On August 6th, at about 12:30am, a cloud burst over Ladakh and caused massive flash floods and mudslides throughout the region. The devastated area includes Ladakh, China, and about one fifth of Pakistan. The death toll will likely never be known for sure, but hundreds were killed in Ladakh, and hundreds more are missing, presumed dead.
Before this happened, we had spent a couple of beautiful days in Nubra Valley, in northern Ladakh. We were in a small village called Hunder, our guesthouse was next to a stream and shadowed by gorgeous mountains. On the night of the 5th, we watched the intense lightning from the safety of our valley, not imagining the devastation that was about to occur. The next morning, as we drove into Leh, on what turned out to be the only road not destroyed by the mudslides, there was an eery feeling, as everything was closed and no locals were around. Turns out, about a quarter of the town of Leh had been destroyed or damaged, including the main bus station and the hospital, and many of the surrounding villages were also devastated.
The next morning, I went to the place where volunteers had been working the previous day, and did what little I could to clear some rubble, in an attempt to find the last body that had yet to be found from a group of destroyed homes. We didn't find a body, but we did find personal belongings. As we pass buckets of mud and bricks down the human chain of volunteers and Tibetan soldiers, we would occasionally see a spoon, a child's toy, a sock... We essentially deconstructed homes, brick by brick, minute possession by minute possession. We would occasionally come across children's school books or family photos, which were put aside by the monks. Every now and then, our human chain of hands would have to stop to let through authorized cars. “Authorized cars” basically meant a funeral procession – a car carrying a dead body up to the mountain to be burned, the following car carrying some monks, and the last car piled high with firewood. That's really when it hits home – these are not just bricks, these are people.
At one point in the afternoon, while I was standing in a mud hole that used to be someone's home, I suddenly looked up and saw everyone running down the road, away from the place where the mudslide had come. A rumor had started that another mudslide was on its way. Within a matter of seconds, I found myself on the top of a steep hill next to the destruction. I had run so fast that I don't even remember how I got there. We waited at the top of the hill, waited for something to come crashing down, women crying in fear. In the end, it turned out just to be a rumor, and it took me a while to figure out how to get down because it was so steep. At the end of the day, we started finding clothes, so assumed we had stumbled upon what could have been a bedroom, where we were likely to find a body. Soldiers took over and uncovered CDs, notebooks, a pair of jeans with a wallet still in the back pocket, but no body. Although I hope for the person's family (and for public health) that the body is found, I'm glad I did not find it. What sort of psychological effect would that have on someone...
By the next day the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) had taken over the coordination of the relief efforts. In the morning, they sent a group of us out on a flatbed truck to a surrounding village to gather firewood to burn the bodies. The truck stopped at every house, and everyone gave some wood. Although they most likely would need it to keep warm over the winter, the sense of community was unmistakable. Something had happened that was bigger than an individual, bigger than one family's immediate comfort. The community was mourning, and everyone did their part to alleviate the pain. That afternoon we were sent to the hospital to start clearing the first floor of the 40 cm of mud that covered it. Back breaking work. I felt like a rice picker. While there, I overheard Western tourist doctor who had been volunteering at the Army's mess hall, by then converted to a makeshift hospital, that they had no more anesthesia. All they could do was hold the children down as they performed surgery...
For the next few days, we were sent to various villages around Leh. We first went to Phiyang, or what used to be Phiyang. On the drive there, we witnessed what seemed like a mass exile of Bahari seasonal migrants – hundreds of men walking on the side of the road with all their possessions strapped to their backs, seemingly getting ready to walk across India, back home to Bihar. I was in a group with 3 Frenchies and a few Ladakhis, and we were the first relief team to make it to Phiyang, since the army had only finished rebuilding the bridge to the village that morning. We walked up to the monastery, one of the only visible structures still intact. As we walked, we passed a gate with a sign saying “Welcome to the Monastery School of Phiyang,” but there was nothing behind the gate. Just mud. In front of the monastery, about 20 shell-shocked locals welcomed us to their tent camp, offered us tea and biscuits that the army had just brought them. “First, we have tea.” It reminded me so much of the book “Three Cups of Tea,” which I had just read. Despite tragedy, these people remained so hospitable and grateful that we were there.
A monk led us down to an area still covered with wet mud that sometimes reached our knees. As we stood on a mound, he poked his walking stick in the earth and said “one body missing from here.” We walked over to the second mound, in front of some trees, and with the same motion and stoic voice said “two bodies missing from here. Dig.” So we dug. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The bodies could have been there, or they could have been in Pakistan, brought down the Indus by the force of the raging waters. In the end, we found nothing but a single, crushed, plastic bottle - the only sign of life that came out of that mud all day.
