On bringing sunlight to the darkness

I need to write more.

Every passing week I see a growing pile of months that represent the chunk of my life I've lived in Pakistan I wince at the stream of writings that could have been; horrified by my lack of recounting of stories of the peoples and places, ideas and opportunities, chance meetings, inspiring moments of passion in dance or music, children, community.

They say something about the longest journey, first steps, no time like the present and all that.  So yes, now is the time, and I'll try to write in the moments between multiple events and busyness..

Where to begin?  at this stage i usually get distracted by searching out pictures of recent ventures into the real Pakistan (Islamabad is lovely, but worlds apart from the bustling, noisy, dramatic and heady rest of the land). Not that there is one land, it's like several countries, meshed into one, officially for only 60 years, but really for thousands of years before that in an incredible history that makes our simple dwellings in Scotland a thousand years ago seem like the stone ages compared to what's been transpiring around here.

But today we're here, in the present. I'm still part of a team of advisors and managers of British taxpayers aid money to help flood-affected people rebuild their lives. My first time with DFID the department for international development (and rather an honour at that to be honest). A donor, one of the biggest donors out here, and it's been a pleasure to see how seriously the whole "institution" takes the quality and targetting of our limited aid budget.  How efficiently they handle the information flow to Parliament and the beaurocracy which has allowed us to focus completely on the best, most cost effective and lasting types of emergency aid and, later on, investment into 'early recovery' projects.  Having spent years on the other side of the table, as an operational organisation, asking donors like DFID for money, how we portion it out. How there's no influence or interference from commercial interests - like British companies being favoured for contracts from UK aid cash.  Apparently Clare Short dealt with that sillyness years ago, and it's stuck ever since. British NGOs aren't favoured over any others either.  Furthermore, I don't feel that we're under any pressure to make funding decisions based on UK foreign policy; it really is based on degree of humanitarian need, levels of coverage by other organisations and donors (filling the gaps), finding the most cost-effective solutions, those that also empower recipient communities, maybe even improve the dire nutritional situation, promote women's rights and represenatation, possibly reduce their vulnerability to abuse and attack, things that build community resilience to future disasters, and so on.

There's just so many issues out there, which is partially why I've never decided on what to start writing about. One at a time right? Small steps.

Let's start with a conversation I had with Farrah a couple of days ago.. Farrah runs a local NGO (called CCHD) that's been involved in womens' rights, advocacy and now with UNHCR setting up legal advice centers around the country, in an attempt to offer some level of representation to people who don't have access - to justice, aid, legal aid, advice.  It's such a heavy task. Protection, and the entire legal safety net that we so take for granted in the "West" is shocking by its absence. Only then do I get a glimpse of what it all means.  Where do you start with a case of sexual abuse, if the legal system doesn't have the will or means to deal with it? How can you protect the victim who has told her story?  Especially in an Islamic culture - which has got to be one of the most gentle and justice-oriented religions out there, but there's so many other layers in society, tribal, family honour.

Anyway, Farrah and I talked about solar lights which she's keen to find out more about. I started looking into this last November when tens of thousands of people were still displaced by flood-waters living in spontaneous camps in any available sites, sometimes in more formal camps where the army or the humanitarians could provide decent tents, water supply maybe, some sanitation facilities, deliveries of food.  We'd visit these camps - always during the day. Our security regs are such that we don't get to see these places at night.  Having lived through war and displacement in Monrovia - Liberia - in 2003 I know fine what it's like: very dark. And scary, especially if you're a young girl, surrounded by strangers from other parts of town, or tribes.  With no money and stuff people just don't have the means for light. So you get whole transitional townships which somehow function day and night. And imagine trying to find a quiet moment for a little wash, or when you're bursting for the loo in those long hours of night, and those scary strangers have wickedness on their mind, and, hidden in the cloak of darkness they descend on those most precious and vulnerable among us, causing immeasrable harm and trauma. It's such a nightmare and it's happened in every camp setting I've ever been in from Bosnia to Aceh - and now in Pakistan.  And like most places, authorities would rather deny it's a problem, that it's happening at all, that the good people of these parts would never do such a thing.  But they do, we do. Men that is. There's monsters within us that we battle with and sometimes, stressed and when our social order is thrown upside down by disaster and displacement the monster takes over.

