A Pebble's Thoughts on Another Fountain

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto -or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nore those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers -show me yours -show me that it is possible -show me your achievement -and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
~Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Okay. So since I have not gone to work a single day this week, know from now that I cannot help writing about esoteric subjects and compiling what I feel are ethereal photo collages -you'll have to forgive both. Also, you don't have to have read it to read about it below (don't worry, I make it understandable after the first paragraph so please don't let it scare you away).

I must say to you this (if I have not ever hinted at it before): Ayn Rand is a genius. Really and truly. You don't have to agree with her fully (and I don't) to appreciate her artistic literary abilities and her philosophical insights into the only world she must have known. I'd already read Atlas Shrugged -in some ways, I did like it more than The Fountainhead... makes sense I suppose, since the former was the culminatory apex of her philosophy in the form of a novel (and who could not love Dagny Taggart more than Dominique Francon? But I do prefer Howard Roark to Hank Rearden or Francisco D'Anconia or even John Galt... but in a sense, he's essentially The Fountainhead's Dagny... or maybe it was John Galt, or a combination of both?). So in some ways, her weakness lies in the formulaic nature of her novels (at least when we compare these two), but imagine finding someone's work formulaic, but loving it anyway?

I'm sorry, how rude of me -I should explain a bit of Rand's philosophy here. It's called Objectivism and is an idealized form of individualism, capitalism, within a framework of integrity, meritocracy and love for reason, and the life lived passionately, dedicated to producing only the highest expression of purposeful action that embodies the spirit of man. The ideal man is the dynamic man who truly loves himself, regardless of what the world around him thinks or tries to do to him (in an awe-inspiring and genuine way, not a false self-love, like the insecurity of conceit) and inspite of all that. Rand's heroes retain a moral purity in this respect, and flawlessly demonstrate the human capacity to produce stunning works of genius (in any sphere of life), but also grapple with their own existential struggles, hopes and dreams thwarted, victims of a kind of moral social injustice that is not meritocratic.

Her philosophy is atheistic and very contemptuous of 'humanitarianism' and the idea of 'serving others' / altruism -but only, I think, within the context of an understanding of these that make them abhorrent to me too. The premise of these ideological adversaries is 1) that there's no such thing as humanitarianism and altruism, so if people claim them, then it is corrupt and full of a hatred of man and contempt of self; 2) that there is no God because the Judeo-Christian God makes sinners of men rather than supporting their potential for productive excellence, thus making them self-hating right from the get-go. See? You'd make 'em your enemies too.

But I would disagree. Well, maybe not about the altruism (I agree that there is no such thing, because even if all you get is satisfaction, well, you're still getting that much, which is a whole lot more than nothing).

Humanitarianism in the way that I understand it, and the way that the Aga Khan embodies it (in the most idealized way, in my opinion), it is not with a corrupt ulterior goal of "power over all men", but actually recognizing that by improving the lot of other people (who may have done nothing to deserve it, even if the idea of 'deserving' is rather judgmental, and I guess Ms. Rand and I part ways on the issue of whether or not it's our place to judge) by providing certain educational, economic and health opportunities, we are in fact trying to help transform this actual, current, real world into Rand's meritocratic kind of Utopia. The difference is that Rand says pure individualism and selfishness (granted, her definition of 'selfishness' is more a sense of unshakable self-respect and honest self-interest, but which, unfortunately, we see rarely manifested in reality) will result in automatic cooperation and an ideal, higher order society. Sounds rather Adam Smith to me. The ideal is really the excellence though. And there are ways to get there practically without assuming that the low, and the poor of spirit deserve to rot in their misery, while the enlightened few create and inhabit some kind of Earthly Eden (except the inhabitants could regularly eat from the Tree of Knowledge). So I disagree with the underlying cynicism that people cannot change -if given the right social and environmental conditions, spiritual and intellectual nurturing, I ask, who wouldn't be transformed with that kind of awakening?

And also, belief in God, or awe of Nature or the Universe, does not translate to self-abasement, contempt, feeling like a meaningless nothing... i.e. you can still appreciate that "I am physically small with respect to the world around me, but I have the capacity to do so much, and have it mean something, or do something, or serve some function or another, and understand what I produce completely, even if it's not in the magnitude of quasars, supernovas or making oceans, because I'll honour those things by trying to make use of them, and give them meaning, at the very least!"

It also doesn't necessarily mean that we have an Eve-complex about taking a bite from the Tree of Knowledge... personally, I think she was the smart one to do it first, and God being God knew that they would, and God being all-loving, most likely loved his own creation even more for it (why would he make such a big deal out of creating a mere stupid, senseless, non-intellectually curious thing... makes no sense at all to me -our whole purpose in life is to take as many bites as possible of the blessed fruit from that sacred Tree) -and I won't apologize for my perspective here at all. And it's fully in line with the Ismaili intellectual tradition (if you doubt it, read Abu Ya'qub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary by Paul E. Walker -yes, it's an IIS book).

Well, there you go... read her anyway though. She makes one contemplate these things. And isn't that some wonderous genius in itself?

The Body Doth Protest Much

Ha. I think I've broken my own record since I've been in Pakistan -almost a week since I last blogged. Multiple forces at play though. Mainly, I have been ill, and there have been Internet connection problems in the Women's Residences all week, while I've been cooped up here.

