Common Cause: Call for support from Islamabad

Common Cause

Call for support from Islamabad

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On 12 October 2005 an email arrived here with a call for help that came out of Islamabad from Rita Bruun Akhtar, the text of which is reproduced here:

Dear friends,

I don't know how to describe the atmosphere here in Islamabad today. The city is absolutely buzzing. Everybody is working constructively to help. My daughter and her high school friends are at the public hospital working in the children's ward. In between they collect clothes and money in the name of their classmate Salman Rahat (February 2, 1988 ?October 8, 2005) who perished in the fall of the Margalla Tower.

In every house that I know of, people are working day and night on some aspect of relief. My dear friend Safia is coordinating relief for women and children under the auspices of SOS Children's Villages of Pakistan. Already on Sunday, she had established a shelter that would accommodate 80. Last night she heard that she might need to be seeking shelter for four to five thousand. I've been sitting in my office designing forms for their intake. At lunch, I went to my friend Zarene's who was holding a meeting on the longer term problem of reconstruction. I've promised to find out for her all I can about cheaply built and simply constructed sustainable housing possibilities. Who out there in the wider world is in that business who can help us?

As I write this, I receive a message on my cell phone from the mobile service provider appealing for earthquake relief money. Zarene has now gone off to the collection point for relief goods set up by her friend at DHL, who when I saw her at our "lunch meeting" --it's Ramadan -- was finalizing the logistics of shipping blood to Muzaffarbad. I should add that in the process she called the main public health hospital in Islamabad to see if they needed blood and was informed that they have enough ?another manifestation of the incredible community spirit we're seeing. I'm about to go with Safia to see the SOS shelter.

Tomorrow I'll see the principal of my children's school, which lost a third grader -- a little girl named Neha -- as well as Salman, their recent graduate, to find out how my office, the U.S. Educational Foundation in Pakistan can support the students in their relief activities. And then, who knows. More of the same into the foreseeable future?

I hear helicopters overhead.

The incredible community spirit is one bright spark in an otherwise very grim situation. Islamabad was an island of beauty and tranquility in this otherwise very poor and troubled country. Our coveted but undeserved isolation is coming to a shocking and dramatic end as the injured and homeless descend on us from the hills. We sense that it is over for us and still we know we are very very lucky.

Please do put me in touch with someone who has ideas about sustainable housing reconstruction.

Rita Akhtar
Senior Educational Adviser
US Educational Foundation www.usefpakistan.org