Knowing this, we have to create means for social protection that are specially designed for life in camps and humanitarian chaos. And one of these should surely be light. Imagine the bustle of five thousdand people in a scrap of land beside a wood and a lake, at night where you can hardly see what you're stepping on. Then see another vision of the same place: a village bright with tiny lights, paths illuminated, toilets in carefully chosen areas lit up and watchable, surrounded by rows of eyes disguised as shelters. Even if nobody's watching, the warewolf knows that someone could be... How much much difference would this make? Surely...

So back in November, charged with coming up with a plan for my country's portion of aid money for shelter, I worked with some of the great folk at Concern to expand the provision of emergency shelter kits (2 high quality tarps, 6 long bamboo poles, some warm blankets for the winter season, etc.). I think we were looking at around 35,000 families or so.  At this point I started looking into solar lights and presumed there was some local production facility. There could be, but it's a bit of shambles, and all the panels and lights they produce come from China and they just re-assemble them here.  At around $30 a pop.

Folks in one of hundreds of villages where we worked with
Concern and Rootworks, their local partner, who
are rebuilding houses here, so they can move
out of these tents, a year on after the floods in Aug 2010.

OK so back up a minute - first we decide we need to do something about the problem of scary men/ prowling spectares, and lets say we focus on light.  We agree that if there's any chance to reduce these horrors we should grasp them, we assume, on behalf of the tax-paying population that they agree (hope you're OK with that folks!).  Right, next we have to find a product that's going to last more than a few weeks, that's robust and reliable, simple and easy to use. It should be cheap - so we can buy lots of them. There's plenty of $500 units out there, with batteries and fancy battery boxes and so on, but then we'll only be able to help a few families, and they'll probably end up in the richest man's household.  No, they should be distributed to everyone, one per family.  So price should be low.

As chance would have some samples were dropped off to our offices in London and sent out for sampling. A relatively new company, and product really - a robust panel using thin-film solar technology stuck to a chunky bit of plastic, offering enough of a trickle of current to charge a light that holds 4 LED bulbs.  Pretty meagre light at first, but pressing the button a few times increases the brightness (while also reducing the time they can stay on).  Optional extras include fittings for most mobile phones, batteries, radios and so on.  Cost for the panel, cable and light only? About ten pounds stirling ($15 or so).

Talking to a family in Dadu, about their solar light (toughstuff) and how it had been amazing...

So we shared these with Concern and it turned out they had bought them before - in Haiti. So they bought 12,000 of them and gave them out in Southern Sindh.  Feedback was amazing: they were saving about $3 a month on candles or kerosene and a further $5 on mobile phone charging... They had figured out where to find adapters to fit their mobile phones, which meant they didn't have to pay to go to town to charge them.

OK, so these were distributed long after they had been in camps - they had returned already, so they were "late" in that regard.  But the "return on investment" seemed to be really good - i.e. the investment is paid back within a few months, after which they save money.

To cut a long story short, it has occurred to me that we should include solar lights in all future emergency shelter kits - as long as they are low cost and robust.  The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has been in charge of the emergency shelter sector in Pakistan since Aug 2010. They are some really committed and passionate folks there, and keen on the idea of light, and I'm so pleased to see that this year lights have been included in the shelter cluster's priority list of non-food items.

So, moving forward in time now (this story has taken months to finish) we have funded IOM to provide emergency shelter for 18,000 families (over 100,000 people) in the newly flood affected areas in Southern Sindh.  Each family will get a solar light. This time a different model - from illumination, which sell them at around $7.50 a unit, delivered to Pakistan. That's less than £5 each!

In two weeks I'm going to visit the people that received these lights and am going to find out what they think.  I'll finish or continue with this post then.