And unlike the expression from which this blog entry title derives, I mean it sincerely: this week my body just totally caved. It started out with cramping and nausea and headaches and dizziness, calling in sick Monday. Tuesday more of the same forced me to go visit the doc at the AKU Community Health Centre (CHC, not to be confused with CHS, which is the department in which I'm working this summer). 2 hours later, and about 500 rupees (which is like $7, for the consult AND the drugs) later, I was back home, popping Cipro and Entamizole (which is diloxanide furoate / metronidazole) -evidently, trying to cover all bases (whether bacterial or parasitic in nature), and pouring Oral Rehydration Salts into my litres of water. Inshallah, they are working. It's my first time taking prescribed meds in years! And well, surely as much as they're helping, I'll bet my good health that they're also exacerbating my nausea, and killing off my good intestinal flora too (because these drugs will just kill everything... I still have my reservations about prescribed drugs, but I was just getting desperate and I don't have the variety of naturopathic stuff that I usually have at home, at my disposal here!).

Needless to say, with a kichri (mushed rice and split green lentils which is light on the stomach)-based diet over the last few days, I was gradually getting better, and then I made the poor choice of eating yogurt with rice last night (the kichri had run out), and so, today was a day of regression from my progress... Don't feel badly for me, please just pray I get better ASAP so that I can go back to doing what I came here to do!

Basically, I have not gone to work all week. I finished watching "Stephen Hawking's Universe", and finished reading The White Tiger. I also turned on my TV here for the first time since living in this dorm room, to discover that I actually get HBO, BBC, FOX and an Arab/Dubai-based station that shows American films, TV series, etc. I watched Mama Mia! yesterday -it's really quite entertaining -light (obviously), but how can one not enjoy the combination of Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth. I'm almost done reading How Doctors Think and have taken a sizeable bite out of the very long, philosophical, masterpiece-of-a-novel, The Fountainhead.

And today, I watched the Audrey Hepburn classic Roman Holiday. And this last was a wonderful experience because I realized that it was the first Audrey Hepburn movie I ever saw: I was probably 10 years-old (or younger) when I first saw it on TV -my first black-and-white, and I loved it -watched the whole darn thing (which says a lot because as you know, most kids don't have the patience for black-and-white films). My whole life (since then), I have been trying to find this movie whose name I didn't know, nor the names of the actors starring in it, that I had found so absolutely enchanting. And then today at last, after having borrowed it from our good family friends, I discovered it. And loved it (again, and probably more with all that longing since my childhood) -absolutely loved it! Probably one of my favourite movies of all time, I think.

So there you have it. This is what happens to someone capable of deeper and more meaningful reflections, when they become a prisoner in their bedroom for a week. I guess it all happens for a reason though, as they say. Apparently this kind of GI-sick is a rite of passage here, and through all the pain and the nausea, the little diversions have been enjoyable, I suppose. I'm really ready to go back to work though! Really, really. Pray for my belly ;)

Tough up, stomach!

Oh, let's lighten up! Interesting stories and fun cultural encounters

Enough tragedy for one week, eh? Let me tell you about some fun!

Last night I went to Clifton Jamatkhana (my 4th Jamatkhana in Karachi!). Very nice, pristine, pretty... but as my Aunty says, "it's the Dollar Jamatkhana". It's in the wealthiest part of Karachi, and everyone there is in all their finery... feels more 'Westernized' -they actually even read firman in English, so basically it felt almost exactly like khane at home. Nice of course (khane is khane after all), but the thing doesn't happen to your soul the same way. Anyway, it's been good to try out all the different ones.

Then we went to dinner with some good friends of Uncle and Aunty (who are our good family friends whom I keep bringing up in these posts!), both of whom are doctors and professors at AKU (cardio and GI specialists), with lots of experience and interesting stories. It was especially fascinating to hear the true story (and it will sound like something out of a book to you) of the lovely interactions between the doctor-couple, Uncle and Aunty, and a very famous painter, which they recalled with such fondness... and then of the sudden gruesome murder of the painter and his wife by their servants. Sad, really -very sad. But very interesting to learn more about the kind of people that this painter and his wife were, and what may have led up to the tragic demise... And then also to hear about some of the crazies who worked as guards / servants for the doctor-couple themselves, including the thievery, and "military trained", suspected-to-very-likely-be a... well, you know, one of those guys who belong to the non-state militant group whom certain countries are fighting ... anyway, of course the dude was fired long ago. But really, stories like you never thought happened in real life to people you'd meet!

Then this morning, I essentially paid $10.50 for waxing (unheard of, right? wrong! now I finally understand why Desi girls at home feel like they're getting ripped off if they have to pay more than $4 to get their eyebrows done...)

Later today, we went to visit a well-known tailor of the kinds of clothes worn in this country, who is also a good friend of Aunty's, and who has also made clothes for Royalty (Ismaili royalty at that...) in the past, and who will be making some gorgeous clothing for my sister, my mum and I (hey, I'm not big on shopping, but if you've gotta shop, might as well get really nice things made, rather than buying lots of cheap stuff that will give you a rash when you wear or use them and turn to rags upon washing... am I wrong? And plus, although they are slightly pricey by local standards (and also by home standards, I suppose, unless you're shopping designers), if you were to actually buy them back home, they'd probably be more than double the price!).

And then, I met up with some of my AKU friends at Zainab market (which is like a huge bazaar, very much like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, with a billion little shops that all sell the same cheap, fake stuff...), as well as a couple of other markets in that same 'downtown' / 'old Karachi' area. What was really fun was playing one shop-keeper off another to get a better deal (sometimes you can just bargain, but sometimes, they're so rude they won't budge on the price at all, and if they're even more obnoxious, they won't chase after you even when you 'walk away'... however, when the next shop-keeper sees that you just walked away because the dude wouldn't sell you the 200-rupee chumpals (local-style flip-flops) for 150 Rs, then this new one will in fact sell it to you for 150 Rs. The most ridiculous part really is that if you think about it, that whole drama revolved around a price difference of less than 1 Canadian Dollar).

