Week 8 & Week 9 & Week 10

Week 6 & Week 7

Week six began in Islamabad with two neat black tape and clear plastic hand-bound A3 documents checked and rechecked and sitting on my desk ready to travel the short cross-sector journey to the offices of NESPAK. After an initial false start on Tuesday, by the following morning, as I sat in a battered 4x4 named Rocky twisting through dawn-orange, spaghetti-westernesque landscape en-route to Kashmir, the drawings were conveyed across town by a colleague and we successfully received approval three days later. That these latest designs were accepted without amendment was not unexpected - they are downsized versions of our first approved house type so there was good reason to believe we would have a positive response - nonetheless, it is a relief to have this package complete so that the focus can now be primarily on construction.

That Wednesday morning journey heralded my second visit to Kashmir, this time equipped with copies of the newly prepared drawings to distribute amongst the Muslim Aid site engineers based in Bagh. During my stay I was to learn that the Kashmiri’s have a song beginning, “My country, my country, just like paradise…” and leaving aside several decades of political turmoil and some quite severe poverty in places (not minor issues but humour me!), the undulating, forested landscape gives strength to this boast with every twist and turn of the road. I had intended, after a week or so, to travel onwards to the NWFP and Jared but the security situation in Swat resulted in an ERRA warning that foreign NGO workers should pull out of the area. This is certainly frustrating – I have not yet spent enough time with the team at Jared to ensure that work is progressing as it should – but we are implementing a long term development project not emergency relief work and can afford to wait until the situation improves.

First task upon arrival in a busy Bagh was to drive through the narrow, people-cluttered streets to the UN-HABITAT compound that occupies a pleasant, hillside location above the main town. UN-HABITAT have been working in the earthquake effected areas to provide training and resources to partner NGO's and to lobby government authorities to ensure that inspection of reconstruction and subsequent disbursement of funds to beneficiaries is undertaken with transparency and free from corruption. A sceptical observer might suggest, with regard to corruption, that they've set themselves a difficult task and i'd be inclined to agree! However, despite the complexities involved, the work of UN-HABITAT is resulting in steady improvement accross the board and as a reflection of this proactive spirit the local carpenters who are based at the compound had agreed to prepare some timber joint-samples as per our drawings...it was time to collect! Thankfully, these men didn’t let me down (of all people, you hope the UN won’t!) and the full-size samples constructed will prove invaluable as a means to communicate what is required to field staff and labourers by covering some areas that have been lost in translation through drawings and description alone.

The team at Bagh have begun a new cluster of 16 houses so we were up and down the mountain checking on sites and monitoring demarcation work which is completed quickly and simply using nylon thread, steel bars to mark the gridlines and lime powder to mark the trenches. Subsequent excavation is carried out by labourers, the majority of whom are Pataans, Pashto speakers from the NWFP or Afghanistan. Although the butt of many jokes that openly suggest they are “mental” and “dangerous”, these men are respected for their strength and toughness and they certainly prove these qualities during the long and arduous labour required to break through the hard, stone filled ground. On occasion the stones prove too big to remove with man power alone so we call in the blasters. This is a typically low-tech affair – they drill a hole, pour in the powder, fix a fuse, then we all scamper up the hill a hundred yards or so until it goes BOOM! Fair to say that health and safety is a loose concept among these men but they all had a full complement of fingers and thumbs so I guess their professional credentials are in order!

A recurring issue in the Bagh area is the problem of getting materials from the nearest road to the beneficiary’s plot. Sometimes this can be overcome by a nearby donkey or tractor-accessible track, but it might also mean trekking up to 2 miles along an extremely steep, uneven and rock strewn collection of interlocking trails traversing the hillside. From experience I know this to be exhausting work with only a pen and notepad weighing you down! For the widows and orphaned children who are some of the chosen beneficiaries, hauling a bag of cement or sand or a load of timber, in such conditions, is not physically possible. Under the terms of the agreement with Muslim Aid it is the beneficiary’s responsibility to provide this timber and, if necessary, arrange and pay for the carriage of materials. The reasoning here being the obligation to do so will help to engender a spirit of ownership and involvement with the build process which a straightforward gift of a paid-for house will not. That is the theory; unfortunately for precisely the reasons that result in their selection - namely severe poverty and vulnerability – several beneficiaries are, at present, unable to provide what is required. This is no fault of the beneficiaries or Muslim Aid who are working hard to resolve such issues and meet the needs of those selected by the local community to benefit from NGO assistance. For the time being the unavoidably imperfect solution is to focus on building now for those who have the available materials. Later, once these houses are complete, we will return to the cases where these problems have caused delay and assess what can be done.



