Noraseri – An Exhausting Day

Mahmood Gillani, who possesses a strange habit to only spoke Urdu when there was the sun and spoke other strange tribal languages to me in other time, just came back a night before from Islamabad. The road was open. The work of clearing the road from the blocks was done very rapidly, thanks to the heavy machine donated by ‘the people of Japan’. Electricity was supposed to come yesterday, as the weather was clear. But it came very late, so that the plan to watch porn movie with young boys from neighborhood was cancelled. And I also met a young guy who was very desperate in kissing and hugging me. I gave my palm for him to kiss, but not my face (yet). The porn watching plan was replaced by sexy gabshab (sexy talk), where the goftgu (conversation) was dominated by sex topics. The boys here not only put sexual jokes verbally, but also physically, like hugging and kissing. It was really hard to determine their sexual orientation somehow, lol.

Our work is to distribute the so-called CGI sheets to the survivors

As yesterday there were not many shelter homes that we visited, today we were supposed to do all of the work, visiting 130 shelter homes and make pictures of every single family and their homes. Very hard work indeed, as the mountain path was not always easy. Luckily Rashid also joined us, so the documentation work was done by both of us. I had problem in climbing, not quite used to, and with no good shoes. The project required us to take pictures of the whole shelter homes, so that donators would see how big the homes the NGO built. But Mr. Manzoor didn’t tell me earlier, so many of my photos were close up pictures of him doing the survey work, instead of taking pictures of the homes. So today we also visited the houses we visited a day before, to make re-documentation.

Dinner in the volunteers’ camp

There were 85 homes we visited in upper mountains, and 50 more in lower parts. The lower parts were easier, and it was in the afternoon, so that we could avoid the fierce sun ray. But the upper part was not that easy. Rashid camera (do nambar kamera) had problem with battery and memory, so at the end it was only me doing the documentation work. I was not used to make pictures of posed positions like this, as I did more journalistic and human interest works now, so I was not quite satisfied with my result. But Mr. Ijaz said no problem. Hopefully it was really a ‘no problem’.

Exhausted when I came back, I went directly to my tent to sleep after the excellent dinner. The cook, who was still looking for contacts to take him again out of Pakistan, made chaval (rice) specially for me, but then all the other guys also preferred to eat chaval to roti (bread). Chaval is always the best, na?