My favourite part of this quasi-authentic experience though was riding in a rickshaw. Twice! We were 5 of us and there were 2 guys, so once you've got some young men in your group, you're a billion times safer, and can do crazy things like take a taxi or a rickshaw in this city. And really, it's a lot of fun. Great way to take in the sites, smells, and bumps of the crappy city roads, as well as scare yourself half to death with the crazy city traffic in which stop lights are just a suggestion, as are lanes (including the division between on-coming traffic!), and all the while you're nostrils are level with the exhausts of the 7 cars that surround you. Yeah, it's pretty fabulous (I'm not being sarcastic here by the way... it really was amazing! I mean, where in North America do you get an experience like that, right?)

When I came home (Aunty and Uncle's home of course -my weekend home, as it were ;), I ate some kitchri (mushed rice and lentils) for dinner (still have stomach-upset), and then we watched "Coke Studio", which has all kinds of fusion-Pakistani bands / solo-artists... really cool music indeed. I think my favourite was "Aankhon Ke Sagar" (translates to "A garden in your eyes") by Shafqat Amanat Ali. Here, enjoy some Pakistani culture for yourself at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG3sCCVTWjY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ600jK5kIE&feature=related

And if you want to get to know some of the cricket-madness here, check this out (a very happy day for Pakistan indeed... kind of like how Montrealers would feel if the Habs won the Stanley Cup):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Y1DD-jPdk&feature=related

Yes there is beauty, and there is hardship in this country... but there's also lots of fun! And I really didn't want you to think that it's all serious Light and Darkness. Karachi has all the colours of the visible light spectrum too! Although they say the rains have stopped for Sindh (monsoons khatam hogya!), there are still rainbows at which to marvel and smile. And it's okay for us to enjoy it...

The Universe in the Eyes of an Infant

I just can't help it. I was going to avoid sharing any pictures of the babies we work with, but then, consent was obtained to take this photograph, this could be any baby, and I am not telling you her name nor in which squatter settlement she lives. I cannot express how much I love this little girl. Look at her eyes. When I look at them, I don't know, something happens to me.

Listen, this is what it is, I think. In this 6-month year-old's eyes what do you see? Fear. Pain. I mean, yes, she's a bit sick here, but there's an existential pain. There's a spiritual wisdom there, shimmering beneath. A kind of understanding of such extreme needless suffering. That sorrow or sadness or grief (these may all look like synonyms, but they're all slightly different from one another and all of them are in her eyes). It's like her spirit understands the struggles of the world around her. And the fear is like a fear of the hopelessness that consumes the people who live there too long (and eat too much paan, which I have described in more detail in previous posts, and other animal-blood drugs -both of these, by the way, are the leading cause of oral cancer in South Asia), and likely feed other kinds of addictions to numb away their shattered kind of existence.

It breaks my heart. Just completely. In that way where you can't even cry because even your tears are aware of their futility. And yes, this is indeed both a human and spiritual tragedy, but it gets worse. Want to know how? When you look in the eyes of children, starting about 5 or 6 years old, their eyes change. Maybe it's because their parents started renting them out early to those thugs who coordinate organized-begging (what you saw in "Slumdog Millionaire" is not just a movie) for a meagre daily fee, which is then used, not to feed the family or purchase urgently required medicines, but to buy paan with tobacco, heroine, animal-blood and betelnut. The schools in these squatter settlements are essentially empty. And there's no really getting out of there. Children and infants are quickly made slaves to their parents' addictions. And the parents need those addictions to survive, even though they go through their lives in a lulled, semi-conscious state, starving, getting high, procreating, reproducing in hovels of filth and hopes turned inside-out.

But anyway, I digress. So, their eyes change once they are no longer toddlers. Those families of 9, 10, 11... those kids who probably are only 5, 6, 7 years-old, their eyes have an unsettling glaze, and they've turned glassy. Sometimes it's because they're sick -there's an excrutiatingly painful amount of mental illness here (and it doesn't take a genius to guess why -these things often come about when biology and environment interact under particular conditions that facilitate the emergence of the illness right, whether it's a personality disorder, depression, or whatever...). There are also a lot of people who suffer from epilepsy that goes totally untreated and unrecognized as a condition that requires treatment (I was told of a case in 1 town where a young girl had a seizure and her mother said she was having a spiritual experience, and when she seized, a big bag of that animal-blood stuff fell out from under her clothing -the doctor was absolutely livid. Especially when after explaining that the medical condition was treatable, the town's response was "we have no money". And it's true they have very little money. But enough money to buy the drugs, you see).

Anyway, so you know what I think about the glassy, hypnotic glaze that comes over what are supposed to be innocent, playful eyes? They go spiritually unconscious. Because how can you continue to live, if you're fully conscious, in that kind of intense misery of a reality, which is really more of a lived nightmare. So babies' souls go into hiding.

Those eyes though, really. Makes you just want to hug and kiss and coddle the poor thing, whisper that it's all just a bad dream, and rock her gently to sleep.

The Soul's Garden

Garden Darkhana, Karachi

It's so late, so I really shouldn't blog long. Work has been keeping me busy. Yesterday, all my hard work pleased one boss, but not really another boss. Today, further work has both bosses thrilled (thank goodness -Allah ka Shukar, as they frequently say here). I'd been having some Internet issues which was partly why I haven't blogged lately (as well as feeling overcome by a strange feeling of "I just don't feel like it today", which may also be related to a slight stomach-upset I've been having... I suspect greasyness is the culprit). Anyway, so instead of blogging yesterday, I chose to start watching Stephen Hawking's Universe documentary series, which is really fabulous (the history of science part is fairly linear and Wiggish to be perfectly honest -simplified, elementary and slightly inaccurate -but the science itself is fascinating, as well as the stories they spin about these characters!).