Granny, at 92, with one of her tribe of great grandchildren, in a tiny village flattened by water in Jacobabad, Sindh.  Poor, they may be, but look how healthy and positive and alive!

Multan Pottery - Punjab, Pakistan

building collage

Photos of summertime

I just found out how to blog up photos from Picassa - wooh! So here's random selection from sometime last summer...

my favourite otter

Joao and son sorting out the steps 

Too darned hot up, time for chilling down at the riviera


Romanians rain-protector wall freshly built at the Alambique


Joao with his Toy Story toy



Earth to mud to piglets and eventually to wall plaster sometime later


Kira kind of learning to roll:)


And to ride waterfalls! (this taken after she made it down that littl'un:)

Post Flood Housing survey - Pakistan

Excellent report here by UNHABITAT covering all different types of houses, materials and designs in rural architecture.

From this we can see why so many houses came down (around 1.4m at last count)

Pakistan floods, firewood and recovery

A school front door in Jacobabad.

The August 2010 floods in Pakistan dwarf any other humanitarian crisis for decades, well, on record probably (at least since we started this aid-effort thing. The measuring stick we can use to say "it's bigger than the last" is not how many people perished, but how many survived and need help to survive, rebuild, recover.

So in summer this year the monsoon rains opened up with all the built up ferocity of a planets' worth of energy, heat and smoke from a continent on fire (Russia, Portugal, etc.), droughts across Africa, floods in South America, a mighty freeze in Europe the winter before that has to balance out somewhere. And so it rained. The mighty Indus that flows from the craggy North to the desert South of this amazing country swelled and burst into irrigation channels built by the British a hundred or so years before, channelling water where it sholdn't have been, sweeping away decades of community. Luckily, most people had time to move out before the water (less than two thousand people died, amazingly few).

Camps of returnees, in the shadow of their former homes.  Jacobabad, Sindh. 

So, I joined the enormous humanitarian community in October to do my bit (it's what I do, rather did, before building things out of straw and mud) and in November had a look around in Sindh, the Southern province, home of Karachi, a port to the Arabian sea and beyond.  Here over 1.2 million homes are thought to have been destroyed, displacing over seven million people (more than Scotland entire!).

We decided to visit Dadu and Jacobabad, the two districts al of which lost the most houses - about 150,000 each, and see how people were coping. Photos say more than I could... First we stopped in at a camp, for a few thousand folk

Cattle, we're told are people's biggest asset. They fled together and live as an extended family. Cows cost a fortune here and loosing one could cripple your finances. They eat straw mostly, which has go to be fairly nutrient-less, but hey.

In the camp,
a hand pump at work, recently installed by
Root Work, a local NGO working with Concern
an Irish NGO, who in turn have British taxpayers cash,
via the UK's dept for int'l development.
Confused? You should be. 

So we travelled through Dadu, a district that lost around 180,000 houses (at 7 people per house that's a lot of people without a home).

Over here, there! Our village is ruined. there's nothing left.
Come and help out place (we were visiting some other community
of returnees. Our efforts are considerable (millions of pounds into all kinds
of services) but it barely touches the surface of the need. 

In the camps, possibly 10 to 40kms from their former homes, people can receive food, tents, health care, water... So there's an attraction to remain? Yes, but people don't seem to: as soon as their lands emerge from the flood waters they're off - partly to make sure someone else doesn't grab their land. There's a really entrenched feudal system of landlords and peasant / landless farmers here. It's hard to know who of these people owned their land, control their own destinies, but from what I've heard it's one of the biggest challenges. 

So, cooking: See the cow dung drying in the sun, makes for good cooking fuel, saves money. Stuck in camps people don't have access to their usual source of firewood, so they pay about $1 a day for sticks and roots.  This exposes a major problem here - inefficient cooking systems.  Local landscapes are denuded, there are literally millions of people cutting and chopping their way through the undergrowth and the canopy, to burn semi dry or just green wood to sizzle up their meals.  There's little evidence that anyone has mapped out the implication of this over the next five or ten years: what will happen if this continues, this size of population cooking their way through these few remaining trees?