The evening I returned to Islamabad emergency rule was in full swing but aside from an increase in razor wire and bored looking soldiers manning guns at road junctions, life in the capital has been unexpectedly quiet. That protest has been less than I might have anticipated since this drastic government action may be due to the arrest of those who would lead such a movement and the suppression of local independent media. Nonetheless, there is a strong sense that Islamabad’s currently serene face could turn angry with very little provocation. Politics is never less than interesting in Pakistan!

Although it would be a gross exaggeration to say that people here are living in fear; more and more it becomes apparent that anxiety and paranoia are felt by the general population as an undercurrent tugging at even the most mundane activities. Worry disrupts the rhythm of daily life and so, alongside the politicians and the generals and the mullahs and the fighters and the many perceived and real disruptive influences from abroad, subtly contributes to a sense of instability. In a modern, relatively prosperous city like Islamabad, if you walk into a bookshop and see your country branded by a prominent international magazine as the most dangerous country on earth it has an effect! Whilst in the bookshop you might wonder if today the market will fall victim to a bomber! Hopefully not, but perhaps its time to limit how often you come into town just in case!

Work gets held up too, as I discovered this week when a scheduled meeting was cancelled because the UN office where it was to be held evacuated all personnel due to security concerns. Travelling with a colleague on a seperate occasion, our taxi was cut up and hit by another car. The motorist-agressor (a picture of orange bearded fury!) was quick to remonstrate and threaten our driver with the police, heedless to the fact that it was his risky manoeuvre that caused the collision. Ultimately we didn’t stop and wait for the authorities - it was a minor contact, we were not at fault and local knowledge made it clear that the police would likely look for a contribution to the force benevolent fund! My colleague later confided to me that during this incident he became concerned thinking, if we stopped, there might be unexpected consequences for the foreigner in the back. At the time I had not considered this a possibility. Perhaps I should have; but then at what point does legitimate awareness of security end and that creeping, destabilising paranoia begin?

Week 5

The government here has this week launched a new offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban militant in the Swat valley (NWFP). Mingaora/Saidu Sharif, the administrative headquarters for this district, is around 80 miles or so to the NNW of Islamabad as the helicopter gunship flies. The spread of Taliban-esque groups throughout the North West Frontier Province is not encouraging. Rather than being contained by existing military actions near the Afghan border the violently enforced diktats of a few are helping to export their hardline take on life to more and more villages and towns in the province. If this spread continues - and most people I talk to seem resigned to this fact, at least in the short term - it may well make it difficult to travel through the area to view the worksites in Jared. There are lots of black-humoured jokes flying around concerning the Taliban onslaught but whereas back home this phenomenon is just a footnote on the nightly news here of course it is all too real and the general feeling is that the outcome of events such as those in Swat will directly influence the lives of many Pakistanis and even, some believe, engender a restructuring of the borders of this country. This process of 'evolution' as it was termed, may or may not come to pass, in the meantime however Islamabad is well within fiery rhetoric-spitting distance of the NWFP border and whilst its very easy to feel isolated in the city such close proximity is keenly felt.

Still, work continues and recently that has meant sitting down and putting digital pen to digital paper. Given the differing plot-sizes available to each beneficiary, it has become neccessary to develop two new, smaller house types within the structural framework governed by the requirements laid out by ERRA (Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation). As each house is an autonomous, pre-designed unit subsquently placed on a plot, these new options alongside the existing approved design provide some flexibility when it comes to choosing the right house type for each plot and the size of the family who are to live there. The completed drawings will now be submitted for approval to NESPAK, the technical advisory body that work on behalf of ERRA and the government of Pakistan. Financial matters, inevitably, have also become an issue - our existing house type has come in at a greater cost than that initially allowed for by Muslim Aid - so by providing houses that are smaller in height and area whilst at the same time co-ordinating the bulk-buying of materials such as sand, cement and CGI sheet we are hoping to see an overall reduction in expenditure.


Over the past few weeks I have had the chance to see some of the work that Muslim Aid undertake alongside construction projects of the type A4A are directly involved in. These occasions have included a Ramadan fast-breaking meal laid on for members of the local area, or at least some of their number - in true Pakistan style there were no women to be seen benefiting from this generosity! - and a post Eid present giving ceremony and trip to the park for orphaned children. There is currently very little in the way of social services provided for the people of Pakistan by the Government of Pakistan so in the meantime it is organisations such as Muslim Aid that are doing what they can to fill the gap.