But anyway, the main write-worthy thing of the week was going to Garden Jamatkhana (which is Darkhana -or the 'Royal'/'Chief'/HQ khane -in Karachi, which is the HQ of all the 950 Jamatkhanas in Pakistan) tonight for Chandraat (new moon). And because it was Imamat Day Khushali Chandraat (celebrating the new moon in July also means celebrating the anniversary of the Aga Khan becoming the spiritual leader of the Ismailis 52 years ago), all the lights inside were lit up -red, green, white, draping down from the ceilings... I was sitting on the main floor (though on a chair because my back is still not 100%)... and there were about 15,000 people there tonight. As in, when we all stood for standing-prayer, it felt like deedar (when the Aga Khan makes an in-person visit to the community and Ismailis from all over gather in one big hall to receive him -deedar, I believe, in the literal sense means "to be in the presence of"). It felt like all you saw was an expanse of dark heads, rows upon rows upon rows of people packed together like anything (there are 2 more floors of this by the way). That in itself is extremely humbling. And then the energy of collective prayer to that degree just overwhelms you to tears itself. When they read the list of the people who had passed away since the last Chandraat (8-10 names) and then the prayers for the departed souls that followed... also moving. Imagine when you died, that 15,000 people prayed for your soul, specifically. Yeah. Exactly.

And the people who sing ginans must be professionals... in heaven (really, when Christians sing "Hark! Hear the Angels sing...", they're talking voices like these). They were so beautiful. And even the Qu'ran that was recited was sweet and melodious. They sang my favourite garbi (which is like a more lively, dance-y kind of ginan... a bit like the Scherzo in Beethoven's 9th Symphony), which meant I had goosebumps from head to toe (literally -I didn't know you could get goosebumps on your toe!) and also another ginan that I recognized as my mum's favourite one.

And then by the time they were singing the Imamat Day Khushali one, I was just completely floored. Completely. God was there. In those voices and in that room. And if you don't believe in God, then I guess it's kind of like being able to suddenly glimpse the whole Universe and all of its time-space pretzels from Big Bang to the Infinity to which it continues to rapidly expand, in a moment where thought and consciousness flicker dim. It was hypnotic, intoxicating, almost too much... I wondered whether it was possible to get drunk on that kind of pure heartsong. Of course, as soon as I wondered, the Sufi mystics came to mind. And then I thought about Rumi, and the whirling dervishes and Turkey... and well, I was back in thought and daydreams and memories. Energy of that intensity is just... you'd have to be a master to hold it and stay present with it. So, the mere mortal that I am, I went back to my thoughts and fell out of the Garden.

But what an enchanting Garden it was.

Ocean Views and What Monsoons in Pakistan Mean

Just got back to my dorm room at AKU a couple of hours ago from my weekend at our good family friends'. This morning, Uncle S took me out for a drive post-crashing rain storms of last night. There were layers of dead rain flies everywhere. The humidity from all the rainfall trying to re-evaporate was crazy. And as we drove around in the comfort of the 4x4, I observed what had happened to the world outside my sheltered haven in Clifton, literally overnight.

Firstly, power is out across the city and is not expected to go back up for another 24 hours -we were lucky to have a generator at their home, and also at AKU. Secondly, the streets are seriously flooded -apparently, people on the roads last night had water up to their knees in their cars. Many were stranded, floating in the street. Surely, there were many wipe-outs of scooters / motorcycles that just don't have the surface area and traction to deal with driving through 'rivers'. Some 20-something people have been reported dead since the storm yesterday, and of course, I'm willing to bet there's more dead in the shanty-town / slums... drownings, several dead because power lines have fallen all over the place and live wires have done their own dangerous damage. Trees have fallen. The poorest lose their homes. The financial district of the city still has totally flooded streets. And in these urban rivers, you can see children playing half-naked in the dirty water. The sewage and pollution stench has grown stronger and surely all this mess is a perfect breeding ground for disease... apparently increase in diarrheal disease, including cholera, is not uncommon during the monsoon season here.

And yet, you hear of people in the streets raising their eyes to the grey skies above and thanking God for the blessing of rain. This city is otherwise a desert the rest of the year round. There had been water shortages across Karachi just before. So... it's kind of a simultaneous blessing and curse. What's the real curse is that the city has no infrastructure to deal with the monsoon... it's really just like a really bad rainstorm back home... what makes it such a 'natural disaster' is the lack of a proper sewer system and drainage in the city, and the governments of both Karachi and Pakistan in general don't give a damn about the costs of human lives, public health, safety, general well-being of the people of this country. There are so-called allocated funds for city infrastructure, but there's so much corruption here that the money never makes it to where it was allocated. And human life has no value here. If you drown, or get electricuted, or whatever, who's going to know? You know the population of Karachi alone is 17 million (more than half the population of Canada... and a couple million larger than Istanbul)? Pakistan is about 174 million or something. And then you go into these slums and you see these families of 9, 10, 11 kids... and really it's no wonder. It's almost like the mentality is, "well, so it's God's will whether we lose a kid to that storm, or this disease, and God's will whether we can just produce some replacements..." -it's really very sad.

