By David Fox
MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 19 (Reuters) - As a social worker with a human rights organisation, Khalida Bhatti was used to counselling victims of traumatic events.
She never dreamed her family would ever find themselves caught up in the middle of one of the most catastrophic natural disasters to hit South Asia.
The Oct. 8 quake that killed at least 42,000 people in northern Pakistan tossed the family out of a comfortable middle-class life in the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and into a sprawling tented camp now home to around 3,000 survivors.
"It will be a measure of us how we cope with this tragedy," the articulate mother-of-two told Reuters on Wednesday near her tent in the grounds of the devastated Muzaffarabad University.
"It will be interesting to see how we all cope with this, but I am confident that we will pull through. Already the signs are there that people are recovering. People have an amazing capacity to survive and recover from the most traumatic events."
Khalida and surviving relatives from six families now live side-by-side in three large tents or beneath plastic sheeting.
Three women and four children were killed from their group of around 30 people and 10 injured.
"We are all very normal people," she said. "We are government workers, bureaucrats, a lawyer, a businessman, a teacher, but we have been reduced to the poorest person."
Khalida said the extended family had discussed moving to relatives outside the quake zone.
"I have worked as a counsellor all my life and the advice I always give to people, that I am trained to give, is that the best way to recover is to get back to normal," she said.
"I discussed this with my husband and we agreed that we could not leave. I could not spend the next years with people saying 'shame, they are victims!' I want them to say "look at them, look at how they set an example'."
Unlike many other survivors, many still too shocked to move away from the ruins of their homes, Khalida said her family had organised themselves quickly into an efficient cooperative in which everyone bar the youngest children has a role.
"It is actually quite fascinating," she said with a light laugh. "I think you could do a PhD on our situation and what lies ahead."
CAMP ROUTINE
Khalida said the women rise before dawn to make tea and serve biscuits ahead of the day's Ramadan fast.
"The nights have become more peaceful," she said of her home for the past nine days. "At first there was a lot of crying -- by children and even adults -- but now people are settling down and sleeping."
After morning prayers, the men fan out across the ruins of Muzaffarabad, a once pretty city of around 100,000 people, to look for food and any other aid now pouring into the area.
"We are not short of food," she said. "But we can't live on this type of food forever. There is no shortage of biscuits and things like that, but none of us has had meat since the earthquake and water is a constant struggle."
The older children trudge more than a kilometre (over half a mile) with buckets, pots and bottles to a stand-pipe to fetch water.
The women take turns to baby sit the younger children or do their best to keep their shelters clean and dry, hanging out blankets and quilts soaked by the overnight dew that seems to permeate virtually everything during the cold nights.
"Ablutions are difficult. There is no water or privacy," Khalida says. "It is easy for the men, but the women have to go at night. It is awkward."
Despite only being in her thirties, Khalida is already something of a matriarchal figure in the camp -- and commands respect from the men and women in it.
She pauses near the entrance of one tent and chats to a wizened old man, promising to try to find him an extra blanket after he complains about the cold.
She gives directions to the nearest tented clinic to an anxious young mother with a runny-nosed baby, then gently rebukes a young boy who is teasing his sister.
"Look at them," she says, watching a gaggle of boys playing football with an empty plastic water bottle. "It's almost as if nothing has happened."
Khalida hopes the government will move swiftly to clear space for more permanent, better serviced tented camps, saying only when they feel settled will the adults also feel life beginning to return to normal.
"All these circumstances are very discouraging."
"But I am not discouraged. I refuse to be discouraged."