Shelling, drought, an earthquake – but one village just won’t give up

SULTANDAKI, India – The school principal in this community splayed across a steep Himalayan mountainside has buried students cut down by artillery fire, seen families rendered destitute by drought and is now coping with the destruction of all but one of the village’s 374 houses in a savage earthquake.

Outside aid has been insufficient, available tents can only sleep 170 of the 3 000 residents buffeted by already freezing nights. Vital water supplies are contaminated by sulphurous springs disgorged by the October 8 earthquake.Despite the crisis, headmaster Seen Mohammad and his fellow villagers in Sultandaki are persevering as they always have, refusing to give up or simply beg for handouts.”I have told them (villagers), the government will help us, but the first option is to help ourselves,” he said.”To bring the children out of trauma, to send them back to school, that is our work.”Although books and desks lie crushed beneath the rubble, Mohammad intends to start schooling within a week.And in his other capacity as Sultandaki’s aid co-ordinator, he’s got ideas for how to build simple, emergency huts as soon as the government provides each distressed household with a promised 40 000 rupees (about N$5 850).Beyond that, village elders want to call in experts to advise on the construction of permanent houses on what they call “this trembling land”, a region of both Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where nearly 55 000 perished in the earth’s most recent convulsion.”We’re living together and helping one another because we all know what our neighbours have suffered,” said Gulshan Bano, an unmarried woman who has moved in with an extended family and neighbours around the ruined, three-story home of Fazal Hussain, a former soldier.The retired army noncommissioned officer said he spent his life savings to build the house, completed just 10 days before the quake struck, making it sway “like a child in the cradle.”Like many in the village without a roof over their heads, the group has cobbled together two tent-shaped shelters from tall maize stalks laid over a wobbly frame of tree branches and the odd wooden plank.Crammed at night with cold sleepers, the maize hut has become a symbol of self-help in the devastated villages of Indian Kashmir.In this one, located only three kilometres from the cease-fire line between India and Pakistan, present misery comes with still fresh memories of nearly six years of life under artillery fire.In almost daily duels between the archrivals, which fought two wars over Kashmir, shells could land on Sultandaki at any time of night or day.A bunker, partially caved in by the temblor, is burrowed into the ground just steps away from the high school, hit twice by artillery shells and now again devastated except for a newly donated and well-built computer lab – the sole undamaged structure in the village.Then, children rushed anxiously to school and couldn’t play their beloved cricket and other after-class games for fear of the shells, which killed 20 in the village.During periods of intense attacks, residents crouched among boulders on the mountainside above their homes.With the 2003 cease-fire came halcyon days, save for this year’s severe drought which destroyed 90 per cent of the principal crop, maize.”Everything was going smoothly since the cease-fire.Then the earthquake destroyed everything – my house, the whole village,” said Nazir-Ullah, standing by the beautifully kept, flower-decked grave of his two grandchildren, aged 4 and 6, who were killed by Pakistani artillery fire as they slept next to each other one night.His own wife and one child perished in the quake, and even his rice field, now riddled with cracks, wasn’t spared, the stoic man of 60 said.”Shelling destroyed specific places but the earthquake took it all.What can we say? Only the Almighty knows the reason.It’s in our destiny,” said Hussain, the retired army man around whose wrecked dream some 40 people gathered for a humble feast, a “fateha”, to mourn one of the village’s 46 dead, 11-year-old Imran Nazir.Unlike the violence, looting and explosions of pent-up anger that follow some natural disasters in urban societies, including those in the West, village elders said the tragedies here have bound the impoverished people peacefully together.So the feast began as the sun’s dying rays ignited freshly fallen snow on the surrounding peaks – a foreshadowing of the dreaded winter ahead.But Mohammad, the school principal, said: “We will survive.”- Nampa-APVital water supplies are contaminated by sulphurous springs disgorged by the October 8 earthquake.Despite the crisis, headmaster Seen Mohammad and his fellow villagers in Sultandaki are persevering as they always have, refusing to give up or simply beg for handouts.”I have told them (villagers), the government will help us, but the first option is to help ourselves,” he said.”To bring the children out of trauma, to send them back to school, that is our work.”Although books and desks lie crushed beneath the rubble, Mohammad intends to start schooling within a week.And in his other capacity as Sultandaki’s aid co-ordinator, he’s got ideas for how to build simple, emergency huts as soon as the government provides each distressed household with a promised 40 000 rupees (about N$5 850).Beyond that, village elders want to call in experts to advise on the construction of permanent houses on what they call “this trembling land”, a region of both Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where nearly 55 000 perished in the earth’s most recent convulsion.”We’re living together and helping one another because we all know what our neighbours have suffered,” said Gulshan Bano, an unmarried woman who has moved in with an extended family and neighbours around the ruined, three-story home of Fazal Hussain, a former soldier.The retired army noncommissioned officer said he spent his life savings to build the house, completed just 10 days before the quake struck, making it sway “like a child in the cradle.”Like many in the village without a roof over their heads, the group has cobbled together two tent-shaped shelters from tall maize stalks laid over a wobbly frame of tree branches and the odd wooden plank.Crammed at night with cold sleepers, the maize hut has become a symbol of self-help in the devastated villages of Indian Kashmir.In this one, located only three kilometres from the cease-fire line between India and Pakistan, present misery comes with still fresh memories of nearly six years of life under artillery fire.In almost daily duels between the archrivals, which fought two wars over Kashmir, shells could land on Sultandaki at any time of night or day.A bunker, partially caved in by the temblor, is burrowed into the ground just steps away from the high school, hit twice by artillery shells and now again devastated except for a newly donated and well-built computer lab – the sole undamaged structure in the village.Then, children rushed anxiously to school and couldn’t play their beloved cricket and other after-class games for fear of the shells, which killed 20 in the village.During periods of intense attacks, residents crouched among boulders on the mountainside above their homes.With the 2003 cease-fire came halcyon days, save for this year’s severe drought which destroyed 90 per cent of the principal crop, maize.”Everything was going smoothly since the cease-fire.Then the earthquake destroyed everything – my house, the whole village,” said Nazir-Ullah, standing by the beautifully kept, flower-decked grave of his two grandchildren, aged 4 and 6, who were killed by Pakistani artillery fire as they slept next to each other one night.His own wife and one child perished in the quake, and even his rice field, now riddled with cracks, wasn’t spared, the stoic man of 60 said.”Shelling destroyed specific places but the earthquake took it all.What can we say? Only the Almighty knows the reason.It’s in our destiny,” said Hussain, the retired army man around whose wrecked dream some 40 people gathered for a humble feast, a “fateha”, to mourn one of the village’s 46 dead, 11-y
ear-old Imran Nazir.Unlike the violence, looting and explosions of pent-up anger that follow some natural disasters in urban societies, including those in the West, village elders said the tragedies here have bound the impoverished people peacefully together.So the feast began as the sun’s dying rays ignited freshly fallen snow on the surrounding peaks – a foreshadowing of the dreaded winter ahead.But Mohammad, the school principal, said: “We will survive.”- Nampa-AP