Javeria Malik, ActionAid Pakistan Comms Officer

On 27th May, Shafqat and I visited ActionAid-shifa Mobile medical camp at Village Kotha (Swabi). It had been set up inside a vacant government building. Local volunteers alloted patients numbered slips which helped the doctors call them in for examination turn wise.

It was encouraging to see women and girls discuss their health problems openly and confidently with the doctors and nurses. We spoke with Raheela Bibi 21 from Dir who said   " I had a miscarriage on my way from Dir to Swabi. It was very painful and my clothes were covered with blood. I felt faint. When we arrived at the Host family, I was bed ridden for a week. Even now I feel pain and cramps. Here at the medical camp a female nurse examined me and later a doctor attended to me. They have given me medicines and I 'll get better soon."

Another girl named Walayat Bibi, 19 from Dir said "my eyes were red and watery. I showed it to the doctor here and he has given me eye-drops. We are new in this area so we don't know where the hospital is located. We don't even have money to pay for transport and medicines. This camp has come to our area and it is very convenient for us. I will bring my mother here so that she can also get medicine for her stomach problem."

The medical camp offered separate waiting areas for women and men. Ismat Bibi 35 said "I came to this camp only for the medical check up but I have made friends here. I didn't know that so many women like me were suffering from depression. This is because we don't know with whom to share our traumatic experience. Now that I have spoken my heart out with fellow patients, I feel light and well."

While waiting in the separate rooms, they engaged in conversation about their family matters, their travel experience from their hometowns to Swabi and as our translator told us,  also told jokes to one another and laughed. It was a pleasant sight. 15 years old Noor Jahan was also among the women waiting for their turn. She had come to Swabi from Swat with her maternal Aunt and Uncle. Her father had died 10 years ago while she was very young and her mother passed away just few months back due to heart attack. "I am happy to see a doctors' team here. My Aunt is suffering with high blood pressure and while fleeing our home, we could not bring her medicine with us. I hope she gets it here".

Rub Nawaz 62 from Mingore (swat) who had brought his 6 year old nephew Abdul Majeed to the camp was pleased with the medical services and said "the doctor listened to me very carefully and was very kind to my nephew. He treated us both with respect and for us Pakhtoons, this is more important than the medicine". Majeed was prescribed medicine for fever and children's multivitamin syrup. 

Shafqat Munir, ActionAid Pakistan Regional Comms, reports from the Northwest Frontier

The North Western Frontier province government fears that the number of internally displaced may reach 2 million - the confirmed figure of registration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other agencies is over a million so far. Hundreds of thousands are scattered at various unregistered places.

"A few members of my family and I have decided to leave our home leaving all belonging there with a hope to go back soon. We are not like Afghan ‘mohahirs' (refugees) but we left our places temporarily. I want to go back to harvest wheat crop as my brothers are stranded due to curfew and fighting," said Mr Behram Khan, 30, of Nawan Kallay, district Buner (pictured).

Mr Behram is a public transport driver and his family owns a small piece of land, which he and his brothers cultivate. Mr Behram, a father of four children came to Jalala camp set up in Takht Bai to have some kind of food aid for his family. He is among hundreds of thousands of scattered people who have not been registered at Jalala and other settled camps but have been registered in the vicinity.

He said his family and other relatives have been registered with the World Food Programme and are being residing at Takht Bai high school but they are not receiving any food or relief aid there so they have come to Jalala camp, but the camp administration has refused to give them any food.

“Whatever cash I had in hand has already been spent during last few days on shuttling between my temporary camp and to the settled camp but I could not get even a single bread,” said Mr Behram.

Javeria Malik, ActionAid Pakistan Comms Officer

Today we are visiting a camp in Mardan district (Takht Bhai area) Jalala camp. We have seen hordes of men and boys gathered around a truck from where the bread was being distributed. This happens at all meal times.

It was very hot and women, girls and small children were cramped inside small tents with hand fans. They were waiting for food. There is no electricity in these camps, with 6 to 10 people living in one tent.  It gets so uncomfortble and suffocating inside.

Women due to purdah (veil tradition) do not step out of the tent apart from for using the toilet. They even wash their personal clothes inside those small tents and hang them inside for drying. Girls are having many problems pertaining to sanitation and personal hygiene. Sanitary pads, etc are not available.

