More Pakistan photos!

OK, so its taken a little bit, but blog has now been updated! Its tuff when you're writing a PhD as well!! Am just scanning out of the funky album still... think of it as arty and less lazy!

And then there were none... Email sent January 31

Dear All,

Here is the last email in the Pakistani Princess Tour line of lazy emails! Sorry for those who got pasted onto the list at the end of the trip, rest assured there are fabulous witty accounts of pakistan and unicef that come before this! Susan and I made it home safe and sound, albeit with a bump, this week. We have raced into real life half asleep and in bejewelled Pakistani slippers, but hope to bumble our way through the rest of the year in style!

We left MZB in the midst of bad weather and while the world still knew the whereabouts of the Turkmentistani Red Cross Heli. Susan got the last heli flight to Islamabad with instructions to find clothes and taylors and go forth and conquer! Of which mission she succeeded in beautifully! I finished up some teacher training and in a hasty and not entirely elegant fashion jumped into a UN car full of security persons and got myself back to Islamabad. It was divine to have Susan, some clothes and a new rat waiting for me at the eccentric hotel of choice!

Luckily it was the last of our Pakistani hotels as Susan jetted off to Bangkok and I stayed on with Asiya's beautiful family! Lahore was great and I can recommend it as a destination if only to go and eat at Coco's Den. Actually just get the pommigranite juice and bring batteries for your camera! I also got to the closing of the boarder ceremony the day before I left and joined with the Pakistani's in screaming PAKISTAN!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! Not quite Aussie Aussie Aussie, but sure to be inspiring if you speak Urdu! Still, there is a magical moment when the Indian guard and the Pakistani guard shake hands and close the gates. It is a ceremony choreographed in 1947 after the seperation of the two states, and had me crying and not quite ready to go home!

Susan and I had made our mark on the United Nations, and not all could part with us! Andreas the semi divine doctor from WHO made the trek to Thailand with us. We tried to get rid of him in all the places one might expect to lose a German but he would not shake loose! In the end we just decided to fall in love with him and take him along to Koh Chang with us! We do lovely you very much despite my inability to be on time anywhere. Some would say this was a skill in itself!

We loved our trip and all the people we met in Pakistan. A more random trip it could not have been, but one that made certain for us future plans and the need to finish uni and get out of here! My next trip is less exciting, but with definate potential. New Zealand! I have a conference and some gorgeous Pakistani clothes to wear at it! It is lovely to be home, and while sleeping at Bangkok airport for several days trying to get on a standby flight did take some fo the glow off of the trip, several good sleeps and lovely ironed dupattas have bought back my sense of humour! We both look forward to catching up with everyone soon, a Pakistani Princess Party, or at least a boozy lunch is looking like a bright future!

Much Love
Dion (and Susan) aka Buggy and Dutchy!

One Down Two to Go! Email sent January 8th

Dear All,

It was a beautiful sunny day here in Muzaffarabad today. The mountains looked delightful and the air was clear and the Neelum river was blue again after the recent landslides and rain had turned it a muddy chocolate colour! Perfect day for flying, and so we lost our Steve! He went back to Islamabad today to make it back to the cricket test in time and then to India to meet his girl. Susan and I will miss his farting renditions of All things Bright and Beautiful, his tea making and cookie grabbing skills and his cuddles. Nothing like a hug from a lovely English lad in a freaky Rangers jacket to ward off the cold, beaurocratic frustrations and morning grumpiness! The transition back to all girl time will be hard, and I have already had to tell Susan she shouldn't fart in the office (although as far as Fart Cricket goes, she got a 6!)

Susan and I are well entrenched in our projects here in unicef Muzaffarabad. Tomorrow Susan will attempt to tell 80 people what the term 'psychosocial' means, and I will give a presentation to the Education cluster on tent schools. Not bad for two girls who are hanging for a gin and tonic and who can't get a job in Australia!

Life here is luxury in a tent! We have a great tent that is number 9 and it has stood up to three aftershocks, snow, heavy rain and burnt socks since we began calling it home. Our roomies love us and despite my exploding backpack we are all good. Yes, we had another aftershock on Friday morning and yet again neither of us realized what it was! We have begun a sweets ration for unicef staff (subjecting each staff member to a ration card and finger print identification before receiving their sweets) and a movie night (although the TV blew up due to unusual power supply here in Muzza so that won't be repeated!). We have also shown the women of the camp how to hold the heating ducts to your head and dry your hair in record time! So we will leave next week having left our mark!

