"People were trying to cut through the debris to look for their dear ones. We saw them digging in on

FOUR years ago, Maryam Bibi came to York to study for a master's degree at the university. It was soon clear to both staff and students that she was a remarkable woman - an opinion confirmed earlier this year when she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the 1,000 Women For Peace movement.

This nomination recognised her work setting up the charity Khwendo Kor. It now provides more than 200 schools for girls in the conservative villages and tribal areas of north west Pakistan, where none previously existed. It also trains female health workers and helps women to develop small businesses.

In 2002, UK Friends Of Khwendo Kor was launched in York to support this work.

Maryam achieved her MA and continues to study part-time in York as and when her work in Pakistan allows.

In October, while she was in York, the earthquake struck in Pakistan.

She returned to scenes beyond our worst nightmares.

This is Maryam's story...

ON my return, I immediately learned of the problems being faced there from my sister, a doctor in an Islamabad hospital.

Because of the pressure to treat thousands of seriously injured survivors, patients were being discharged straight after treatment while still in need of nursing and rehabilitation.

These included women and children without families or homes, who became immensely vulnerable to the criminal gangs seeking to exploit them as prostitutes, beggars and child labour.

We immediately sent a team into the hospital to talk to the women about what they needed. It emerged that even more than rehabilitation and shelter, the women wanted reunion with their loved ones, but also simple things such as eating and cooking utensils, soap and towels, since the hospital provided only medical care.

A start was immediately made on providing such basic necessities.

A few days later, I went to the earthquake area with a team of 11 people including a volunteer doctor and a female health visitor.

Words cannot express what we saw on the journey.

People were trying to cut through the debris to look for their dear ones. We saw them digging in one house to take out bodies. There was a terrible smell and flies were all around.

On our way back to Mansehra, we were told that two children, along with their parents and one brother, were found decomposed in that house.

We saw women moaning beside the tiny graves of their children. There were women and children with no family remaining. Many were not in their senses. Children were crying with fear, clinging to their close relatives if alive, or anyone around.

The situation felt like doomsday, as if no one were able to help any one else. Every family seemed to be hit and no one was left to console the survivors.

We went to a camp established for the injured outside the district headquarters hospital in Mansehra.

Before my return within the first week of the emergency, Khwendo Kor had already put together a team including an orthopaedic surgeon and paramedics, and sent them to the earthquake area.

At this stage, there were problems with co-ordination between agencies, issues of safety and security, many villages inaccessible with roads demolished. Relief goods, water, disposable items and clothes were left lying everywhere.

Accustomed to living in purdah and unused to strangers, particularly in the mountain villages, women were hiding in their houses even when aid arrived.

In some cases, no one realised that such female victims were there and in desperate need. We saw that, thanks to our experience of working with women and girls, we might have a unique contribution to make.

The camp I went to was full of the seriously injured, mostly women and children who were at home at the time of the earthquake. There were pregnant women with broken spinal chords, young students with amputated limbs, people with plastered legs, head and shoulders. Little or no medical help was available. My fear was that many would die due to lack of care.

Somebody had donated good quality medicine and materials to us, such as canulas for passing blood and drips. People in the camp rushed to us pleading for help.

Our doctor, the health visitor and even the drivers worked day and night and exhausted the medicine. They became very popular in the camp as they reached almost all tents, did examinations and referrals, and distributed and prescribed medicines.

I spent time talking to women and listening to what they had gone through. One woman said she now felt they were not alone.

Since then, we have run a third camp and I have been meeting the international agencies, Pakistani military, welfare authorities and other local non-governmental organisations as they struggled to bring order to the distribution of aid.

The United Nations has estimated that 90 per cent of tents supplied so far are unsuitable for winter conditions. The ad-hoc camps which have sprung up all over the mountains lack sanitation, medical care and food.

Fire is a constant danger. Nevertheless people do not want to leave them because they want to stay near their homes and families.

Seven local charities including Khwendo Kor have come together to share their varying expertise and attempt to make a real difference in three of these camps.

Our aim is to help people insulate their tents with locally available materials, install sanitation, teach fire prevention and healthcare, provide basic nursing care, refer urgent cases for treatment, survey and repair local buildings, and provide food when necessary.

We are drawing on our skills in education and community development to organise teaching for the children and enable people to emerge from grief and trauma and take over the work themselves.

We want to save lives now, but also provide a basis for healthy communities in the future. money from the large organisations takes time to come through. People are already dying and the winter is rapidly getting worse.

We are anxious to get on with this work immediately. We have been offered office premises in Abbotabad (in the vicinity of the earthquake) rent free for four months and have already started working from there. It is estimated that there are 1,000 people in the three camps and that the cost of the aid required would be £25,000 initially, or £25 per person.

The money already collected by the Friends Of Khwendo Kor has enabled us to start work in the camps. We hope to fund a rehabilitation shelter which we are about to open in Mansehra.

This will provide nursing and rehabilitation close to patients' families and remove their fear of losing touch with friends and relations.

It will also protect them from the kidnapping gangs seeking victimskidnapping them for prostitution and child slavery.

We need to continue with our existing work too. We must look after the village education schemes and the micro-credit and training schemes for women that we had been running before the earthquake struck.

Our experience will be used to help those victims of the earthquake - children who have become orphaned and families who have lost their breadwinner and all means of sheltering and feeding their children.

Donations to help this work can be made online at

www.justgiving.com/frokemergencyappeal or by cheque made payable to UK Friends of Khwendo Kor and sent to The FROK Treasurer, The Old School House, 7 School Lane, Heslington, York YO10 5EE.

More information about FROK and Khwendo Kor can be found on www.frok.org.uk

Updated: 08:47 Tuesday, December 20, 2005