Tenth day in the field. Left last Thursday when we finally were granted a vehicle to use for GPS assessments. It was supposed to be a four day trip, possibly seven if things went wrong. And now its day ten.

I’ll try to cover these past days as we drive back to camp from Hattian Bala.

The rain started on the first morning after arriving in Muzaffarabad. A steady light rain, day and night for 48 hours. Any precipitation up here, for our jobs, is a bad thing. If it rains, the roads don’t just get a thick layer of mud on them – they disappear. As the rain comes down the slope it takes the side of the mountain with it. What was above the road, piles up on the road. Sometimes just a few stones the size of babies that you can lob over the cliff face so you can pass by, but often times you pile those up on the side of the road for use later (more on this to come). Other times it’s a boulder larger than the truck you’re in. But most often it is the mountain setting claim on the road, piling itself up on top of what used to be flat. Boulders, mud, dirt, stones, trees and remnants of crumpled houses. The mountain just fixes the scar that once slashed across it. Unfortunately, that scar is the only way to move relief and reconstruction cargo to families and villages throughout the affected area.

When the mountain doesn’t take back its own (point of sudden interjection: I’d just like to say I had to slap some ass – it was blocking the road) … so when the mountain doesn’t take back its own, the road falls apart. Anyone driving the roads here will tell you there is nothing great about them. Sometimes they might have a white lane down the middle, sometimes they might be paved, and only in Islamabad are there a few smooth roads. It comes as no surprise that they weren’t made all that great either When the rain falls, the roads get undercut by erosion, carving out the foundation. If you’re lucky to be driving on a stretch that has a shoulder, hopefully the shoulder just falls down the hill. Most often, it is a part of the road that falls apart. Many times you can’t see this … until you get on top of it and it begins to crumble under the weight of the vehicle. Yeah, that puts the fear in a man.

The thing is, there’s usually only one way to get someplace, so if the road is bad, you just deal with it. If you’re in a hurry, you just keep driving, wondering what the best position would be to put your body in, if by chance, the vehicle did tumble over. Sometimes there are other options. If you’re around a village or some farmers, you can usually talk them into bringing some shovels, sledge hammers and/or pick axes and busting a boulder apart so you can drive by. Other times, you just rebuild the road. It’s surprisingly easy. I’m not sure how safe, but it gets the job done. But it must work, because you see the telltale signs of this on all the roads. What you do is you look for a pile of stones somewhere around, or you use whatever stones you can find from the landslide. Much like stacking firewood, you begin to arrange this stones in the gap where the road’s foundation used to be. One on top of the other, trying to fill in any cavities and keeping the rocks steadfast to one another. Work your way up to the road surface, and then onto the top of your new bit of road you kick any piles of dirt, vegetation or gravel that happens to be lying around. Then you drive the car over it, very slowly, hoping that it holds, because if it doesn’t, you just spent a good thirty minutes preparing yourself to get crushed inside of a big heap of twisted metal that will probably catch fire and explode at the bottom of the cliff scattering your guts everywhere and any remnants of amoebic dysentery that might still be hanging out in your now charred stomach contaminate the stream that the village downriver fetches their drinking water from causing seventeen small children to die as well. Not a great way to go out.

Why do people drive slowly over things like that? It seems a little stupid. Why not hightail it over, burning rubber the whole way ala Days of Thunder. Instead of being exposed to the possibility of a horrible death for 15 seconds, you get it all over with in 1 second. And if the road does collapse because of your speed, you’ve always got the good old angel named Inertia on your side.

I’ve been driving these roads for ten days now. We came to drive a few select roads: Neelum Valley Road, Jhelum Valley Road, Hattian Bala-Lamnian-Reshang, Reshang-Lipa Valley, Reshang-Nadseri, Neelum-Saidpur, Kotli Valley, Neelum-Sarli Bachhacha, and Neelum-Kuttan. If along the way we discovered an unused route between the Neelum and Jhelum valleys, going over the ridge, that would be excellent. As soon as we got to Muzaffarabad, three problems presented themselves. First, the rains had caused big landslides all up the Neelum and Jhelum Valleys, so we couldn’t get to any of the roads we needed. Second, a UNOPS team was driving in the Jhelum Valley, just east of Hattian Bala, when it was taken out by a small landslide in an area previously thought of as not being high-risk. Two of our colleagues were killed; two were injured. Third, UNDSS (security & safety people) had closed off the Neelum and Jhelum Valleys to use by international UN staff (again, its okay for staff to drive in dangerous areas, or for our partner agencies). Some legwork needed to be done to gain special access to these roads.