Meanwhile.... 'In the field' we are getting along slowly but brilliantly! There is a whole new subsection of Kashmir who call each other darling, say the view is divine and who feel much happier in the hell of a relief camp in Himalayan winter by wearing beads! My schools were shut for a few days due to the rain and snow, in fact they collapsed! and in one school a family and their motorbike moved into a classroom! But all vehicles have been removed and children made it back to school for a whole two days before going on holidays for Eid!

Eid is going to be a rather tuff festival to be here for. It involves befriending a goat, cow or camel, giving it love and then slaughtering it and eating it. One very generous Islamic NGO has supplied animals to some of the camps so that they can celebrate Eid. From a vegetarian western perspective this is a somewhat odd decision. Mostly because tents are very close together, the area doesn't have great drainage other than that it is build on the side of a mountain and the whole set up isn't really conducive to a mass slaughter of beasts.

Eid starts Tuesday evening so we have a few days left of work, the will be working on a somewhat depleted staff quota until Friday when everyone comes back, I hand over my project to my Pakistani counterpart and get myself a heli out!

Love to all (and especially Our Boy who is safe and warm in the 'Bad tonight!)

Dion

xxxx

Happy Muzaffarabad New Year! Email sent December 31

Happy New Year!

I have just come back from my first ever solo field trip! Nearly a week into our stay here in Muzaffarabad and we have all found ourselves projects to run and have joined the rest of the UNICEF staff in working form 8:30am to any time after 10:30pm! There really isn't that much to do at night as all UN Staff (which now includes us!) must be in the compound by 6pm and aren't to leave. So everyone works.

Life is very much like watching back to back re runs of M*A*S*H! We live and work in tents and get around in UN Land cruisers instead of jeeps, but we WFP cookies that are apparently high in protein and which refuse to digest - ever! Consequently the four toilets on site are sufficient for the hundred or so people living here!

My Trip to the field today took me to Mera Tonalian Camp, which has about 900 families staying in it. It is one of four or so planned camps meaning that there is some sort of order in the way the camp is structured. I have taken on the task of training teachers to work in the tent schools in the camps. Most of the teachers were students before the earthquake and have no idea how to control a tent full to bursting of 50 five and six year olds in it! Not sure I do either...

We are having a special party for new years tonight with a surprise menu! Who know what that means! Very exciting!

Hope that you are all well and having a great time, with the time gap it probably means that you are out at the moment! Hope not too many hangovers when you read this!

Just incase you want to know more about what is happening here in Pakistani Administered Kashmir, have a look at www.unicef.org/pakistan/index.html

Love to you all!

Dion

Email to Mum and Dad, December 31st

Dear Mum and Dad

Am loving it up here in the mountains. They are just beautiful and there are helicopters flying around all day and UN and Red Crescent and Oxfam and all sorts of NGO and INGO cars going everywhere! It’s very exciting! Tomorrow I go out into the field on my own for the first time. I just filled in my vehicle request form! My own UNICEF logo-ed land cruiser! I am going to some camp schools to talk to teachers and parents and see what they think their needs are. Its a bit of a joke really as we can't meet al of them and it makes it seem like we can. Still, we have a great thing called School in a Box. It’s got all the resources and stationary supplies for 80 children for 3 months in a big tin box that the teacher can unpack and use as a blackboard.

It says in the newspaper that there will be snow and possibly heavy rain this week, so that is a bit scary! The tents are fairly precarious still and some aren't waterproof or winterized. Our ten is luxury! There are seven of us on stretchers down the tent with a massive tube that pumps in hot air! Its soooo warm! We are also close to the loos so it’s not such a horrible thing to go and find the loo at night when it’s freezing, and the showers aren't so bad. A garden hose with a faucet on the end that has luke warm water. But then they fill that room with hot air too, so it’s a bit like a sauna so the water feels warmer! We have two kitchens; one does Scandinavian inspired western food (lots of fish in jars!) and the other Pakistani food. The office is in another big tent with desks everywhere and people lugged into cables that trail around the skirting. Its just like M*A*S*H

Lots of Love

Dion

Christmas Party!! Fill In!