Week 3 & Week 4

The last couple of weeks have been relatively quiet. We returned to the capital as Ramadan came to a close and the country slowed pace in anticipation of the coming Eid holiday. After a time enjoying crisp mountain mornings and enough isolation to subdue the mind a little, the city heat and ever-present political fervour took a little while to adjust to. However, the capital’s crowds soon evaporated with the sighting of the Eid moon and subsequent mass exodus of city-dwellers. Islamabad being relatively young and entirely planned (see Week 1!) there is a limited indigenous population here so the large majority of Islamabadites (?) ship off to villages and towns across the country to be with their families during the holiday. As a result I now have a fairly clear idea of what it must be like to spend Christmas and New Year all on your lonesome! You feel sorry for me right?...but its not all bad….no arguments round the dinner table, no need to buy loads of gifts and given the restricted access to alcohol, no morning after!! A further positive to my mind is that, with Ramadan tucked away for the next 11 months, we are all back to eating three square meals a day! Without the strength of the Faithful, I can tell you eating breakfast at 4:30am day after day starts to grind a little! Calls ring out from the mosques post these pre-dawn meals extoling the virtue of prayer rather than sleep but at that time of morning I know where my priorities lie!

Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the past weeks has been a protracted set-to with the boys at the Interior Ministry. I was obliged to make their acquaintance in order to obtain a visa extension - a service which they were initially unwilling to perform - so we began a lengthy process of negotiation and, with fluent Urdu a clear advantage here, the bulk of this advocacy fell squarely in the lap of a colleague of mine from Muslim Aid. The patience and resolve he demonstrated in undertaking this tricky task are commendable. You see, the men of the ministry are a special sort! I have already mentioned the rigorous uniform of the legal fraternity, white shirt, black suit, black tie…well my source tells me the only colour tie to be seen wearing in the hallowed halls of the Ministry is blood(tie) red; a family bond being the primary criteria for admittance to a privileged existence of extended nap breaks and complete indifference to the problems of the visitor-come-a-calling. These men possess a certain power and, as my Chief Negotiator later commented, “they always say ‘what’s wrong?’ they never say ‘what’s right?’! Still, we were eventually successful (my role consisting of staying quiet, smiling politely and projecting a look of sufficient gratitude at the appropriate moment!) and on the Friday, between the hours of 11:00 am and 11:40am as stipulated, I entered the Immmigration office to collect my passport. In this arcane environment every piece of information is meticulously logged by hand into huge, clothbound ledgers as ancient stamping machines are employed to mark the many passports strewn in disarray around the office. Struggling to remember where he left your documentation, the immigration man’s movements are trained to be slow and methodical, calculated to cause maximum frustration to the patiently waiting applicant. Everyone has to play this game, impatience only leads to an instruction to return tomorrow – or yesterday – it’s hard to say for sure as the Urdu word is the same for both of these! But after the obligatory too-long wait I departed a happy man, passport with newly stamped visa in hand.


Running various errands around the city I’ve had the pleasure of taking the taxis here which are yellow like the ones in New York and buzz up and down grand, arrow-straight avenues too but there the similarity ends. The many tiny Suzukis that populate the city’s roads are largely dilapidated vehicles. I’ve seen hapless passengers stood by the roadside as the driver changes a tyre and the first time I took a cab myself I had to get out and push to get it started - with hindsight surely worth a discount! The price structure too, in my experience, is a little haphazard. Inevitably when I enquire how much a journey will cost the driver fixes me with a twinkle in his eye and asks me how much I wish to pay! Foregoing the obvious response to this loaded question I begin the haggling process and each time, when the deal has been done, the twinkle remains and I’m left with the impression that once again I’ve been fleeced! If I’m being picky here I would also suggest that a man who drives a city cab for a living should know the city where he works, more especially so when it’s laid out with the kind of vicious logic present in the street plan of Islamabad. Nevertheless on one occasion I found my chosen Suzuki slowing up in the midst of the 7th Avenue (just like New York see!) while the wiry, confused cabbie leant over his seat to ask me if we were going in the right direction! My destination was far from obscure, still, this problematic case of role reversal was only resolved because I’d taken the trouble to look at a map before I left the hotel and had the simple route (straight ahead buddy…now take a left!) firmly laid out in my head. When dealing with an Islamabad cab driver, I’ve come to learn, preparation is key!

