Reblogged from MarySmith’sPlace:

The next few months were busy. As always reports were needed and funding bids – I laboured over one from WHO which, from diary entries seemed to take forever to complete (all those objectives, outputs and activities) –meetings and travelling. Quetta weather was becoming colder and wetter. It rained solidly for five days, ending with a terrific thunderstorm (and several leaks in our roof) then it became colder and the pipes froze so we had no water and the gas pressure was so low there was scarcely any heat from the fires. The staff was fetching water from the nearby mosque but even after leaving the buckets to sit for hours it was still dirty looking. A trip to Karachi let me soak up some much needed sunshine.

We had meetings in Peshawar in North West Frontier Province where we were woken on our last night by an earthquake. We’d become accustomed to earth tremors in Quetta but this one shook the bed, rattled the windows and made a terrifying noise. We learned a few days later around 1,000 people were killed across the border in Afghanistan and flooding afterwards caused further deaths.

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