Stories of Brody and his Friend 'Stan

2006-03-04T20:19:00.000+05:00

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.

2006-02-26T00:20:00.000+05:00

Okay, so I got some pictures for you now. Really.

They are over there ---------------->

2006-02-24T10:29:00.000+05:00

There has been few times in which I have almost vomited while in a car. I think the first time was on a trip to Yosemite when I was 8. Ford Taurus, driving up around something-Dome, my dad stopped, I opened the door car door behind him, kneeled down on the gravel and blew chunks. It had rained recently - typical afternoon thunderstorm, still cluttering the sky with dark clouds. Although, I guess that could have been my brother, but I know I was there.

Then there was Oscar and Jen's wedding. It was 4:30, I discovered I could chug beer the night before, and 16 hours later I was not doing so well. It was an improvement, because I had slept that night on the bathroom floor, because the cold tile felt nice on my face. Around 4:30, however, I was in the back of a limo driving a small road into the Rocky Mountains. Driver stopped, I shuffle over to a closed gas station, and try to hurl while overlooking a serenely beautiful river. It didn't work, so we got back into the limo, and I didn't improve much for the rest of the evening.

The only other time, was yesterday. I hadn't slept much the night before, had a frustrating and very busy morning in the Islamabad office, and then hopped into a Landcruiser two hours late. Luckily, Zeechan was driving. He's a young Pattan, from up in the mountains towards Gilgit. I can't quite put a bead on him. He seems like a really nice punk who is very sincere, but as weaved a few stories around him that just might not be true. But he is nice. He can drive fast, but he is also the worst driver I have ever experienced. Absolutely terrible and compiled with the Landcruiser being a stick shift, I was not in a good way as we left Islamabad, which has its streets laid out in a nice grid pattern - straight, long, minimal stops.

We were headed up to Muzaffarabad, which is at the center of all the operations here. It’s a provincial capital, and the main hub of Azad Jamma Kashmir (Free Kashmir...according to the Pakistanis who control it). It’s a big town, with two major valley systems emptying into it, and another two just around the corner. The first two, are the Neelum and Jhelum Valleys. The epicenter of the quake was about 15 kilometers up the Neelum (NE of town), but the Jhelum (SE) was hit awfully hard as well. Both these valleys are sandwiched by the Kaghan Valley and Bagh which were nailed too. Muzaffarabad is the largest relief hub, and the town, even though it was devastated, has had a huge influx of folks looking for help (we call them IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons], but they're refugees when it comes down to it). The airport outside of town has become exclusively used for the relief operation, using rotary craft (helos, choppers, birds, etc.). It’s impressive to see the stats for the tonnage moved through here because it is massive. And it is surrounded by the steepest mountains I've ever seen.

It’s these mountains we had to drive over yesterday. We started at about 1675ft, got almost up to 7000ft, in about 45 minutes, and then dropped back down to 2000ft and drove up the Jhelum River. Most maps don’t have the road on them, but it’s a nice one (for Pakistan). Where the road hasn't had a landslide or any subsistence, it’s paved and fairly smooth. Driving through towns most the way, but the only name I picked up was Kohala. I'd reckon that most of Islamabad's chicken supply comes down from that road. Here, the keep the chickens in what look like apartment buildings, with wire mesh for windows and straw on the ground. No cages inside, so the chickens can wander around like they're at a conference. Not too stinky. The ones that do stink are the small ones, mixed in with the shops as you drive through a town's market strip. Same size as the shops around them, and like those shops, there are no windows, no light, just a door that opens when the chicken person is there. Maybe twenty chickens in the small places, and 200 in the larger ones. Oh, and Bird Flu popped up yesterday in NWFP (Northwest Frontier Province), according to local sources. First incident recorded, which unfortunately happened to involve someone dying from it. From the internet, it appears that news agencies aren't reporting it yet, other than rumors of it being in Lahore, and that chicken prices are dropping down to 70 rupees a kilo.

It was a beautiful drive, except for Zeechan, who drove it as fast as he could, but would slam on the breaks at the slightest hint of a bump in the road. So, he'd floor it for 5 seconds, slam on the breaks, drive slowly over a very, very small crack in the road, and then floor it for 5 seconds, slam on the breaks, over and over again. The back of my head hurts from the headrest. Halfway through the drive, Zeechan started driving even worse. 10 minutes into it, he tells me he ahs to go pee, and he is driving faster so he can find an appropriate place to do that. That appropriate place turns out to be someone's driveway, just down the street from an open-air restaurant.

Funny thing about local men here: they squat down to pee. I don't know how they do this, because that position seems very, very precarious. It’s not like they drop their pants or anything. Just the zipper. Well, I guess I am guessing that it’s just the zipper. It’s not like I inspected his business or anything. Sure, guys can walk down the street holding hands like they do in San Francisco, but I think there is a line.

That line, however, became even more interesting last night. When I got to Muzaffarabad, I met up with the two UNJLC guys here, Kevin and Alastair. Both good kiwis. After dinner and some work, we decided to hustle over to the recreation tent, which was empty, and watch a DVD. Towards the end of it, come other guys come in to join us: three local Pakistani chaps. At the end, Kevin and Alastair leave, and I stay as I was chatting with Hilary. One of the Pakistanis puts in a movie, "Jugheads," but none of them seem very interested in it and have a hard time following it. After 10 minutes, the guy closest to me turns and says, "We Pakistanis like love movies." He and I go on talking for a bit, as he explains to me that since Pakistani men have to travel away from home for jobs, they miss their families, wives and girlfriends. It’s the romance, love movies that help them make it through each day...because Pakistanis understand love.

