, on foot, through the landslides on a 6 hour long trek and the rest of us quietly got into the helicopter and made our way home.
Sitting in the helicopter, I saw the mind-boggling beauty beneath me and how fragile it was and how in a second it could all go away and leave you with an dark cold pile of debris and devastation.

I want to go back one day but im not sure when and if the women I talked to will remember me. Even if they do, Im not sure if they will welcome me in their kicthens and among their families since after coming back I dont know how much impact our surveys made in the government policy reform. I like to think that we did make a difference and there has been some sort of a difference in my life as a result of an experience that I know I can never forget and not beacuase of the devastation of the earthquake but by the strength of the people's spirits.