I don't seem to have an email about our random Christmas fortunes either!

On a walk up to the mountains surrounding Islamabad, we were in the middle of a brawl between bus drivers who wanted to take the foreigners. While things were getting heated, and people were being turfed off the bus to make room for the foreigners, a lovely man in a shiny white sedan pulled up and asked if we wanted a lift!!! Yes!!! So we met Glen. He worked for BHP and took us to his office, gave us tea and coffee and invited us to spend Christmas with his family! His son was back from Turkey for a visit and his daughter was singing in eh church choir and was a lesbian to boot!! Hilariously this wasn't an issue in their family, she was gay and while her mother thought this was still some sort of 15 year fad, they were all very certain that their dog was a lesbian and so no male dogs were allowed near it!! Irene was fabulous and we had a great time with them. So that was a fab Christmas party and church outing. Irene then drove us to our other party with Dazza and Sam and promised to come and get us and take us back to her party again when we were ready.

So cakes in hand, we went to Dazza's. We were welcomed in, given drinks and sat down with various fabulous people back from working in Kashmir and listening to tales, as we were about to go up ourselves. Steve then overheard a conversation in the kitchen, Who are these people??? with Dazza saying - I don't know!!!! Hilarious! Sam had only met Dazza at a press conference the week before, and Sam wasn't at the party either, so Daz had three random people turn up at his door with cakes for Christmas!

Fill in!

There are a few emails missing from here, so let me just fill you in on the antics of Susan Steve and I during the Christmas period in Islamabad!

First of all, our hotel!!!!!

Ahh, the Simara Hotel in Sitana Market!! What a gem. Even now, over a year later, I laugh out loud when I picture our darling Steve, the most placid and patient man, frothing at the mouth in a rage about this hotel! Ed, Steve and I arrived, I was given bag minding duties while Ed went and looked at the room. His decision was, its OK. So we lugged our packs up the steps with the threadbare carpet and into our room with thick velveteen blue curtains! The beds were filthy but we had sleeping bags and so long as you didn’t get too close to the walls you would be fine. However once we tried the hot water tap, and yes there was hot water, we couldn't get it to turn off! The room filled with steam, but it was OK as we couldn't get the door to shut. I blew the power when I plugged in the phone charger and Steve was loosing patients. I was hysterical!! In a rage, Steve flung his Pakistani shawl around himself to march down stairs to get the manager, only his shawl swept across the wall and took a hunk of plaster with it! More laughing from Ed and I. Steve came back with the manager, and I asked for some water glasses, but you have some he said. I had to show him that they were full of mouse poo! So we got moved to a better and bigger room

This room was the tops! It had four ceiling fans that just about touched each other, two queen size beds and a single bed, and again thick dusty velveteen curtains. The bathroom was much bigger and while it was possible to turn the taps off, you got an electric shock when you did so! We also had a balcony, which was a concrete block suspended three floors off the ground with no railing and a nice view of the dumpster and kids playing cricket! First we had to call the manager to come and kill a rat that was darting around the room, then explain with sound effects and actions and stilted English the electrocution issue in the bathroom and then we had to call again to get rid of an unknown but largish animal from inside the velveteen curtains!

Another earthquake on Christmas Day had Susan thinking she had caused the tremor when she put her foot on the air conditioner on the 'balcony' to tie her laces! the whole building shook!

We all zipped ourselves into our sleeping bags and shared the beds as no one was game to sleep by the curtain with its mysterious menagerie living in it! And for the m most part, Susan and I were getting around in mime inspired outfits of black long johns and massive knitted Afghani bed socks.

Our Christmas outfits were also a disaster. Susan looked gorgeous although she couldn't breath it was so tight and her arms were paralyzed. Yet mine, well, cat vomit is the best description! Even now looking at the photos I look like a giant Aretha Franklin who has been vomited on by a cat who had just ingested marshmallow. Just horrible!!

Merry Christmas from The 'Bad! Sent, 23rd December

Dear All,

Tears were shed today. It is the beginning of the end of the trip, the cricket has finished, the English team has left, and today Edward, traveling companion of our trio left. There is a definite feeling of winter in the air and the frivolity of a city hosting the cricket and winning has gone now the players are out of town. It’s very misty here at night and none to warm either! Good news is that Susan is back so The Girls Are Back in Town!

