One day like a week. . .

We have been so warmly welcomed into this village by the people and are overwhelmed with their friendliness. We’ve been here only a day or so but, having seen so much and met so many new people, it feels like a week already.

Our housemates and ‘minders’, Aneela and Farah, are helping us with some Urdu. Learning to understand the basics, like: come, sit down, go, please and thank you, etc. . . We are a couple of ‘Gories’ here, roughly translating to something like fair-skinned women, we think.

We have started to do a bit in the clinic. It is time consuming to speak to patients through a translator, but it works.

CDRS is well thought of here and Todd has made a very positive impact. There is also a Turkish NGO in town (for constructing homes and clearing landslides), but we are certainly the only New England Yankee women in the area.

The feeling is definitely that Chikar is a remote place. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there are bulldozers permanently parked along the narrow mountain roads at places where they are routinely cut by slides. At some point we will travel further out to more remote areas.

We’ve had a problem with the laptop, so sending any photos will have to wait until we can sort it out. Such a shame because the imagery is amazing; village life going on amongst the rubble with a butcher, a tailor and others plying their trades, kids flying kites from the helipad, (which doubles as a cricket pitch) and the ever present backdrop of the mountains.

We are very happy to be here and feel quite safe and are looking forward to the work ahead.

Judy and Helen