By Giancarlo Rinaldi BBC Scotland news website South of Scotland reporter

Farooq Ahmed outside the school dedicated to his niece

He sifts through images of his recent months in Pakistan almost as if they were ordinary holiday photographs.

Only when he pauses at a picture of his 13-year-old niece who died in the South Asian earthquake does he give any hint of the tragedy he has witnessed.

The Dumfries-based special constable has just returned from helping an area which has lost over 70,000 lives.

Mr Ahmed, 51, is development director with the Muslim Hands charity and spent weeks helping co-ordinate the aid effort in Kashmir to recover from last October's quake.

"I was filling a communication gap between the UN and other agencies," he said.

"It was a real eye-opener. The little things we take for granted in this country are a long way from coming out there.

Folks are beginning to understand the severity of it but they know the worst is over Farooq Ahmed

"I used to let the tap run when I was brushing my teeth but being out there I realise how valuable water is.

"It is the same with the power supply - you take it for granted that it is there every time."

The aid worker, who came to Dumfries in 1979 and lives just outside the town in Cargenbridge, visited all the areas worst hit by the earthquake.

"It has made me realise the value of a life," he said.

"On 10 October last year a woman was sitting on the roof of a collapsed building hoping her seven-year-old son was going to walk out soon.

Buildings have been turned to rubble by the earthquake

"When I met her again five months on she was still waiting for her son."

Mr Ahmed said he tried to talk to her to persuade her to leave the building.

"She just looked at me blankly with no emotion," he said.

"She lost her husband and another two children. She had lost just about everything."

The aid worker was joined in his effort by Dumfries and Galloway's former reporter to the Children's Panel Miller Caldwell.

Among all the devastation the Dumfries men saw some signs of hope for the future.

Miller Caldwell and Farooq Ahmed look back on their aid trip

One such action was the construction of a new school - to be named after Mr Ahmed's niece, Sabahat Qayyum.

"It is going to take years to get back to normality," he admitted.

"Folks are beginning to understand the severity of it but they know the worst is over."

When the father-of-four returns to the region next month he will be part of another important rebuilding mission.

He will be looking for a plot of land to build a home for the family of Shamiam Arif - a three-year-old Kashmiri girl who suffered horrendous burns in a fire in her home country.

The family has received much help from the public in Dumfries and Galloway while she undergoes a lengthy series of operations in the UK.

Eventually they hope to return to Kashmir and be part of a land slowly recovering from a devastating natural disaster.