Today we spent five hours in a silk shop getting fabrics and tailors to sort out our Christmas outfits. I rang the Australian High Commission to see if there were any Christmas activities planned, and this afternoon got a call from Sam - the secretary to the Commissioner. There isn't anything planned as most people have left town, but his mate Darren who works for the commission too has bought a turkey, so did we want to go around to his place? So we are having Christmas dinner at the Australian High Commission with Sam and Dazza, and then onto the British Club for drinks! I have a lovely pink silk embroidered number, still in the Pakistani style, but a little more tailoring to the pants, and Susan is going for silk stripes! We have even found a supermarket that sells Quality Street Chocolates, so that will be our contribution to Sam and Daz.

Have been spending a bit of time in the relief camps in Islamabad. Its been brilliant, everyone is just so cheery, but a definite current underneath as many people didn't want to enter building as they are still in shock, families are split up a lot, and many injuries still. However, schools are being set up and made a bit more permanent with the arrival of new tents on Tuesday. Books and pencils and toothbrushes and undies receive the biggest welcome. I went to the camp with Steve and Edward who were immediately taken off to play cricket, while I got to sit inside tents and drink tea and meet children and chat with the girls about my beads and shawls and the apparent 90% divorce rate in the west. It must have gotten a lot worse in the past month!

Are off up the mountains on Monday. All a bit nervous about the cold, but very anxious to get up there and start doing stuff. Apparently there has been a class waiting for me for a week! Ooops! Susan and Steve are looking to do some work Winter-izing tents for United Pakistan who are doing a lot of work and who we have had great reports about.

Hope you are all enjoying your break, the weather and Christmas!

Love love love

Dion

Email to Mum and Dad, December 19th

Dear Mum and Dad,

(note here for them to take my library books back!!)

Today I went tout to one of the smaller camps here in Islamabad. I t is on a local sports ground and has about 1000 people staying there. There were lots of children and everyone was so hospitable. They are living in tents with no floors, no heating and not enough blankets. Scabies has broken out, and while they have enough medicine they don't have hot water or enough showers so can't treat them yet. I was invited into a family's tent to have tea with them, and the grandson had scabies and was scratching like mad and his mother has them too. The two English guys (Ed and Steve) I met played cricket outside with the boys and the men, and I held hundreds of babies and smiled and drank tea. They also served me some WFP biscuit things and a boiled egg! My stomach isn't doing so well! Apart from having no homes and no jobs, most of these people didn't have savings either. It is strange some for the things they have with them that they could bring. They also have a lot of stress and trauma issues, with them not willing to go into buildings or be parted from their children. Some of the women, who are about my age, have started a school and take the children to play games in the evenings to give the parents a break. There were also quite a few newborn babies too. Its strange, none of them know when they will go back or really what to do now. Many of the sons have gone back to see if they can help in Kashmir and go back and forth.

Tomorrow I am going to UNICEF to fill out insurance stuff, and then should be in Musaffarabad after that. The camps here are enormous but the ones up there are supposed to be even bigger. The whole city has signs and directions to camps and so many different aid agencies. Its like a carnival has come to town!

Talk soon,

Love,

Dion

Cricket in Lahore

Email sent December 15, 2005

Dear All,

Susan and I split up today; we are dividing and conquering the mountain ranges here! She is off to a festival in the Kalasha valley and I am off to Kashmir to UNICEF and gun toting rebels!

We arrived in Lahore after our thirty hours of hell, well, it would be if hell was fine dust and spit. Everyone had told us we would love Lahore, that it was just like Europe. And it was. It was like Serbia. We made it to a McDonalds where we braved the security and got a burger with no meat. Basically a maccas bun with tomato, pickle and special sauce and loads of lettuce. It was the best thing I have ever eaten!

We stayed in a brilliant little hotel that had a rooftop where we sat around a campfire and listened to Sufi drumming that was amazing. They drum so intensely that they go into a trance and start to spin. Fantastic and slightly frightening!

