In April 2019, three Pakistani women set out on a journey to collect climate change narratives from communities all across the country. Our team – comprising an environmental scientist, an educationist and a documentary filmmaker – had just won a grant from the National Geographic Society. This grant allowed us to observe how ordinary people in Pakistan are being affected by climate change and how communities are tackling it. Pakistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Early on in our research, we also began observing an interesting pattern. In order to get access into communities, we would first contact a focal person there. These focal persons were always men, and when we would request them to help us meet community members from their area they would only arrange our meetings with other men there.

We were in Reshun Valley, Chitral when we met a young banker named Sonia when I was photographing an area devastated by the flood. She simply walked towards us with her younger sister and we began conversing.

Listening to her changed our entire perspective completely. Sonia spoke about the gut wrenching sound of the flood just before it hit her village, and she kept hearing the sounds in her head months after the flood had passed. She explained how she and her cousins had to rebuild new, smaller houses on the other side of the river because the flood had literally eaten away the land their homes were built on; and as a result of this displacement familial ties had gotten negatively affected because the sense of togetherness was gone. She spoke about trauma, loss, nostalgia and memories of her old home and farmland in a way no man had spoken to us before, and that is when we fully realized how well-rounded one’s research can be if researchers make an effort to talk to more women.

“When the flood had passed, that was when I realized all that we had lost. I used to look at this place and get very… Geplaatst door Climate Stories Pakistan op Vrijdag 5 juli 2019

“I was taught by my grandparents that if you cut a tree without reason or need, it calls out to God to seek protection… Geplaatst door Climate Stories Pakistan op Vrijdag 12 juli 2019

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=353221695345063

They say when you travel, your long held stereotypes about people and places break. That was true for us too, except for one stereotype that ended up being reinforced instead in our case. It is the stereotype of men’s inability to take directions when on the road. From the desert of Nagarparkar to the plains of Okara and the mountains of Chitral, we found all our otherwise amazing drivers to be resistant towards asking for directions even if they were lost in a place they had never visited before and there were local pedestrians on the road who could have easily guided us. This became a running joke of sorts during this journey.

Another such person was Riza Ali who we met in Badswat situated in the Ishkoman Valley of District Ghizer. We had come to Badswat after a six hour long, extremely difficult drive to see the aftermath of the submersion of an entire village under a newly formed lake due to a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). There was no phone reception there, and no human being in sight all around the vast expanse of the lake. It felt like a scene out of an apocalyptic film in which everything and everyone had been decimated.

We walked around the place, I took photographs, we began trekking upwards on foot and the area continued to appear fully uninhabited. And then suddenly, from the back of one of the mountains in the distance emerged a group of men who kept walking towards us. One of them was a lean, young man named Reza Ali. After we initiated a conversation with the men, Reza told us, “I could see you from the distance and it seemed like you needed help.” Reza worked with us the entire day without any expectation of reward, helping us to talk to as many people in the area as he could and then fed us a generous supper at his home before he finally allowed us to say goodbye to him.

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