Anyway, so we drove around the city again and Uncle S gave me a little history lesson about Karachi... it's growth from a small port village -Kharadar (meaning "salt gate" because it faced the sea) is the original port, and oldest part of Karachi -into what it is today, with increasing reclaimed land... and then we drove by the ocean view and that was absolutely spectacular. There were men with their monkeys on a leash, who apparently, for a small sum of money, can make their monkeys do all kinds of acrobatics. And I was told that there are snake charmers, with cobras that get hypnotized and go into a trance-like dance to the vibrations of a particular flute played by the charmer (but I did not see any there in the early afternoon!). There were lots of camels and horses trotting along the beach, which you can ride if you pay a fee, as well. I had thought I'd love to ride a camel before going back home, but I was warned against it with my recent back incident. I guess I should have brought my camera with me to take pictures.

The light grey-pewtery waves of the Indian Ocean crashed mercilessly onto the beach -apparently the waters are too rogue for swimming even. The depth drops off very quickly and the currents are extremely dangerous. But what a site! Uncle S said it always humbles him, reminds him of God's power, greatness, majesty. It was very beautiful and very humbling -the expanse just stretches on to infinity and is awe-inspiring indeed. As they'd say here, Alhamdulillah!

Monsoons, R&R and Meta-Reflections for the Busy, Time-Constrained beloveds

July is Monsoon season in Karachi. But I've seen my first rain here only today. People love cloudy days here (they actually say "what nice weather!" and "Zabardast!" when it's cloudy or rainy because the sun is like death-by-heat). And I must say, my own spirits feel lighter with the rain. Gotta remember that when I go back home!

I just started reading a fantastic book -it's so funny, and the descriptions of people and attitudes and realities, although it is set in India, is very similar to what I have been experiencing here in Karachi. It's called The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga -it won the Man Booker Prize in 2008, and is written wittily, with personality and love.

I'm also in the middle of reading How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman -also excellent, albeit in a different way (obviously... one can't compare fiction and non-fiction)... it's kind of like reading Atul Gawande's books, but with the added component of advice for both patients and doctors to engage in a partnership in the clinical setting to improve the quality of health care -really wonderful!

Anyway, I've had some time to reflect upon my reflections over the last couple of weeks, and I also realize that a lot of you are working professionals under crazy time-pressures, so these 6-8-line summaries are for you:

Thoughts on the Extreme Poverty here: visiting these slums for the study, I've realized that the kind of life we're all born into is really more about luck and blessing than anything else... so i feel both grateful for the blessings in my own life, and have an even stronger conviction that those born into more privilege have a duty to ameliorate the lives of people who have almost nothing materially, intellectually and sometimes even spiritually... in the poorest of slums, they are often still 'unconscious' -addicted to drugs, hypnotized by unbearable heat and the burden of too many children, suffer ill health... the resilient ones do the best they can anyway with the little they have, while others have become utterly despondent...

What's the nature of my actual work: for now, i spend part of the week in the 10 different towns that are the field sites for the Complementary Feeding study (urban slums and slum-slums), and the other part of the week doing office work (currently working on a presentation on Comp Feed that the department may or may not share with auditors, and also helping one of the supervising doctors prepare for a presentation she has to make in Dhaka for the World Bank in a bid for funding for another nutrition intervention in Karachi, relating to early childhood development...

the Spiritual experience: khane here is really just something else completely... everytime there's ginan, i find myself weeping away... i just get so moved by it here... and working in the poor towns of Karachi is also a spiritual experience because you really realize that harjaga bache he bache (everywhere, kids are kids) and mums are mums, and there's a lot of love and a lot to love, despite being appalled by the disparities, and the resilience -especially the kind we see in the urban slums -is truly inspiring -these are very, very strong women... and many are intelligent and innovative too... they just didn't luck out in having the opportunities that we were fortunate enough to have... masla hai, lekhin shukti or khushi hai also...

so really, the lesson here is just love. but the very big kind. epic big. all encompassing, buckets-full.

Bohot Mushkil... and some light culinary joys!

Hmmm... so I thought that I would feel like writing about Thursday's visit to Bin Qasim town (but upon re-reading this entry, I realize that I have in fact written about it quite a lot -if you're not feeling like reading something 'heavy' for now, skip down towards the end to read tales of Pakistani barbeque instead -don't worry, I understand, it's hard stuff, this slum news)

Harjaga Bache hai Bache, lekhin bohot jaga mein bohot mushkil or masla hai or khushi nahin... I mean, can you blame 'em? You probably wouldn't be happy with challenges and problems like that either!

Right, so Bin Qasim 'town' -a real slum, with lots of little villages in such extreme poverty, where women really suffer a lot of oppression under a strong patriarchy (this is not based on any assumptions, but according to one of the main coordinators at the local Primary Health care Centre (PHC), which itself is the product of an AKU Health & Development branch and Community Based Organization (CBO) partnership... local input = more sustainable, and it has been there for over 11 years now!), where the babies enrolled in our study are benefiting from the food we provide, but constantly getting sick with diarrhea / abdominal infections and respiratory infections... it's no wonder with all those flies (often all over the baby's mouth, in the clothing, in the food and water... it's pretty sad) and animals and very poor hygiene, and all the mothers are addicted to paan (which is various spices and beetlenut mixed into a leaf, and they also add tobacco and heroine and various other drugs, and essentially toxic chemicals, like that sweet red sauce -don't get me wrong, it is possible to also acquire paan that is more or less drug-free, but these people eat the hardcore stuff) and so their teeth are red, and they're so ignorant that they don't even realize that they're addicted to something that's not good for you, so some probably even feed it to their children and it's just such a mess...

