from the horizon

I arrived in Pakistan at 3am-ish in the morning, grateful that my bags had turned up and even more grateful that there was a driver there to pick me up.

It was great to see Jo again. She’d gone to Pakistan a month before me, so it was good to have someone to show me round (ie. Drag me to tailors while she picked up the outfits that she’d had made)

OK, so she wasn’t the only one shopping.

My first week here has been … challenging. I spent it traveling between Islamabad and Peshawar.

Islamabad is an interesting city, it was “planned” about 30 years ago. The result is a fairly pretty city with wide tree lined roads, but not a lot of soul. I found it quite interesting how the trees had created spaces with limited the human hussle and bussle. Having been to a number of planned cities, I think I am beginning to see their problem. When you plan a city, all you can possibly get is the city you planned to get. When a city grows organically, that’s when the magic happens.

Peshawar is located 3 hours away from Islamabad, close to the Afghan border. The main office for my organisation in Pakistan is in Peshawar, and has been running for over 20 years, working with the Afghan Refugees. It’s much busier, and less developed than Islamabad. There are donkeys and horse and carts on the streets. I’ll have to get some photos.

As well as acclimatizing to a new place, I discovered that they already had a logistics database in place. Although it was very basic, there was still resistance to upgrade to the system that I’d designed. I did know that this wasn’t going to be easy.

I went back to Islamabad for the weekend, and went to a NGO Party which totally out-classed anything in Aceh. 100-200 people, DJs, smoke machines, lasers. I let off steam on the dance floor.

Finally, after a week, I got to Mansehra, where I’ll be based, and I unpacked my bags. Mansehra is in the earthquake affected region, nestled high in the mountains, so it’s a bit cooler. Because it so quite, and so warm, sometime I feels like I’m living in a holiday town, then I realize that the beach is several thousand kilometers away and I’m here to work!