Pakistani dispatch #1: Going to Kashmir

It's a last-minute arrangement but I leave for Lahore, Pakistan  on Wednesday.

There, I join a team of Pakistani doctors. We'll drive north to Islamabad and then head into Kashmir in trucks. The team leader is Dr. Shahid Latif, a pediatric surgeon from Lahore whose regular practice specialty is in correcting congenital malformations in children. Dr Latif has fielded an assortment of volunteer Pakistani physicians who will enter the ravaged areas and do whatever is necessary to aid earthquake survivors. First, we will spend a day in the village of Rawalakot where a boy's college was destroyed, and then we'll move on to the village of Bagh, the site of a collapsed girl's college where we'll set up a more permanent medical camp. The colleges are now mass tombs; symbols to the outside world of the horrible destruction within Kashmir. These towns were completely flattened. The casualties were enormous.

Bagh is halfway between Islamabad and the epicenter of the Richter 7.4 quake of October 8th. I'm not a physician but will act as Dr. Latif's assistant as he sets up medical teams in various villages, staying in each for about a week to get clinics established before moving on. I am the only westerner on Dr. Latif's team.

These medical relief efforts are under the auspices of the National Rural Support Program (NRSP),  a Pakistani non-profit organization which operates on grants and donations. Kind of a Pakistani Red Cross. I have been talking with Dr. Rashid Bajwa. The CEO of NSRP, and based in Islamabad, he has offered generous logistical support for my personal efforts as well as Dr. Latifs'.

For business and for pleasure, I've been to Pakistan three times over the past few years so I have contacts. My businesss relationships are over but the friendships remain. Dr. Latif is the friend of a friend of a friend.

You have seen the disaster photos so I am not going to include any here. Instead, here are northern Pakistani people when times were better, back in September 2003. I took these shots not too far from the future disaster area, near the village of Skardu which is on the Indus river and at the gateway to the enormous mountains of the Karakorum range.

I was on an excursion sponsored by my former business partners. Pakistani's all, they are highly educated, ambitious and committed to improving the lives of their people by helping to open Pakistan to western trade and services. We flew from Islamabad to Skardu on a fixed wing aircraft. The next day, in a Pakistani army helicopter, we flew south of Skardu to Fairy Meadows at the base of Nanga Parbat. The next day we flew northeast to Concordia, the "Throne Room of the Mountain Gods," on Baltoro Glacier at the base of  K2 at 16,000 feet elevation. Without question this is the most spectacular and beautiful place I have ever been.

In our return to Islamabad via helicopter, we flew hour after hour at two thousand feet above the raging, brown-hued Indus River, with impossibly vertical 15,000+ foot mountains rising far, far above us on each side.  It is enormous country and as we careened down the valley we looked down upon countless villages, few of which had any discernable roads for access. The geographical commonality shared by a majority of these enclaves was this:  sickeningly high and steep mountains on three sides and on the fourth side, cliffs falling straight down into the rampaging Indus. Some of these people live in these places their whole lives without ever seeing the outside world. Technically, this area is not Kashmir; it's just barely to the north but it accurately illustrates the incredible remoteness of the region.

It is important to note that the politics of terrorism and any Muslim/Christian differences are meaningless here. These mountain people are concerned with getting from one day to the next and couldn't care less about the rights and wrongs of the outside world. The same can be said for the doctors. To the mountain people, what mattered before the quake is the same thing that matters now, just after the quake: simple survival and the continuance of the family name.

On my visits, the majority of the back country people I encountered did not speak English and certainly I have no abilites in Urdu, the region's language. But I have some warm feelings for the remote area Pakistanis as their innocence, friendliness and their especially powerful gut-level vitality shined through. These are not the black and white images of the occasional newspaper article. These are real people.  Did they see me, a flesh and blood westerner, in the same way? I presume they did and therefore I feel honored.

Since the quake, I've taken the time to follow and investigate what's happened over there. It's bad.

Try to get a feel for what is happening right now in Kashmir: 3,000,000 people are homeless with many thousands of families living in hand-dug trenches with plastic sheeting pulled over the tops of the trenches. These people don't even have tents. Whole families huddled in frozen ditches. No power, no sanitation and it's damn cold: There's snow on the ground and it's dark most of the time as these days are among the shortest of the year. It is the most mountainous region of the world and the beginning of winter is now. 