Especially frustrating when you know that alternatives exist that really work: fuel efficient stoves (at least to slow down the disaster), solar cooking (ovens, parabolic water heaters, oil tank heaters, and more), biogas (cooking from the gas of our poo, or our cows poo, or both).  

The humanitarian machine is incredibly fixed into its way of doing things, but it can change. It's taken years but mainstreaming concepts around gender equality and to a lesser extent protection (human rights) is becoming more recognised.  Environmental impact is starting to appear as an overarching / "cross-cutting"  issue but most people and organisations don't understand the link between energy, environment and human communities so it's given lip-service and spin.  In fact, from an environmental perspective our aid operations are catastrophic. Consider the overall pollutants and carbon emissions of the millions of products we import from the far corners of the globe, the tens of thousands of air flights, air lifts, truck days and so on.  Do we count this up? No, don't even discuss it! We are, it seems, immune to the carbon magnifying glass. "hey, we're saving lives out here, don't hassle me with that tree hugging shit" is the general impression you'll get if you bring it up. 

People in return. It turns out that vast numbers of displaced just moved out to neighbouring districts which remained dry and found work, settled down with families or friends, and were not completely exposed and vulnerable. They managed. The network of family support is enormous, low profile, goes unrecorded and ancient.  Supporting all this is the diaspora who send millions of dollars worth of cash each month to their extended family back in the homeland. 

The traditional Katcha house, make of local earth and bits of straw. Most of these just melted away when the floods came and inundated the walls. Most brick walls that used mud mortar suffered the same fate, but some survived. The challenge now is to find ways to reinforce these earthen walls.  There's lots of work and discussions going on around this, but I'll have to leave it for another post. 

I seriously wanted to dive onto that hay cart and carry on our trip by those means. So it would take a few more days, or weeks, but that's OK.  Nice to see the wooden wheels still in action, and the hay stacked on carts. Like in Romania, though there they have horses and car tyres.
And their hay is cut grass, this is cut straw and has far less food/nutritional value than hay.
This stuff finds its way into the mud walls (otherwise they wouldn't hold together so well).

What remains, after this trip, is an amazing friendliness and warmth from everyone we met.  Despite everything that's stacked up against them: a brooding civil war, the meddling of our Western powers in their affairs, the crippling corruption and the injustices that rule their lives, they are happy to share a cup of tea and discuss ideas.

Roof building time / Tempo para a construção do telhado

 After many moons of preparation - of walls, lime work, wood research and planning - it arrived, a truck load of eucalyptus wood from near Porto, 140km or so away. With this + one experienced carpenter, our main house roof began.

Carlos, the local Hulk, nudges this half tonne
beam and lets the block and tackle
take the rest of the weight.

Day 1, wood arrives and sits like heavy lumps on the ground in front of the house. I expect a day of phone calls for cranes and heavy lifting gear (after having seen João, the stonemason, use his mechanical claw to move stone all around).

These guys are different – they use a block and tackle. A “Garibaldi”. A pulley with gears. They built a super basic frame higher than the first floor, and dragged the first 8m mega-beam up to it, then hoisted it with this simple yet life-changing little device. From the 1^st floor they did the same thing up to the roof, and within an hour the first beam was sitting there, all warped and imperfect, waiting. 

It was incredible to see how quickly they worked. By the end of day 2 they had created the skeleton of a roof, made from enormous bits of green wood (let it go dry, it's impossible to work they say).

Manuel, lead carpenter, 40 years experience,
lining up first beam to go on the roof

They work with no plans or drawings. The list of materials they ordered was done standing in the empty house, pionting at corners and spaces in the air, pulling figures from their volumes of experience. “8m beam there, 64 rafters to cover both main roof elements, a truss here, and supporting beam there” and so on. Jorge, Mr Sawmill, was there scribbling notes as Manuel fired out instructions. They ignored me and my irrelevent questions.