Week 2

Up before dawn to travel the seven hour road trip to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, I wasn’t quite prepared for the hair-raising rollercoaster ride this would turn out to be. Twisting through an impressive mountain landscape, the primary driving technique is to gun the accelerator when approaching a blind turn, at the blindest point pulling alongside whichever vehicle happens to get in your road and, horn-blaring-knuckles-white, roll the dice and overtake, praying to whatever you believe in that you don’t slam into an oncoming truck before freefalling a thousand feet or so to become another messy statistic. Like many situations here, after the initial “oh really, your actually going to do that?!” wide-eyed surprise, its best to adopt a fatalistic mindset – like getting on a plane; whatever happens next, its out of your hands – and with time this cavalier, no-seatbelt attitude to life starts to appeal, dangerous bit by dangerous bit.

The first stop on this journey is the town of Bagh lying to the north east of Islamabad, close to the 16km exclusion zone called the Line of Control that provides a buffer between Indian Kashmir and the part of this area administered by Pakistan. Long before arriving in the town it becomes clear that, along with the local driving skills, there is another peril awaiting the visitor to these forested valleys of the Lesser Himalaya. Landslides are commonplace and were responsible for much of the devastation after the earthquake struck. They killed thousands of people, burying homes and leaving no trace of the communities that once stood in their path. Construction of retaining walls, planting trees along suspect slopes and choosing appropriate sites for new houses are attempts to reduce the impact of the slides but there is little you can do when half a valley side ruptures as happened often with the quake.


One such rupture has had an unintended consequence that might yet prove beneficial to the surrounding villages and towns. In a valley in the Bagh district a slide blocked a water course which, over the preceding two years, has filled to create a lake of dulled blue water blur-reflecting the surrounding landscape. Pausing to take this in, we were told the Pakistani government is now intending to dam the valley to take advantage of this terrible natural phenomenon, generating electricity and providing infrastructure and investment in the area. With luck this will not come at too heavy a price for the people who live there.

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To drive the road from Balakot to Jared up the narrow Kaghan Valley in The North West Frontier Province is to journey through a landscape in perpetual collapse; a place beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. It wasn't always this bad, I’m told, but then the earthquake came and shattered steep valley slopes sending pink-brown shale and huge splinters of rock cascading onto villages and blocking the road for such a length of time that injured survivors were lost through lack of proper medical care or starved before relief supplies of food could arrive. Today the road, boulder strewn, narrow-twisting and treacherous at the best of times remains at the mercy of the frequent landslides, rock falls and the often heavy winter snows.



The villages in the valley spread from this artery to climb sporadically toward bare mountain ridges; houses nestled high amongst terraces cut into the rock for the cultivation of corn. A clear, fast flowing mountain river runs the length of the valley bottom, straddled at points by bridges of simple steel trusswork or smaller, cable suspended structures that bounce precariously when crossed. At this time of year the summer crowds that flock here are long departed and the place has the feel of shutting down for the long, cold and difficult months ahead. But the days are still warm and the nights not too cold and trekking from site to site to see the work already undertaken is very far from being an unpleasant experience.



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Traveling throughout Kashmir and the NWFP this last week, meeting staff from Muslim Aid and the local beneficiaries who are to receive houses, I am increasingly aware of the heavy toll paid when the earthquake struck. In towns and villages across the region entire school buildings collapsed, sometimes taking the lives of all pupils and teachers within as they began their morning lessons. Skilled tradesmen were lost too and, as a result, these communities have been left bereft of the means to educate their children or rebuild the infrastructure and houses that are so important to their ongoing survival. Twice I visited house sites to be introduced to the owner of the building and had to stoop to shake the hand of a boy in his early teens. Orphaned two years ago, now head of a family, these boys had become child-householders and been burdened with responsibilities far beyond their years.

In places like Jared It’s clear that life is hard and must have always been so. People seem to be getting on, day by day, as best they can. The influx of NGO’s since October 2005 has brought medical centres, new schools, water and sanitation projects and rebuilt peoples homes but this process must be ongoing and there is still much work to be done.

Week 1

One week in Islamabad and its clear being based in Pakistan as a project manager for Architects for Aid is an experience quite unlike any professional activity I have previously undertaken. My primary role here is to manage the implementation of a seismic resistant house building programme in the regions of Azzad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP – the acronym is king in Pakistan!), part of a larger reconstruction effort following the October 2005 earthquake that caused widespread damage and loss of life in the region. I am working alongside our partner NGO in the country, Muslim Aid (MA) in order to ensure that the houses constructed conform to guidelines set out by The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) and National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK). These guidelines outline simple construction techniques that once adopted and implemented successfully, will improve the ability of new housing to resist any future seismic activity.