Here's what happened on the ground when the earthquake occurred 9:00am Pakistani time, October 8th: The huts that house most of the population of the region collapsed. The three to four feet thick sod roofs instantly dropped straight down, engulfing and crushing the occupants. That's what killed most of the 90,000+ people who are gone. A huge proportion of the dead are children. Many didn't completely suffocate and are paralyzed. Food for winter that had been gathered over the warm months is buried and ruined beneath the collapsed homes.

This is reality for the survivors: The winter in the Karakoram is beyond harsh and there is a profound lack of food and shelter.  I'll say it again: right now, as you read this, there are 3,000,000 people left homeless.

In Bagh, virtually every building in the town was instantly destroyed, including the girls college.  The college is now a mass grave.  The medical team will work with survivors for seven to ten days, to exhaustion, and then go back to Islamabad to recover. After two or three days we'll return to repeat the cycle. The team includes physicians and other health professionals from the whole range of disciplines from Pediatrics to Orthopedics to Internal Medicine... surgeons, general practitioners, assistants. They are doing this on their own time, at their own expense.

The Tsunami relief efforts raised far more than what was actually needed. These Pakistani earthquake victims are receiving very little aid as the world demonstrates little interest. The Tsunami did it's work in minutes but the earthquake nightmare is continuing to happen NOW and the impending deaths can be stopped if enough help can be found NOW.  Children are dying of exposure and disease NOW, and  they will continue to die unless there is substantially more help. The deaths will be slow and agonizing. I think about that at night as I climb into my safe, warm bed. And as my departure for Kashmir approaches, I find myself also thinking about it through the day...

We, as a nation, are ignoring this tragedy. Go to Google and enter "Pakistani earthquake" to see articles like this, and much more. It's really happening and it should be said that the dying won't stop because we in the West choose to look the other way. 

My fiance Linda and I want to do whatever we can for the victims of the  earthquake.  Linda joins me in this effort but will help hold things together at Centratel while I am gone.  I return to our home here in Bend on December 13th.

Linda and I are personally donating a good sum of money on our own and we invite you to do what you can to help. While over there I will be rebuilding huts, digging up bodies, handing out rupees to parents and chocolate to kids, assisting the medical team. We'll distribute anything we can secure. 

One week ago I was quietly preparing to go to Pakistan to help. Then, as I told friends about my trip, they spontaneously handed me cash.  It came easy so it made sense to expend some extra effort to raise more money despite the short time before my departure. And why couldn't the fund raising continue after my departure? For the first time in my life I've become a fund raiser.

At this point I have no affiliations except the Pakistani doctors on the medical team headed by Dr. Latif, and the loose connection to NRSP.  But here's what you can do:  Send a $20 donation which is a typical month's income for an entire Pakistani family in the Kashmir back country. Maybe consider "adopting" more than one family if you have the resources. The donations that have been coming in have ranged from two dollars to two hundred dollars. It is hard to believe but just one dollar is BIG money to these back country people. I personally guarantee that 100% of your donation will go directly to the people who need it: the back country people of Kashmir. For my part, I've purchased my own round-trip ticket and am donating $5,000. Your donation will be added to that.

Make checks out to Pakistani Children's Relief Fund,  c/o Centratel , 141 NW Greenwood, Suite 200, Bend, Oregon 97701.   If you send the money after I leave, it will be wired to Islamabad and will be distributed personally by me. I will see that 100% of your donation is given in Pakistani Rupees to families who are desperate. Thank you for whatever you can do.

Recycling a tired and unabashedly PC term, I am attempting to  "raise awareness" of the situation in Kashmir. I am taking my laptop and camera and will send out information/photos as I periodically return to Islamabad and internet connectivity.

You can check on my friend John Krog's website at www.adventurejoe.com for updates.  I will also update this Blog (www.centratel.com/blog) whenver I can. My personal email is samc@centratel.com. EMAIL ME AND I WILL PUT YOU ON MY UPDATE LIST.  ALSO, PLEASE GIVE THIS BLOG ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE YOU KNOW AND EVEN THOSE YOU DON'T KNOW (again, the address is www.centratel.com/blog)

There is no electricity and certainly no internet connectivity in the Kashmir interior and my trips out are not confirmed. I am unsure how often I can stay in touch.

I will end this post by giving you an exerpt from an email I received from Dr. Latif in his own words, describing the situation in his first trip to Bagh after the quake: "I reached after 60 hours in Bagh, the place is devastated, all the buildings/houses either are crashed or damaged in such a way that it is impossible to stay in...the people stay in tents (not winter resistant tents) and in trenches. There are absolutely no facilities, no electricity, even my team had to manage on water and milk cartons for 3 days..."