We also met up with foreigners for the first time! There were lots of English lads there for the cricket so we hooked up with some free tickets from the team and got to watch England loose to Pakistan. they guys we went with dressed in Shalwaar Kameez like women and caused a great stir! Only to be outdone by Susan and Myself who went as ourselves. More fun was had by the crowd watching us than the game!!

Am now up in Peshawar. We went up the Khyber Pass yesterday up to the Afghan boarder, which was brilliant. Today I am wandering the market looking for a teapot and tomorrow I go with some English guys out to look for Darra, a town where they can copy any weapon in less than ten days. You can even fire a few rounds before word gets out that a foreigner is in town and you get put on the next bus back to Peshawar!

Am a bit lazy with this email, sorry, but email is rather slow and I have heard that there is a subway restaurant in town and I need to go on the prowl for food that isn't lentils!

Love

Dion

Lazy Email from Quetta

(Email sent December 9, 2005)

Dear All,

The lazy emails are coming thick and fast, and our time in Pakistan is just racing by. Today quite literally as we ran through the desert with scarves flying to hail and old ford milk truck. A day trip to the stunning Hanna Lake, a blue green lake surrounded by craggy mountains, took a turn for the surreal as we got a mini bus who drove us through the most enormous military training ground, then dropped us in the desert beside a sign that pointed to Hanna Lake. No evidence of water or people about!! After a good hike up a track we found the most hilarious puddle of murky water, with a fake island in the middle and two peddel-os! Oh well. We ran back to that road and then got a lift with our Milko!

Quetta has been fantastic. It is a small city, with a very laid back feel in the west of Pakistan near the Afghan boarder, so the influence of the Afghanis is quite strong. Susan and I have both fallen in love with the divine shoe maker from Kabul who sells shoes opposite our hotel with his little brother. His easily the most devastatingly handsome man we have seen in Pakistan! I even bought some of his shoes, so Jamie and Robert have a pressie when I come home! I hope they like pom poms!

The frontier feel is definitely there, with loads of traders and carpets and woolen wraps and silks everywhere. Just gorgeous. Lots of hairy men, bit turbans, bushy beards, and all walking around in wraps! The weather has gotten chilly, and we are struggling to wear sandals, our feet are blue even through the dust! Tomorrow we have a train out to Lahore, its a massive 30 hour train trip, going on the dodgiest train and an economy sleeper, with six other women, so as you all wriggle down in your lovely beds tonight, think of Susan and I !!! We have invested in Valium that got us through the 18 hour bus rid to Quetta. We needed something as the windows had been shot up, some had smashed completely, others had cracked and tape was around the bullet holes. Try being the only two women on that bus and sleeping! The train may be step up!

Last night we had a private dinner with the Premier of Bolochistan, the province we are in. Turns out his nephew owns our hotel, so we were whipped out under cover of darkness to visit the uncle who produced cold beer for us, despite this being a dry country! He then got paranoid that we were foreign journalists and that we were going to expose him for a bottle of beer!! Nothing like playing it cool! We were then made to sit through a massive meal of curry and rice at midnight. Random! Tammy has suggested I sell the photos when I get home to supplement my PhD earnings!

Would love to arrive in Lahore with a full inbox!

Love to All,

Dion

PS It looks like we will start working with UNICEF in Muzaffrabad next week!

Lazy Email from Karachi!

(Email sent on Novembre 29, 2005)

Dear All,

(It is very nice to write that again after such a long time!! The thesis has been a bit slow this year and what better to get the creativity flowing and the motivation to finish, than a trip!)

After a few beautiful days in transit on Kho Chang Island (where I set a new record for just how fast a white belly can turn into a pink lobster like belly) we landed in Karachi! It has been wonderful. Today we begin our meandering journey up towards the mountains, with an overnight train ride to Multan. For the past few days though we have been residents at the Al-Haram hotel in Dadam, a fine establishment where we have been adopted as the local doctors no less! It has become quite a thing for us to get knocks on our door, only to open it and find a Pakistani man who will look us up and down while asking if we are doctors and could we look at his (seemingly) healthy hand. Hmmm. We also have a rather creepy waiter, who along with a porter and someone called a room boy, are busy fulfilling their duty to look after our floor of the hotel. This apparently means knocking on our door and asking for 30 rupees. The rooms though is nice, it has a very enthusiastic fan that takes off when there is a power surge, and some temperamental electricity - mucho sparking and crackling, less so charging of iPods. Our bathroom is divine, as first for me, it comes with its own uniquely squat toilet smell...so think it tastes!!!