The following day we went to a beautiful village called Saboo, which is where the cloudburst is rumoured to have occurred. Because roads and bridges had been destroyed, we walked up the mountain for two hours until we found the house we had been looking for. We were to dig out the three remaining rooms of a house, and look for the body of the old man who had been living there. His body would either be in the room to which I was assigned, or else it would have been carried down the valley along with the other two rooms of his house. We found nothing but boulders and mud. At one point while I was digging, the Ladakhi guy that was with us told me “Don't shovel too hard, there might be a body under there...” He had pulled several bodies out of the mud in the previous few days, so he knew what he was talking about...
The next day, a candle-lit march was arranged. Thousands of people, presumably the entire town - survivors, victims, tourists - gathered at the petrol station, and began the assent up the main road that had paved the way for the mud to flow smoothly through civilization. As we walked up through the devastation, surrounded by pentatonic Buddhist chants, candles, and prayer beads being fingered by faithfuls, it really hit home that this could have happened to anyone. We were in the path of destruction at that moment, just like we could have been at 12:30am on August 6th.
After a day of rest to nurse a pulled hamstring, I returned to my digging expeditions, but this time in the devastated Tibetan refugee settlement of Choglamsar. Most of the army brought up from Delhi had been sent there, as the village was in ruins - there were rivers where there once had been roads and homes. Unfortunately, the soldiers seemed quite disinterested with the local population. Their combat clothes were perfectly clean, while us volunteers were covered in mud, cuts, and bruises. More than once I witnessed scores of soldiers standing by as exhausted locals attempted to move heavy furniture or tree stumps from their homes. After lunch, I was walking back to a house in need of digging out with a girl from St Gallen I had met that morning, when a soldier came up to us and asked for our help in digging out a home. We followed, thinking his request was sincere. However, when we got there, shovels were put in our hands while the soldiers sat around and smoked cigarettes, still perfectly clean despite a morning of supposed 'hard work.' The soldier who had asked us to come over told us that when we were tired we could take a rest. I told him that when I got tired I would give him the shovel and it was his turn. “No, I don't shovel. I command.” Well, commander, it's time to stop giving shovels to women, children, and tourists, and have your men do some real work. After berating him for a while, in an attempt to kick some good old Swiss efficiency into these men, he left to go on his lunch break, from which he never returned. With the commander gone, the new and improved Swiss commandos were able to take charge, and get the few remaining soldiers to do some real work (although they were sure to avoid picking up any stones with their bare hands, as it may have dirtied their previous jewels). After about a half hour, though, they were too tired so decided to take a break. We left.
On the final day of work, I returned to Phiyang with a big group of German volunteers. We dug out a family's home alongside the family members, who had all survived but were forced to live in a tent in what used to be their back yard – 3 generations, eating, sleeping, living in one tent. The family was so grateful we were there – one of the women said thank you under her breath every time she filled her shovel with mud – that it almost made me uncomfortable. Why were they so grateful? Why was the fact that human beings were helping other human beings after a disaster like this so unusual? They showered us with biscuits and chai and butter tea, and fed us a wonderful lunch, just like all the other affected communities had. They sacrificed what little they had for us foreigners who have everything, who will soon go back to our cooshy lives where we know that mountains won't come down on our poorly constructed homes, where we know our water will be safe to drink, where we will have enough food for the winter because our only source of food, our crops, has not been destroyed.
Reflecting on the experience, I suppose that what makes me uncomfortable is that I feel like the Ladakhis were so grateful that someone, somewhere was finally caring about them, that they were finally important. It took a disaster to make these people important to the West, to reverse the roles and have the rich foreigners do manual labor for the benefit of the poor brown people. And does the world really care? Pakistan, which was even more severely hit by this same disaster, is not receiving the kind of help from the international community that it so desperately needs. Twenty million people have been affected by the disaster in that country. 3.5 million children are at high risk of water-borne diseases.
I don't really care if this seems tacky, but here's a link to donate to Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders' efforts in Pakistan:
http://www.msf.org.uk/pakistan_floods_update_11aug2010_20100811.news
And to end, a short list of things I've learned from this experience:
- I really do have a talent for shoveling mud out of houses. Maybe I should think about a career in construction?
- After smashing my finger between a rock and a hard place in Phiyang, I realized that I can live quite well with only 9 fully functioning fingers, at least for a few days.
- Thank Novartis for Tetanus shots.
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