But so, I don't really want to talk more about this. I think the photos speak for themselves (and if you're wondering, consent was obtained for the close-up photos of the people in their homes, with their babies -and might I add that the older kids absolutely loved having their pictures taken, they were laughing and excited and smiling and it probably made their day... I was thinking of printing some of those out to give to the families at the next field visit because they don't have any 'family photos' and it might be nice for them to have one in their home -because we need them for a presentation I'm helping out with that one of the supervising doctors is making in Dhaka in August to get funding from the World Bank for another nutrition intervention... of course these photos are not for my personal use and so to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the study and the photos taken for that purpose, there are eyes and half faces, and arms all separated from bodies and mixed up together in that first collage). And well, what can I say -it's like seeing those documentaries you watch on PBS or National Geographic or those give-money-to-our-charity-which-will-feed this-poor-starving-child-with-rickets phone-a-thon things... except it's real in front of you.

I didn't feel badly about my own privileged life -but the strange reality just hits you that really it's all about luck whether you're born into one kind of life or another kind of life, or one part of the world or another part of the world, and the resilience of these people is remarkable. We have so much to learn from them. And as to the disparity, nothing is gained by feeling badly, or sadly or shocked -we just have to do what we can to try and help make things better, right? Still, it's unfortunate and abominable that anyone should have to live like that in this day and age with the amount of wealth there is in this world. And really, I'm sure when I visit Dubai in August, the absurdity of that kind of opulent, over-the-top kind of wealth and consumerism will compare quite starkly.

Lighter Brain Fodder...

Anyway, on to talk about brighter and lighter happenings. I finally went to Bar-B-Q Tonight (apparently the best restaurant in Karachi -and it's huge, with 3 or 4 floors and gets packed up around 10 pm every night and I've heard on the weekends you have people literally standing over you as you eat so that you're pressured to hurry up and leave! T.I.P. indeed!) yesterday evening with my mami's mother, brother and his family (in the South Asian tradition, since family and extended family are so culturally valued, there are more names for the different kind of relatives, so rather than just 'uncle' and 'aunt, your mother's brother is your mama and his wife is your mami; your mother's sister is your masi, your father's brother is your chacha, and your father's sister is your fui... etc). Anyway, we had a wonderful time -great barbeque chicken tikka, and hot, fluffy naan, and spicy Seekh kabab and a delicious rose-essence-y and pistachio-y kheer (South Asian rice pudding... you know how I am when it comes to rice pudding!) and the kids are so cute =)

Now, I'm back home at our good family friends' again for the weekend, getting taken care of after an exhausting week that culminated in me pulling out my back =( so just trying to rest up and get better for Monday... eating good food (chicken paratha wraps, daal, different pickles) and fruit (mango, apricots -so yummy!), and working from home today...

much love and more love and more love and hugs, and a big kiss to all of you!

No Words: Cry, Learn, Love

I'll write to you more about today, tomorrow. For now, I want your spirit to be moved and your heart to be overwhelmed and your mind to go hazy like mine did, so enjoy these photo collages of my day that I've put together. Click on them to experience the whole thing big and real. What a strange world we live in. Fall in love with our common humanity.

Kachiabadis Day 2: T.I.P.

That's what they call the slums here in Karachi. And I went to a different one today: Liaqatabad, which is also not a slum-slum, but an urban slum like yesterday's. We went in the afternoon -we were supposed to go in the morning, but this is how things work here: there weren't any AKU drivers available, and then when one finally was available, he decided to go on his lunch break first. So basically, we have to wait around -nobody really has an independent schedule here of which they have full control. Gotta just go with the flow, otherwise you'll go nuts.

Anyway, so after a good morning's work on my presentation (which is looking fabulous by the way, I must admit!), the same supervising doctor and I stepped out into the hot sun, and drove through dusty, bumpy alleys, and foul, sulfur and sewage-smelling roads (you know, I thought I had a pretty good tolerance to noxious nasal stimuli after changing so many diapers when I was working at that summer camp for the disabled... but apparently nothing can prepare you for this...), and then passing through a relieving street of carpenters (the scent of woodworking is really jannat (heaven) in comparison), red paan-masala stains along the sides of the roads, against the bottoms of falling-apart apartment buildings, more goats and chickens walking about freely, with children running about between, and others playing foosball inside the entryway of some storefront or other... lots and lots of garbage everywhere, and all the different colours of painted metal doors and barred windows... and then more trash and sewage between floors, and short archways, and dead 'roaches in the stairwells... but really cute kids and even cuter babies, and mothers who are sweet and protective, and just like other moms in some essential ways... I think the main thing I learned was harjaga bache he bache (anywhere, kids are kids -doesn't matter whether it's in a slum or in a mansion...)

Anyway... did you know that there are random, useless dudes in this country who somehow get a hold of all activated SIM card phone numbers and actually go through calling them, waiting for a woman's voice on the other end and start harrassing them with all kinds of good-for-nothing crap ("i want to be your friend", "let's do this, let's do that", etc...) I thought my friend was kidding when she told me about these random early-morning calls on her landline or on her cell phone... but I got my first one this morning circa 5 a.m. so as soon as I heard a strange voice on the other end of my groggy "hello", I just hung up. Jerks really. When I asked how on Earth these randos get our numbers, my friend's reply was, "Anything can happen here -T.I.P."