When it's time to join the wood together Manuel whips out his electric chainsaw, sharp as a needle, and cuts shapes, based on how the wood sits beside another bit. He may draw a pencil line, he may not. A few whacks with a mallet and chisel to clean it up. And boom, it slots into place like it was meant to be. A couple of massive nails to keep it in place and it's hard to see how that roof isn't going to stay in place for centuries – as long as we keep the water out.

Day 2 or 3. Main uprights going into place. How they figured out what height these should be at I have no idea.
Without drawings they must have done it by eye, or rule of thumb, based on the width of the main beams crossing
the breadth of the building, which are about 8m long.  Lenght ways, the building is about 16m long. 

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Piecing it together

Carlos, whacking out some indents to house the angled trusses.

Temporary brace for the end of roof... Hoping there's
some kind of longer term plan for that one!

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Ilie understandably worried at this stage. 

By day 4 or 5, looking more and more roof like...

What am I doing here?

Nikita in the thick of it. Learning.

First he cuts, then chisels

Then checks 

Then slips it into place. Nice

 

This is the only hip-roof we're going to have on the building (alternative to a straight, gable end).

More massive wood, oak this time
to hold up East side of roof. 

And floor beams, almost 6m long, 30x20cm size
for the kids bedrooms floor...
Roof coming over this next. 

I have been amazed by the skills and confidence of this guys. I ask them if they have any young 'uns coming up behind them, learning their trades. They laugh, regard me as retarded, and explain that no young person wants to do this sort of thing. "People want to learn to design things on computer, not here for real, where it's hard work, takes years to learn". For sure, this isn't something you could pick up in a year or two. It's an art, a lifetime's work.  And not particularly well paid.

"anyway" they add "everyone builds their roofs with cement these days".  This is a whole other issue, based on a little common sense and no doubt serious financial gain for a few individuals in charge of the concrete industries.  But how could the entire architectural and engineering professions have been sold out so easily?

Here's the story:

Why cement? Because they are “resistant, waterproof, strong, long-lasting, cool in summer, warm in winter” (quotes from local builders, home-owners). As they have only been built in this way for the last 30 to 50 years they don't yet know the results of this national experiment. In the UK, many buildings made with cement have started to deteriorate within a 30 to 50 year time span, due in part to the inevitable cracking of cement floors, foundations and walls – cracks that allow water to come in, and eventually cause damp within the building, rotting of any wooden elements and so on.

But cement in roofs never really took off in the UK – or France, Germany, the US and most other places for that matter. This means we don't really have a precedent to measure it against. It seems mighty popular in Spain and Portugal so this should be the area to watch. Here are some of the down sides I can imagine with cement roofs:

• Non-breathability. Cement doesn't let moisture pass through, so it can't “breathe”. A bit like a plastic bag. It keeps the rain out, sure, but it also keeps the moisture in. And if you think about how much moisture we generate in bathrooms, kitchens and just breathing around the house... We would need a fairly sophisticated ventilation system to allow all that water vapour out, without letting in too much cold air.

• Money. I have yet to find out how much it costs, per square meter to build a cement roof, but I'm fairly sure it's more expensive than wood. Though that depends what kind of wood you choose. We'll get to that later.  

• Carbon Factor. We now know that to produce 1Kg of cement you will emit 1Kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Multiply this into the millions and you're talking a fairly major chunk of your national CO2 diet. In fact, buildings in Europe are responsible for around 40% of its emissions. So, you want to cut emissions, why not start there, in the building products themselves ? It really is a no-brainer. Trees are like solar panels: they grow with a happy combination of sunlight and water.  Cut them down to make houses and plant more, plant twice as many.  Make forestry a part of the building industry. Use local timber, not imported stuff from Scandanavia and you cut emissions further.  Learn how to use local wood. Get young people learning about this stuff and you may just reduce carbon emissions.  Or just screw the planet and build with cement. It seems there's overwhelming pressure around us is to do just this -  so many people make so much money from the status quo.  Why change it? 

I had better leave it there, lest I rant.