(written on 17 October 2006)
Pakistan beat Sri Lanka in style today at the ICC Champions Trophy in India; it was Pakistan’s first game of the tournament. I got to watch it on the TV here at the hotel which was a bonus, as I don’t have a TV in Gilgit, nor access to one.
I’m finally getting into the actual work of my project with AKRSP. On Monday, I came out here early. An engineer from my project area and I went up to one of the potential hydel sites we visited last week. I didn’t really do anything but observe. But I was able to watch the survey (for elevation, exclusively) of the site from the existing channel to a potential powerhouse site. As I sat there on a large boulder in the warm morning sun, I looked up at the surveyor's rod, past the survey tripod and level to the top of a sheer rock face that rose up behind the channel. The day was fine, clear and clean. I marvelled at the opportunity I have been given to get right in with this kind of grass-roots engineering. This is where it’s at, where engineering and social responsibility and real needs come together and one person can observe all three aspects of development work and quickly evaluate how well they come together for a certain project. Today, as we sat around in a circle with the institutional development manager for the region and about 10 village “notables” discussing the feasibility of widening the current channel for the hydel site, I was further struck by the integration of engineering and social responsibility at this level. Previously, I wasn’t sure if such was possible. The merits of development work are dubious at best in most cases, it seems, and the merits of large-scale commercial engineering projects are rarely even that well established, beyond their immediate profitability. I’m not saying there are no problems at this level, just that it’s more clear what they are and how to resolve them responsibly and sustainably
The discussion around the water channel emphasized to me the utter dependence of these people on secure water supplies. This must the case in any arid area. In the west, especially Canada, we take our supply of fresh water completely for granted. Here one channel can be the life-blood of a village. If it ceases to function, the village cannot exist.
As I walked up through the market town where I am staying, today I marvelled at the water flowing along the road (which became a strangled, rocky path and then a road again), neatly guided by a series of channels. Large, healthy trees overhung the path. Neat dry stone walls ringed private property and agricultural land. At one point the water overshot the path landing in a channel on the opposite side and continued down through the village. Despite the poverty that exists everywhere, the village is quaint and picturesque. And its livelihood is on display. Available resources are visible. When they are depleted, their loss is painfully obvious. A barren, boulder-covered field stretches out above the village, where water has not been channelled. And higher up, where there is water again, trees cling to the sides of vast piles of ancient glacial moraine.
From atop the pile of moraine I looked down into the valley and across to the foot of an intersecting valley. There, as is the case everywhere where settlements exist in these valleys, the irrigation channel supplying the underlying villages charts a straight line of green across barren, rocky, vertical slopes of grey boulders, red and white granite and yellow deposits. Below, where gravity takes the water, things grow, above the land is dead and hostile.
Higher up, in winter, snow covers the high ridges. In spring it melts and feeds the hungry valleys.
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