The UN works very much in a tit for tat manner. You do a favor, they do a favor. You step on some toes, they treat you like a cell mate. Preferring not to go down prison style, I decided to work with UNDSS on a project of theirs. Because of developing security issues and the eventual centrifugal spin-off that will occur around April-June as relief agencies set up dispersed offices around town, UNDSS wanted a good map of Muzaffarabad. It’s a logistics project because of the need for evacuation and secondary routes. And its logistics because it helps us get our job done. And its logistics because no one else but I will do it. So to do this map, we simply added the Muzaffarabad city streets as roads we need to drive. Easy enough to do, especially since we had a few days to twiddle our thumbs until landslides were cleared and the rains stopped. At the end of it, they’ll get a spiffy map.

Actually, Friday UN staff were in lockdown for security reasons. Supposedly when Muslims go to pray on Friday afternoons dangerous things happen…like they combine the mental vibrations of their chants and prayers into a Mega Death Ray Gun*!!! Serious, they do! You could ask my coworker Ben, and he’d agree. I think he read about it on the DARPA website. He’s single too, if any of you are interested. Send me a pic and a bio I’ll pass it over. I don’t say this at his request, but he’s a good guy and I’m just trying to help a brother out, you know? Yeah, so anyways…we were locked down. We started driving on Saturday and Sunday, cruising the streets of Muzaffarabad, and all roads leading into town. Muzaffarabad seems to be a respectable place. Not as filthy and polluted as Peshawar; 4,000ft hills and higher peaks surrounding it; clear blue skies when the rain isn’t falling; and a nice river running through town. Driving through town is still noisy, as everyone honks their fancy obnoxious horns, but the place is interesting. Most of Muzaffarabad is inaccessible by car, and instead is cut by footpaths snaking through neighborhoods and bazaars. What streets there are typically end up twisting into the high hills giving exceptional views up and down the valley and beyond.

* Don't Fatwah me, please.

Collecting the data is pretty simple. I’ve got a GPS unit that communicates with a set of satellites and is able to tell you your location with an accuracy of 15-30ft. I’ve got the GPS plugged into my laptop, running some GIS software, and that combination allows me to track my position in real-time on top of the maps I’ve been producing for the past 5 months. The greatest benefit of this is it allows me to ground truth our data as I drive, and it shows just how weak our original data was (even though it was the best available for the area). So as I’m driving, the GPS is making a track of each movement – often precise enough to show when we pull over to let a car pass. I’m also making waypoints, collecting the locations and extents of landslide prone areas, bridges (and damage to them), villages, road conditions, and pertinent locations (i.e. hospitals, schools, military facilities, gathering points). Other than when we pass a jingly truck that is kicking up a lit of dust or is quite fumey, the window is down and I’m hanging out of it taken pictures. I’m getting really good at the art of blurring a person’s face. And taking pictures of what is, um, not what I want to take a picture of. Sometimes we stop for lunch or to chat with some locals, but one of the better times was a few weeks ago when I was on an assessment mission with our field logistics officer in Batagram, my buddy Jordan. Along the way, we had to stop off and talk to some locals to find out who owned a piece of land that we wanted to set up a rub hall (storage tent) on, to increase our cargo movement efficiency. We went to a few people, and then found out it was The Khan’s land. So, we went to talk to The Khan. We were lead into his fancy military grade tent (his house had collapsed in the quake). We had some tea, we talked about Texas, and then got down to business. After many negotiations, mainly to get The Khan’s two brothers jobs with the UN, we finally came to an agreement and left happy. On submitting the request to the powers that be, WFP, it was denied. But I still had tea with a Khan.

We’re doing these drives for multiple reasons. Not just to improve our maps, but also to increase the safety awareness of staff by letting them know where potential landslides may be more likely to occur. Additionally, we need to be able to inform cargo movers about road conditions and capacities. It’s all really quite useful, and I do like to drive around.

We’ve done 6 assessment missions out of the city. Two into the Neelum Valley, two into the Jhelum, and one to find an additional evacuation route out of Muzaffarabad. Only one was successful, and that was the later. On all the missions we had to turn back because of landslides. We’d make it past most of the small ones, when we had some locals around to supply us with tools, but many times it was because of slides we couldn’t drive around or over. One today was about 10m high and 100m wide. Underneath it, we believe, is a UNOPS vehicle, but no one knows for sure.