I should add at this point the disclaimer that I am solely responsible for anything and everything that appears here, that this is a personal journal of my time in Pakistan and that the content which appears on these pages in no way represents the views of A4A as an organisation nor has it been edited by, or on behalf of, A4A at any time. It follows that any mistakes and/or inaccuracies are my own.

First a little background information about my current hometown. The city of Islamabad was built in the sixties after a masterplan drawn up by a firm of Greek Architects, Doxiadis Associates. Triangular in shape the city is based upon a grid system and divided into sectors. Now, to my mind, there was an excessive degree of rationality on display when it came to naming each of these sectors. As an example, I currently live in Sector F-10 (an important software industry sector apparently). On one side of Sector F-10 is Sector F-9; on the other side - and you’ll notice a pattern develop here - you find Sector F-11 and so on and so forth; half the alphabet entrapped within a grid of expansive, chaotic avenues that leave each sector feeling like a self contained island rather than part of a city whole. My hotel, The Hill Park – “With a wiew(sic) like heaven” - is located just off one of these avenues, tucked behind a petrol station, opposite a chair and a wall-propped mirror combo that provide the sole furnishings to a minimalist, open-air barber shop. The celebrated view is indeed not bad, giving onto a line of distant hills that border the city - just be sure to squint past the Shell signboard (see photo) and the man squatting to crap in the park across the road (for the reader’s benefit not shown in the photo)!


Intriguingly, the room service menu offers a dish identified as brain masala without feeling it necessary to specify where the brain comes from! Needless to say I’ve yet to pluck up the courage to attempt this particular delicacy…its early days yet and with an extensive menu to exhaust it’ll be a while before that little number raises it’s head, so to speak! Not only what, but when to eat is also an issue as we are some way into the holy month of Ramadan. For the large majority here (just over 96% of Pakistanis are Muslim) the month of Ramadan dictates the rhythm of daily life from before dawn, or Sahar, until sundown when the fast is broken with the Iftar meal. Out of perhaps a misplaced cultural sensitivity I initially found myself torn between eating as usual some days (only really possible in the privacy of my hotel room) or adopting my own, less exacting version of the fast - eating breakfast early and pushing through till the evening before breaking the fast with anything but brain! In my defence here I should say that’s it’s a long way from the MA office where I am working to a shop and with everyone else abstaining it didn’t seem polite to make a fuss. Fortunately my colleagues soon took pity and have kindly arranged, each day, a little takeaway to keep me going for the duration.

Islamabad itself has been on intermittent lockdown this last week with entry and exit from the city severely limited. These heavy handed measures are in response to a dicey political situation in which critics of General Pervez Musharraf challenged, in the Supreme Court, his authority to maintain dual office as president and army chief come the presidential elections on Oct 6th. The Judiciary eventually ruled in the General’s favour, much to the dismay and fury of the legal fraternity. These gentlemen are easily recognisable from their impeccable uniform of black suit, black shoes and black tie offset against a crisp, white shirt and they’ve taken to the streets in numbers to protest the decision, not entirely peacefully. It’s strange to watch these besuited, belligerent lawyer mobs wielding sticks and taking hits from riot police, fighting and bleeding and not once thinking to remove their ties! Unfortunately this political face-off has left me confined to the capital until further notice. Our only attempt at a site visit curtailed one hour out of town by a military roadblock that left us stranded behind dozens of gaudy, pimped-up haulage trucks. My colleagues from Muslim Aid quickly saw the futility of hanging around. We returned to the office for a day behind the laptop.

My evenings are usually quiet, I might read down in the hotel lobby or, for excitement, chase cockroaches around my hotel room (a classic case of winning the battle, losing the war!) I caught a commotion in the lobby the other night where a crowd of excited men had gathered by the television, jumping up and down and clapping sporadically. On occasion one or other of the group would punctuate these movements with a hopeful “INSHALLAH!” or the more universal, “YEAH!” as the Pakistan/India cricket match they were watching came to a dramatic climax. Now, I’ve only been here a short while and as a result my observations are more surface than depth but watching these men thrill to the match, whilst on a day to day basis inhabiting, (according to the always opinionated daily paper) “an increasingly beleaguered Pakistani civil society”, I found myself sharing their disappointment when India took the prize and ruefully imagining the party that must have come had it been a Pakistani success. No doubt a little post match celebration would have lifted the mood here and provided, for a while at least, a pleasant distraction from the turmoil of the upcoming presidential election and so many other serious issues facing this country.