A mass eviction & the race against time in Pakistan

This was my day off and I was wondering what I’d write about until the late afternoon when the landlord showed up at our team house in Mansehra, North West Frontier Province. He announced we needed to be gone by this evening. We were evicted.

...tens of thousands of people have been evicted from their homes by a killer earthquake We could only laugh at the strangeness of it all. Another quirk of cross-cultural miscommunications? Was he offended we had to find larger accommodations for our expanding team and were to move in a few days?

There wasn’t time to find out. He gave the ultimatum to local staff, not the foreigners. They know the power he wields here and they were shaken. Out of deference to problems he could make for them, we packed up and moved.

While our hastily assembled movers filed out with beds and desks, I sat in a plastic chair in the middle of the street doing business with World Vision Canada colleagues on a hand-held satellite phone.

I put my hands out in a “wait here” motion and walk away. You never have enough tents A cute story except that tens of thousands of people have been evicted from their homes by a killer earthquake. They have no shelter and the temperatures dip further every night. I know you have read and heard this for days now but it has to be said again and again.

Can you imagine what is it like for them? I slept in a tent for the last five nights in the mountains but I can’t tell you. Most of those people are sleeping in the open. We had three-season sleeping bags, air mattresses and extra blankets when the dampness got worse after the second night.

Yet those people could tell you without words if you were here at a tent distribution. Their eyes are wild and fearful as they come to the back of the truck and shove their identification cards at you. You always know the people who ignore the queue and come pleading at the back are from other communities.

The North West Frontier Province is a far flung topographical nightmare We distribute village by village. Every community is desperate but we must track our progress and avoid duplication. You quickly get so you can’t meet the eyes of the pleaders. I put my hands out in a “wait here” motion and walk away. You never have enough tents.

I heard the United Nations is calling for an operation on the scale of the post-war Berlin airlift. Bravo except Berlin was child’s play in comparison to the mountains of northern Pakistan. Berlin was a city. The North West Frontier Province is a far flung topographical nightmare.

The first to die will be the children and the elderly This isn’t said to discourage. It’s just better the people of the world go into this knowing the challenges. But they have to go into it.

If they don’t respond, I worry we won’t even be able to shock them with photographs of dying children as was done in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda and so on. Because the snow starts falling in maybe 20 more days and these regions will become next to inaccessible.

Those without shelter will succumb to exposure and pneumonia. The first to die will be the children and the elderly.

-Ends-