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Over the years, my work has taken me around
the world, and as I travelled to more and more
developing countries I began to appreciate
just how lucky we in the West really are. As a
backpacker travelling through places, there
was never enough time to do more than just
sightsee, and I never felt I was helping the
poorer people I encountered. When I got home
I wanted to do something more, so I completed
an advanced course in first aid and started
investigating humanitarian organisations that
I could volunteer with. I had a background in
arduous adventure sports, so I was looking
for an organisation that would test my limits.
I found out about a small Australian medical
NGO called Australian Aid International (AAI;
http://www.aai.org.au).
AAI appealed to me because of its small
size. This makes it a very flexible, nimble and
effective organisation in the wake of a disaster,
where, in the first few critical weeks, everything
is mayhem. AAI is a non-profit Non-Government
Organisation, committed to mitigating the dou-
ble burden of poverty and poor access to quality
healthcare in regions where healthcare systems
and medical infrastructure have collapsed. AAI
regards healthcare as a fundamental human
right, and strives to make it available in some of
the most remote and dangerous regions of the
world, targeting those communities where the
need is greatest.
In October of 2005, an earthquake
measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit northern
Pakistan, resulting in over 86,000 fatalities and
almost three and a half million people being
made homeless. I decided to go with AAI to Pa-
kistan, leaving my wife and two small children
behind in Australia. I was worried that I might
not be effective, as I had no medical training
and it was my first time volunteering, but AAI
were looking for determined, fit and eager
young individuals to provide logistical support
and first-aid services to their team of medical
personnel in the most remote and dangerous
places in Kashmir, and I fitted the bill.
Once in Pakistan, we were sent to theremotest villages that had received no aid. We
were either choppered in or trekked for hours
to reach villages cut off by landslides. Most
vulnerable were the young, the old and the
traumatised, who were unwilling or unable to
seek help due to the remote location and vari-
ous social and cultural barriers.
What I saw was complete devastation. As
far as the eye could see, homes had been
flattened and people wandered around aim-
lessly. Whole mountains had opened up and
moved. Hillsides had collapsed and swallowed
up roads, making crossing them dangerous,
even on foot, as aftershocks were still being felt
weeks after the initial quake. But what struck
me the most was talking to people. Everyone
I met had lost someone in their family; some
were the only survivors. We would talk to each
other despite the lack of a common language,
but I couldn’t get over the empty look of sad-
ness and mourning in their eyes. We slept in
tents only metres from freshly dug graves, as
they were the only safe places to camp.
For mile upon mile, the hills, ridges and val-
leys were dotted with fallen houses. Poorly built
to begin with, these structures stood no chance
against the earthquake’s fury; their occupants
possessed even less hope of survival. The
dwellings in these remote villages were built
without effective foundations; they were just
large rocks piled on top of each other to act as
walls, and roofs made of the same large stones
and foot-wide wooden beams held together by
two feet of mud. When the earthquake struck,
there was no time for people to evacuate their
homes, as most buildings toppled in the first
few seconds, burying people alive or killing
them instantly as heavy roof beams and 100kg
rocks fell on top of them.
The hardest thing for me was dealing with the
children. Having two children of my own, it was
hard not to become emotional when little boys
and girls wandered up to me with deformed
limbs due to untreated broken bones. Large
wounds were common among children, and so
were scabies and acute respiratory infections –not to mention the emotional trauma of
losing parents, brothers, sisters and friends.
One boy was stuck under the rubble for eight
hours when his school collapsed. He had
seen his friends die and heard their screams
only feet away. He had broken his hip in
three places, and when he went to the hos-
pital they told him to go home and sleep on
it and it would get better. We found him after
a week in bed, in agony, unable to move. We
stabilised his leg and got him to a hospital to
be properly treated. Another case was of a
boy who had a large open wound that had
become infected. We came across his father
by accident, who told us about him (in very
broken English), and told us he was going to
amputate his son’s leg. We quickly walked
the two hours to his house to find him, but
luckily the wound was healing well and the
leg did not require amputation.
I returned home after a few weeks and
instantly got the guilt feelings that so many
experience once they return to their own
country. Thoughts such as, ‘Did I do enough?’
‘I should have stayed longer.’ ‘I wonder how
the people we treated are.’ ‘Did they survive?’
whirled around my brain. Once home I
continued monitoring events in Pakistan but
it wasn’t long until I was needed again, this
time in East Timor in June 2006.
Today, I continue to volunteer with AAI,
helping with their website and public rela-
tions. The time I spent volunteering abroad
was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve
done. It’s hard to stay focused at the scene
of a disaster as, at first glance, the work
you do seems too insignificant to make a
difference. I firmly believe, however, that if
everyone does their little bit, situations as a
whole can be improved. The camaraderie in
these places was fantastic, as people from
all over the world rushed to the aid of in-
nocent victims who, without our help, would
definitely have perished.Paul Piaia, Special Cartographic
Project Manager, Lonely PlanetAn Emergency Relief
Experience
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05: Organised Volunteer Programmes:An Emergency Relief ExperiencePaul Piaia about to be airlifted into a remote Pakistani village to bring emergency relief following the 2005 earthquake. Photo: Nathan Mullins