The Marrow of LIfe: THE RUBBLE OF BALAKOT, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan (Sep. 06)

Dungeons of Debris

I don’t know why it surprised me, the rubble! They were everywhere, huge piles of concrete and debris over whelming everything, even the very mountains. The CMS progress report I was going to write could be summarised into 2 words. 'No progress', or so it seemed that 1^st night we arrived. A year on after the earth quake, all I could see were scarred mountains looking down on piles of rubble, and a scavenger peoples that seemed to have survived nevertheless. Even the photographs that 1^st night, reflect the sense of despair that we felt; of the emptiness despite the scavenging survivors and the dungeons of debris. We heard the stories over and over again, how some of the most beautiful pine fresh mountains that embellished many a travel guide had suddenly been torn apart swallowing up entire villages, whole. We listened, breathing in the awkward still dusk as hollow eyed grown men, told us how their wives and children were swallowed whole by the treacherous ground. We apologised uncomfortably conscious that repeating these stories to every wide eyed visitor that came was probably not helping.

‘The worst was the stench of death’, one volunteer who were among the 1^st rescue workers that arrived at the scene described. ‘It was impossible to find survivors in the piles of the dead. Everywhere you dug you were likely to find dead bodies’, he elaborated as I uncomfortably pried at the mound of soil I was standing on. Night had come with its soft muggy claustrophobic mists and veiled the mountains in morose shadows, and the stories of the 100s of school children that were buried alive were feeding our despairing morbidity. 85 000 people had died in the span of minutes, and worse the rest were still struggling; survival was still a day to day challenge.

As we stood on the bridge looking back on the desolation which had once been a pretty rustic mountain village, I was overwhelmed with a grief that wasn’t mine. Forgotten memories of a charred corpse came seeping back insidiously, choking me with nausea. The river splashed against the bridge as the enormity of the scale of death and destruction became obvious. Despair seemed to lap against the overwhelmed team as they dejectedly watched the river in impotent misery. I was recalling a promise that held that nothing beyond what we could bear would be given to us to carry. I thought of all the death, destruction desolation and despair our generation had seen in reproach. Who could carry this?!! This abandoned generation that I could see no hope or healing for.

Almost in response a knot of children approached us on the bridge wanting their pictures taken. There was no dejection or despair in their countenance. They could have been children from anywhere, and their curiosity and bright bashful faces kindled something akin to hope. As the many encounters of the restoration work we witnessed established, the almost primal beauty of the survivalist resilience and altruistic kinship that knits humanity in the face of overwhelming adversity, is as old as the imposing mountains and as refreshing as the fresh-water springs. But most surprisingly in these hidden depths of divine design is a fulfilment of a promise.