At Al-Haram is located conveniently close to the Empress Market, so we covered up, hair and neck covered in our beautiful silk scarves, all very exciting, and headed down there. A beautiful colonial building named after Queen Victoria, Empress of All India, it is now buried in behind a mass of squirming hession and poo. We very quickly realized the potential for the burka and left. We also live very near a market that sells wedding dresses, shoes, jewelry etc. It is a magical wonderland of dress ups and we have now tried on jewels, seen the most amazing bejeweled and beaded silks and tried on shoes of all makes and descriptions. The lovely shoe man was very impressed to have two Australian’s as customers, apparently it has been his dream, so nice that he has fulfilled that at 70! We had a big chat about cricket, where I assured him that Joe Bloggs' form had been suffering and that Australia as a nation was worried, although speculation was that he was saving his strength for the game against Pakistan. Relieved he gave us more shoes to try and we left saying that we had parents to email. I may possibly have said that I needed to ask my Dad for money to buy shoes. The shoe man became very worried and offered us money, gave us his home number and said to phone him after 11pm, all the time shaking my hand with 100 rupees in his! No phone calls were made, and we were tucked in our beds under hurricane wind for the night by 10:30!

Sunday was spent riding jeweled camels along Clifton Beach. What was once the social spot of the British Raj is now an enormous building site, with plastic chairs in the black oil slicked sand with which water laps at them. The Pakistani government has warned against swimming due to pollution, but that was prior to the oil spill. Our camel was very well behaved, although there was something in his manner that said he was less impressed with the tinsel adorning him than I was! A wander up the beach took us to some upturned pallets on which you stand while washing off the petro chemicals. All in all, A romantic and inspiring outing! Happy Birthday Me!

Yesterday was Railway Ticket Day. A choice day, we sat in the offices of Pakistani Railways Sub Superintendent and waited for our concession passes to be OKed. We sat behind a massive leather covered desk and breathe in, hoping that the papers that has accumulated in various poles, wardrobes, shelves and drifts didn't all come crashing down on us. Everything was written by hand, and the office shared a typewriter! They wrote everything on the back of the papers left by the British Raj in 1947!

We are now off to Multan and bidding Karachi goodbye. We stopped at Dohbi Ghat this morning and watched the laundry being done on great rocks, the river has been dried in order to put a highway through, but a man in a loin cloth slamming sheets on a rock is a man in a loin cloth slamming sheets on a rock whether by a river or a highway I guess!

Karachi has been great, we have gotten very used to wearing the scarves and long clothes and have made many friends, a schoolgirl (driven to school in a horse and carriage) a long time administrator of Pakistani Railways who loathes the Taliban, the staff at Karachi Central Station, A taxi driver, some very find men who know how to wash a shirt on a slab of rock, and the blind community of Karachi (the visually impaired and foreign aliens go to the same office for railway concessions!)

Lots of Love from a newly 27 year old!

Dion

Karachi in all its befuddled glory!

We arrived in Karachi on a weekend and no one was there! We had a great time navagating around the markets and then Monday... everyone was back!! Lots of jumbled images of new and old and camels carrying televisions and carriages carrying school children!

OK, so its taken a little bit, but blog has now been updated! Its tuff when you're writing a PhD as well!! Am just scanning out of the funky album still... think of it as arty and less lazy!

Who gave the woman a gun?!?

Photos from Kashmir, the doctors divine having tea!

That would be your girl!

Falling in love with an afghani shoe refugee, not the least of the random things that occurred on this trip!

Moi and Sir Gaseous himself!

Kashmir

gorgeous scenery and people of kashmir

Saying goodbye to our lovely Steve!

blanket distribution

more muzza

Lovely Ladies have tea at Muzaffarabad's finest!

Muzaffarabad

Very exciting flying the UN 'heli'

Tea break!?

Welcome to the UN compound Muzaffarbad!

Here is a site where you can see what is was that I got up to in Pakistan! I've started putting up my album and will find the best bits of Lazy Emails!