They have to drink hot water as ice is seldom available. One man said he fainted one day due to dehydration as he couldn’t make himself drink hot water in scorching heat.

Women told us when its sunset, their hearts ache for their homes. They cry every evening and pray for their relatives that are still trapped in the conflict areas.

One old woman Zartaja Bibi said they were warned by the Taliban that if they didn't leave their homes their throats would be cut. The woman was trembling, she said "I miss my home where Taliban are living now."

Javeria Malik, ActionAid Pakistan Comms Officer reports from the emergency camps in Pakistan

People are really exhausted and traumatised. I met a 9-month pregnant woman aged 18 who had to climb a mountain in order to cross over to Swabi from Buner. Her family didn’t have any money to pay to the transporter so they took a short and hard route to reach the camp 2 days back.

The woman has had a miscarrige earlier and this time she has developed severe lower abdominal pain. A female doctor is available but due to the large number of patients she has not yet visited the woman.

In another incident, a woman went into labour on way to the camp and all purdah and modesty aside had a baby on the truck that she was travelling in.

People cry while telling their stories. They talk about and recall their homes and livestock and burst into tears. They are shaken and very depressed.

Javeria Malik, ActionAid Pakistan Comms Officer

Families are still arriving in the camps and being registered. However for getting food supplies they have to travel on their own to the food distribution points where they stand in long queues waiting their turn.

Women-headed households and the disabled face difficulties: in the Pashtun culture it is considered highly immodest for women to go out of the house, even in emergencies. Women whose husbands or other male family members weren't present at time of lunch and dinner would prefer staying hungry instead of standing in queues for food alongside men.

We saw burqa-clad women sitting in separate portions at the registration points. They told us that their husbands were either killed or stayed back to sell property.

People are facing difficulties in terms of medical facilities especially expectant mothers who are not getting check ups or midwives for delivery.  In Pashtun culture, women observe strict purdah and we noticed that while men were sitting outdoors (outside their camps) in the evening, women stayed inside the tents. They feel their dignity is compromised if they stand in queues for food alongside men or even if they are seen walking up to the toilet by men. They wait till dusk to go to the toilet. Even pregnant women don't visit the dispensary as they don't want to be seen by others.

Paul Wu, ActionAid video producer/director

After breakfast of paratha and curry we went back to the brothel and filmed an interview with Etty and Smreeti's mother Momo Taz. What a shit life! Six kids, two died, Etty, Smreeti and two boys who are now on drugs in the brothel. Her mother, grandmother and aunt were all sex workers and when she did get married her husband beat her up and abused her. She services 10 clients a day in a two and a half meter square room in the brothel complex and makes barely enough money to survive.

She felt that her life was over - all she had left to hope for was that her daughters would do better. She hid her sorrow with smiles she said and then gave me a lascivious look and told the others that she'd want to go with me to see what it was like and said I looked like an indigenous mountain person. Everybody laughed.

Kamal couldn't get involved in the filming this time - he had to leave the corrugated metal shack we were in because it was too hot. Indeed it was like a sauna and I was soaked in sweat.

After the interview I filmed Momo Taz in her room and wandered around the brothel trying to film kids secretly. I also filmed a newborn baby. A girl.

Then some of the sex workers gathered to chat with Kamal and the partner organisation lady for the sake of some filming.

I then secretly filmed a client coming out from a young mother's shack. He looked normal - okay looking, respectable. The woman came out with a basin to chuck away the condom after the client was hurried away by her Babhu (pimp/protector). Most of the money the women make goes to rent. That one brothel building made the owner 50,000 Taka a day.

We then took Momo to see her daughters in the centre - it was awkward as if she didn't have anything to say to them especialy Etty. She contributes money to their meals but to all extents and purposes they are off her hands now.

She slunk away without saying goodbye and I filmed the kids playing. Then it was lunchtime and after that time to leave. In-between the kids especially Etty bombarded me with questions about my life, my wife, my kids, why I didn't have religion, whether I eat dogs like other Chinese people etc.

Then it's goodbye time. Smreeti and another girl want to come with me. They want a better life and I completely understand them.

Tomorrow morning I'm filming some slum children in Dhaka - I think it'll probably be a barrel of laughs compared to this place.