Today’s mission was another where we didn’t make out intended destination. We got turned around 3km from the ridge into the Neelum and Lipa Valleys. On our way back, we stopped in Lamnian for some tea and biscuits, and of course got to talking to about half the village while there. Towards the end of it, a young Brit came in, who was a working with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in the village, and he had a young girl who needed to be taken down to the valley floor to a hospital. Nothing major, just needed some tests to make sure her kidneys weren’t failing. HSV or something, some rash. I think it was monkey pox. MSF didn’t have any vehicles at their site in the village, and the public transport was refusing to run that day. So we took her down to Hattian Bala, which was on our way. We get to Hattian Bala, ask a few folks where the hospital is, and we finally get there. The hospital (same word in Urdu) was destroyed in the earthquake, but there are now six scraggly tents set up around all the damaged, yet salvaged equipment from inside. There were some people there, and all they could tell us was that there were no doctors there: they only work until noon and then leave. The old man who was trying to help me just wasn’t helping enough, so I had to figure something out. We weren’t too sure what to do about that, but I happened to remember the last time was passed through town, there was this little girl name Hemelga. Weird little girl actually. 11 years old, and she just walks up to us on the street happy as can be that we’ve stopped our vehicles there. Sticks out here hand and asks, “What’s your good name?” We get to talking, she was just coming back from school, spoke excellent English, was bashful but straight forward, and just wanted to chat with us and see what we were up to. Kids don’t really do that here. Sure, they stand around trying to figure out what you’re going, but they usually don’t approach or acknowledge you. Especially girls. Especially 11 year old girls, who are “of age”. Concerned for my life, I checked my shoulder quite often looking for uncles or brothers ready to put a beat down on me. As luck would have it, when I met Hemelga before, we were parked in almost the same spot, and she had pointed out her house (actually a tent, her house was destroyed) for me. So I bid the old man good bye (he kept following me anyways), and headed in the direction of Hemelga’s tent. She must have scene our vehicles parked out on the road, because she, happy as can be, was already headed down from her tent camp with a friend. With the best of manners, she introduced us to her friend, also named Hemelga, but was probably her sister because they were just about identical in behavior (the newer Hemelga was younger). I told her what was up, and that we had a sick girl in our truck who needed to go to the hospital, but no one in town could tell us where the hospital was. And of course, Hemelga knew where to go and told us. We chatted a bit more about what we’d been up to for the day and what we’d seen, and what she’d been doing all day. I wasn’t worried much about the uncles and brothers this time. After all that, we heeded Hemelga’s instructions and dropped the sick girl and her father off at the hospital on the other side of town. I suppose that made up for not getting down what we’d hoped to do today.

But blocked roads have been the minor reason of why I’m still in Muzaffarabad. I now have two jobs: GIS Officer and Field Logistics Officer. We had our recent field logs officer for Muzaffarabad leave a few weeks ago, and another guy here was covering until our new staff member could arrive. Well, that covering person had to leave a few days before the new one arrived, and since I was in town, I suddenly became the new one (until the newer one arrived). Um, the newer one has since arrived…and has since taken another job elsewhere. This leaves yours truly, Brody Dittemore, Field Logs Officer of the main operational hub for this whole shindig.

How do I feel about this? Welp…let’s just say I get to operate with a lot of freedom. No one from UNJLC has told me a damn thing about what I’m supposed to be doing here, reports I need to file, or whatever. I’ve just been doing my own thing, which has mostly involved ignoring Islamabad. See, my experience in Islamabad has taught me that most people in Islamabad don’t give a damn about what happens in the field, and are completely disconnected from the operation. My experience in the field reconfirms that. Thus, I’m doing what I think should be done. I’m setting up some sweet relations with agencies in the field here, making due on some promises, and doing what I can to evolve the logistics structure to something that works within an environment of variable road conditions and the withdrawal of air assets. And the good thing about it is that there are a few people in Islamabad who communicate with their field officers, and these people have been very impressed with the changes that I’ve been a part of. To be frank, I don’t know what a field logs officer is even supposed to be doing. It’s a good enough feeling that I don’t mind continuing on here, except that I get paid a lot more to stay in Islamabad ($40 a night versus $120…and I like $120). But we’ll see, and I’ll have plenty of time to think about it, because it will probably take two or three weeks to get someone new here to take my place.

Oh, and I only brought one pair of clothes. The field is dirty. So am I.