Oh my landslide

Hi. I'm in the town of Mansehra, near the epicenter of the October 8, 2005 earthquake in the NWFP. We have health, water and sanitation, and mental health projects here. Today I went to along with a mental health/psychosocial team to see their activities and help distribute sewing machines to widows with no sources of income. Basically, just hung out all day in this tiny mountain town--in the clinic and with the community. It was really beautiful. But also sad. The people have lost so much and their daily life is constant struggle. I can't say much more without ranting about suffering and priviledge and tearing up, so I won't.

There are still crazy landslides throughout the mountains and all over the roads, which were hairy enough without all the rubble to climb over--all single lane with no shoulder. I sit behind the driver so I can't see what's going on. Even when he violently swerves, slams the brakes, or blares the horn, I just keep looking out the side window. If we are not getting in an accident, I don't really want to know how close we came, it would just make me tense. We went soo high though, way up into the clouds. Really beautiful.You can see in picture with the man standing how high we were. There is a raging river down there, too far to see.

The top photo of the guys with the goat is one of my favorites. Actually, the guy in the center was my favorite. I took a bunch of him, and they were all really good. He dug it. I was originally taking photos of his goat's football-size scrotom sack (I thought since they they are probably comparable to sheep balls, I could make a funny post out of that) but then he showed great enthusiam for posing for pictures with his goat.
The kids were part of a group of six brothers and sisters who came in to the clinic. And the bottom one is Dr. Sabah and I. I have so many more photos--of rock landslides, more people, the mountains and river, tent cities, the six kids, the goat....
But, there's not enough room on the blog, or juice in this dial-up connection to put them all up. I'll just make sure to put some up each day. Tomorrow I'm going out with the medical teams to some more remote areas and a displaced persons camp. Wednesday is back out to the field with the wat/san teams, then down to Islamabad.
Hope you are all well. Ciao.