It has been four days since I last wrote and I have some really good excuses. But this one is best. Some time on Sunday afternoon, somebody needed some wire so guess what, they reallocated the phone cable that supplied us with a phone and DSL. No, this was not in Muzaffarabad or in Balakot where I have been working with the internet cafe and relief work. This was in the city of Islamabad and in just under 3 days we got the connection back so now I can report to you what has been happening. Boy, we have more reliable service in the devistated quake areas 🙂
Saturday morning I flew out of Muzaffarabad by helicopter for my mid term break (which got pushed back by a couple of weeks) and then my return home.
It was good to be able to have a nice long hot shower, use decent ceramic bathroom fixtures, sleep in a bed off of the floor.
Sunday, I awoke to rain and quickly found out that there was rain in Muzaffarabad and probably snow in Balakot. This basically closed the air service into the mountains for the day. What is amazing is that this is only the second day since this disaster that air service had to be stopped! It is nice to be in Islamabad but I really feel for all of the workers and the Pakistani and Kashmiri people that are living in the mountains. One of the NGOs in Muzaffarabad woke up to 2 inches of water in their tent so spent the whole day building more platforms and trenches to keep dry!
The past few days I have been doing some shopping, having a debriefings, reading and just trying to relax. Tomorrow morning I will be up early (four hours from now) to take a nice warm shower, throw my PJs into a suitcase, tape them up, and get some coffee and banana bread and head to the airport.
This is not the last note on Pakistan. There will be at least two if not more on a few more thoughts but I better say goodnight for now (it is 11:55pm here).
‘night