T.I.P. : This Is Pakistan

'Story-Telling' in the Field

New Urdu words of the day:

• Kismish (raisins)
• Saara (all -for some reason I always thought this meant 'good', but evidently I was wrong)
• Bahana Banana (excuse-making, 'story-telling'... lying, essentially)

I almost went into the field today. I mean, I did, technically. An urban slum called Landhi Town. I went with one of the supervising doctors -we were going just to meet with one family who had recently called to drop out of the study, find out why, try explaining how beneficial it would be to their child for them to stay in (field studies here are a different ball-game entirely, apparently, when it comes to ethics... well, you'd change your ethical framework too if you saw what I saw today and what these field coordinators see every day -the Western model just doesn't work because poverty and ignorance in theory are very different from when it's in your face, as is the disease, lack of hygiene, etc...)... and mainly, we needed to convince the grandmother (the father's mother) that CF is a good idea for her grandchild. See, this is how it works: old people in the old country actually have a very important, respected status in the household. So if grandma doesn't like it, it ain't happening. Which is why we were hoping to convince grandma too.

Unfortunately, we didn't get the chance to convince anyone. When we got there, various people were basically bahana-banana-ing about the whereabouts of the mother. And I tell you, these guys are expert liars. One dude even when out of his way, walking with us 4 blocks to some vacated building telling us, "This is where she lives". Luckily, my supervisor and our AKU driver were not born yesterday. But what can you do -it's not like we could force ourselves into her home right... so we basically, just drove back to campus.

However, even though I didn't get to see the way CF actually happens in the field, I did get to see what some of the 'fields' actually look like. This particular one was not so much a hardcore shanty-town style slum, but an 'urban slum', as I mentioned earlier. You could see the conditions that people live in, the poverty they bear, and you could quite viscerally smell the hopelessness, even during the spittles of rain, despite the children playing in the streets, between goats and bicycles and street BBQ, and the man walking around with a plate of freshly sliced naryal (coconut) for sale... you also see men just sitting on the side of the road with literal rags tacked up on the wall behind them, as though they were selling them... which I guess they must have been... and other men digging in what looks like a dump, by the side of an old railroad, and women lugging things home, with too many kids about them and a spiritual heaviness too, exhausted and drone-like, making their way between alleys and garbage... the fruit market in this area did look delicious though, I must say (don't worry, I wouldn't eat anything from there -not about to go about trying for a hit of typhoid or hepatitis)!

Food in the AKU caf was pretty good today. Keema-paratha for breakfast (so not a breakfast food for most of you, I know, but heaven-on-Earth for people like me, who most of the time could not care less for standard breakfast foods...), and then Nihari (which I had never had before) and naan for lunch... and then a pretty good daal with rice for dinner (gotta go veg somewhere!)... anyway, I've been working on a presentation on CF all afternoon (nowhere near done... you know how these things go...) but I'm absolutely exhausted.

Peacing out for the night...

Why the World (in Karachi) Goes Watery During Songs of Worship

Noorabad Jamatkhana, Karachi (near AKU)

Today was not particularly eventful. Same old:

• still jet-lagged and thus waking up super early and getting tired early (around this time actually... circa 4:00 pm-ish),
• still hot and humid (this is not going to change),
• still making new friends (befriended an Ismaili nurse who works here at AKU Hospital in Emerg. -she was so much fun to talk to, and she said she'd take me to Karimabad Jamatkhana one of these days, which is the largest JK in Karachi... around 50,000 people!)
  
• still tearing up at khane
  

I realized though that this last mainly happens only during the ginans... and my theory is (my source of historical data here is my father... although I probably, honestly should just pick up one of Dr. Ali Asani's books and refine my raw understanding here... he really is the expert) that it's because the whole ginan tradition started in the Indian subcontinent way back in the day, when Hindus were being converted to becoming Ismaili, and so the poetic song that used references to familiar Hindu icons, and even comparisons with Hindu gods to praise and revere Islam's One God, provided a comforting smooth transition... kind of like how Christianity retains a lot of pagan symbolism which was used to facilitate the conversion of pagans -let's not misinterpret here, I'm comparing the strategy of conversion, not pagans and Hindus (so let's nobody get offended okay).

Anyway, so back to my theory -if the origin of ginans is here in this land, then maybe that's why I keep getting so particularly moved when I hear them sung here... must be some old resonance or something, they just feel 'weightier' / more profound / spiritually overwhelming (hence the weeping). It's kind of like... I don't know, eating pizza or pasta in Italy, or drinking cay with some baklava in Turkey, or eating fish and chips in England... you know, you're doing the activity / experiencing the culture 'in the place where it really, really belongs'... or at least, where it all started. Now, I fully realize that most of us don't cry over a delicious culinary experience, but well... I guess... maybe it's more like watching the whirling dervishes in Konya, which is the burial place of Rumi -the original Sufi master.

Main Muta'assir Hain... and You'd be Impressed Too!

Firstly, Imamat Day Khushiali Mubarak! And what an amazing experience of this Ismaili 'high holiday' I had here today in Karachi! I woke up early / late this morning (you know, the usual eyes open around 6 a.m. then falling back asleep in about an hour or so, then waking up again around 9... this jet lag, seriously!) and ate a very Karachi-special kind of breakfast at the main AKU cafeteria: halva-puri... except they were out of halva (which is like a very sweet, buttery, mushy... I can't even explain it), so I had puri with a very delicious chickpea curry thing... greasy, but delicious. Apparently this is for breakfast every weekend (both days!), so I'll either try to get myself out of bed a bit earlier, in time to try the halva tomorrow, or I guess I'll have to wait for another weekend...