This "Jugheads" movie was just in until the rest of their friends could show up and sure enough, 3 more guys came in and sat down. And what was it? "My Thick Black Ass #8." In Pakistan, the following applies:

Love Movie = Porn
Romance Movie = Porn

In case you are ever confused in Pakistan, refer to that. Unfortunately, it was getting late, and it was time to call Hilary. I politely excused myself from my porn friends, who became quite embarrassed. They were worried I was ashamed of their tastes, and disappointed in them. I did my best to assure them that I was not, and that I too knew where they were coming from because my fiancé is in Iraq. And it’s not like I'm against porn, who is?! In short, I tried to smooth things over nicely, but I think I may have said something to which they are expecting me to join them tonight for their next porn session. I got to admit...I would be a great cultural exposure. How many of you can say they watched, uh...well, I'll just stop now.

I should probably change the topic somehow. Well, I didn't vomit in the car. I forced myself to go to sleep so I could ignore the whole thing. It worked, and I woke up as we drove across the plank bridge into Muzaffarabad. I still wanted to puke, but I made it to the camp, and spent the evening feeling terrible.

Why am I in Muzaffarabad? Mainly, it is because my GIS team just got a vehicle. One of our main responsibilities is to map the roads in the area. Before, there were no quality road maps of the area. It really was all trash. All the GIS data was terrible as well, even the stuff produced by the US Defense Department. The Russians didn't have much either, but I've compiled everything I could back in November, threw it all together and tried to remove any duplicates. It’s worked for a bit, but it still isn't worthy of much. Despite that...all the locals have told us we've got the best road maps they've ever seen of the area. We're trying to improve that. To do so, we've for the novel concept of driving those roads with a GPS unit. The problem is the United Nations. When in the field, UN staff can only drive in MOSS compliant vehicles. These are SUVs with VHF, HF, and CODAN radio equipment, big antennas, UN logos on them, winches, spare fuel, overnight kit inside, etc. UNJLC does not own any of these, and have been relying on other agencies to loan them vehicles to use. These agencies have recently begun taking back their vehicles, mainly through a chump named Simon. I've never met a Simon I've had respect for, so don't name your kids Simon. But anyways, when we do have a vehicle, it’s slated for use by our field logistics officers, since they need them the most. Thereby, if we want to map something, we have to rely on our field officers to have free time. This means that our improved map data is slow to create.

This slowness has become a major issue. Not a fault of ours, but more a fault of the operation. We've over utilized helicopters to move relief goods to the field. Helicopters are fast and sexy, but they also take about $11,000 or more to fly a sortie. Whereas a truck, for the same trip, would cost about $36 per ton. Those trucks are pretty sweet too. Not some silly 18-wheeler tractor trailer. Nope. We're calling them "Jinglies" here. Big trucks, beefy and dirty looking, but decorated in their entirety. Paintings, calligraphy, carved wooden doors, head pieces, coins and chains dangling everywhere, stylish hubcaps, everything. All owned by local individuals. Its money directly into the local economy, as opposed to sexy aviation fuel and ex-commie pilots.

Okay now, because helicopters are so expensive, we've run out of money. The helicopters are being pulled back and we need to move things by road more. We just need better road maps (need is used loosely), so we can direct cargo movements more effectively. We looked out the other day, and a vehicle arrived on our doorstep for us to use. The next day, I hopped in, with Zeechan, and off we went so I can drive as many roads in the Kashmir as I can.

Like always, this is more difficult than it should be. The UN has a group called DSS (Department of Security and Safety..?), whose sole job allots to pissing people off and now allowing them to do their jobs. Because of DSS, I can't do my job today, because in town there might be a protest. Might. This has been ongoing for the past three weeks. Camp lockdowns, even in Islamabad. Red-No-Go zones being used more frequently, which means we can't drive places. We can't drive there until DSS goes and assesses the road, but they are understaffed and don't get our frequently. Oh, but the UN can hire local staff to drive those roads...its just that the roads are not safe enough for international staff. Ideally, I'll be finding some roads to use as second and third alternatives, in case DSS throws a wrench into everyone's operation.

Yup, so I'm bored today, and I have time to write in a blog and do some Cartisan work. But I'd also like to go get some dudhpati (chai, with goats milk) to keep me awake, and to keep up the mojo. And the rain has stopped too, which is good. That means not only will I not get wet, but that hopefully there will be less landslides on the roads I want to drive. Oh, and hopefully less landslides through towns and people.

I'd post pictures, but KodakGallery is 5 ways of slow, so maybe tomorrow.

2006-02-05T22:34:00.000+05:00

This should get you all up to speed on what has occured in my life during the past four months. More details will follow. To begin:

I am no longer in New Orleans

I did not go to Lebanon

I moved out of DC very quickly

I've been in Pakistan

I have had three beards

I went to Idaho and Italy

I was in a car accident

I'm engaged

I went back to Pakistan

I like rugs and want to sell some to you

I make maps in Pakistan

I've gained some weight

I had tea with a Khan

I can cuss like a sailor in Urdu. In fact, chupa lagao, chuts!

I work a lot saving babies. This post just cost a few, so who knows when I'll update this again.