Balakot – The often inaccurately-described epicentre

I called PIA again and they said they could extend my deadline to 3pm tomorrow and in fact I could go to the PIA office in Muzaffarabad. Sa-weet. Job for tomorrow.

Zahid was only going to stay until Thursday morning and then he was going to cycle back to Islamabad where I would meet him, hopefully for a return journey back together (PIA had). He rested the first couple of days, just checking out the village and its river.

I had a meeting arranged in Balakot with some locals of villages near Balakot itself. They described water problems so I went to assess their needs. Zahid came along, as did my host and her brother-in-law, who drove us there. Balakot is actually equidistant to the epicenter of the earthquake as Muzaffarabad, but the damage in this city has been vastly different. Balakot is a smaller city with much less damage due to landslides. Instead, most of their buildings collapsed with the quake, including on the less steep hillsides. As we drove into Balakot, it was clear that many blue-roofed shelters had been provided to the affectees. Apparently, these were completely free donations by various countries/organisations and, when I saw one of them, I was surprised at how well constructed they were: double-glazed windows, electric power points, lockable doors, 15 year durability. Much better than some of the shelters I'd seen in Muzaffarabad. In addition, we drove past at least 2 hospitals, some schools, a children's play area, bridges spanning the river, new roads and rebuilt shops.

The men we visited from a central area within Balakot seemed very aware of the problems in their specific area that the meeting had much promise. Discussions with them started off with what seemed like a basic water supply problem, but as I recapped with them their needs, they seemed to add on a bit more. So what initially started off with a straight-forward main water pipe line between 2 pre-existing tanks became an extension of an existing mainline, then repair of another line (which Oxfam had already done - even though the locals had collected money for this work, they didn't want to spend it on repairs), to activation of the filtration tank, and finally more activation tanks. I then got told that many an assessment had been carried out on their area, but nothing came of them to the point where people can be abusive of NGO visits. This rang alarm bells – was the lack of funding a function of their needs not being a priority (after all, they have something of everything) together with ignorance of not knowing their relative position, or simply their inability to state clearly their needs? I came to the conclusion that, based on my assessments so far, they were no way a priority and even if they were, it would be difficult to know exactly what they wanted and wasn't entirely sure we would receive active support from the locals. Anyway, another area of Balakot honestly stated that they already had a bit everything, but would like improvements on the situation. Fair enough. I don't think Balakot is a priority area, really!

In the evening, Zahid had planned to begin this massive walk up to Pir Chanasi, some 3km high. The plan was to go up to Thore, that village I assessed, stay overnight to continue early in the morning. But it rained so hard that evening and became so foggy high up that the trip was cancelled. Never mind!

Hope the weather's peachy where you are x