I made a friend over breakfast -my dorm neighbour actually, this very sweet Ismaili girl from Hunza (Northern Areas), who just finished her Bachelor's degree in computer engineering and who's now working at AKU in some capacity... after breakfast she came over and we got to know each other a bit better -it was really nice. Then, I had my room cleaned. Like you call the front desk and the cleaning lady comes and washes the bathroom, sweeps and mops the floors and dusts all the surfaces... obviously university employees, but it's still kind of weird... in fact I was so weirded out by how acutely I felt the 'class differential' that I completely forgot to offer her a glass of water, or some of my 'Fruit to Go' or something... man those women work so hard, and most of the residents don't even really talk to them. One of my friends here was saying something about how most of the cleaning people in Pakistan are Hindus, and in the wealthy areas, there are a lot of rich families who don't even feed them or anything when their staff is on duty... which to me just seems particularly un-Muslim... I guess India's not the only one that still maintains a caste system... sigh.

Anyway, then, I napped... for 4 hours! And then showered and got ready for khane -we went to Metroville Jamatkhana for Khushiali and that was an absolutely wonderful, moving experience. Most of the Jamat (Ismaili congregation) there is from the Northern Areas and Afghanistan and they live in the 'colonies' (huge apartment building complexes with dark alleys in between -to be quite frank, I believe the people living in this area are all pretty low-income, uneducated, but warm and sweet, at least from what I saw... but apparently they're all Ismailis who live there... about 20,000 of them!). The Jamatkhana itself has pretty tight security, with Ismaili guards standing on the roof of the building, strolling about the gates, as well as in the apartment building balconies, and they check all bags when you enter (I was told last July 11 there was a bomb scare at this khane... I know, I know... but I really didn't know this until afterwards, I swear...)


Anyway, inside, there are 3 floors of khane -we were ushered onto the third floor, which was basically all children, young mothers, children looking after their baby siblings and a handful of elderly volunteers (but most of the volunteers were even these young 4-10 year-old children -the cutest and most beautiful kids I've seen, really).

Metroville Jamatkhana, Karachi (exterior)

And again, during the services, my eyes were wet all over again... I don't know what it is about khane here, but for whatever reason I keep feeling quite moved -Metroville khane though, I loved, absolutely loved. Humble people, but so much heart... the building was like one big heart, and the singing and Du'a was just like love on your ears. Of course, being the big day that it was, and with all the leadership-changeover announcements, the ceremony was looooong (though probably not as long as back home, to be honest) and so in the heat, and most of the people on our floor being young children, or women minding too many young children (huge families I tell you, huge!), I wasn't at all surprised or bothered by the increasing noise-level, restlessness and roudiness, especially towards the end. Some of the people with whom I had gone were though, and I don't know, I just couldn't sympathize with them at all on this one. Their basic argument was that regardless of socioeconomic status, or cultural background, "khane is khane" and thus being quiet is not negotiable out of respect for the sanctity of the ceremonies. And some of them had actually been to khane in the Northern Areas and said that there was pin-drop silence in the congregation during the ceremonies there.

But here's the thing: no one khane is like any other khane, no one murid is like any other murid, and there is no one way to show one's love for God and this Earth, no one manifestation even of respect. Pluralism is one of the tenets of our faith as Ismailis. Now think outside the box okay -pluralism is not limited to just different expressions of prayer or song or rituals... it's so much more than that right. I'm not saying that being noisy during services is a cultural thing -it's not cultural. But are the prayers of a roudy congregation any less likey to be heard or accepted from up above? Listen, many of these people, who have roots in Afghanistan or Tajikistan, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, for generations, never received zahiri deedar (that is, having an opportunity to be in the physical presence of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismailis, which so many Ismailis, especially those with East African roots, and those who live in First-World countries, have been fortunate enough to have multiple times in their life -I've had that over 5 times already!), until so recently.

And yet, their faith was so strong... imagine following the spiritual guidance of a leader that you have never seen, that your parents have never seen, that your grandparents have never seen, in a part of the world that was completely isolated from the rest of the world technologically and financially for such a long time... wouldn't most people in that situation start to doubt that such a leader even existed? So really, who are we to judge just because there's a little noise in the prayer hall while some boring guy reads out a list of a zillion names that mean nothing to you at the personal, spiritual level? Just sitting there with these people, with this history, as a people, I felt so moved -like I had something to learn from them that could not even be taught, and it was just a feeling okay. Calling them uncivilized is just unfair and ignorant on our part, and judgmental above all else, which is not our place, not at all.

Anyway, after services, and a quick 'tour' of the colonies (Hunza and Gulzar-e-Rahim colonies), the 6 of us who had come together from AKU, hopped into a couple of taxis (an interesting experience of madness really, foul smells of pollution, petrol, body odours, frying food and spices, and dust, all in the crazy bumper-to-bumper city traffic at around 9:30 p.m.) to a local 'dive' near Millennium Mall. The Sikh kebab was delicious, as was the naan (and so far, my stomach seems to be holding out well, shukar), the chicken tikka a bit less impressive... but the chicken that was BBQ-ed Lahore-style was also pretty tasty (a nice lime-y spiced kind of zing, if you can imagine that)... this was followed by unsuccessful negotiations with the cab drivers to take us back to AKU for under 100 rupees (cheapos I know, but hey, if you come here, you gotta go local... and doesn't 'a hundred' of anything just sound like too much? even if it's really just $1.50 for 4 people... what would cost us a good $30-40 back home?)... so we paid the 100, and made it back safe and sound, showered, and now here I am writing to you about it!

Anyway, it's quite late and I have to be up early tomorrow (relatively-speaking)... so with that, I bid you all, Khuda Hafiz.

Acha Juma Hai!

Also known as "I have real responsibilities and people like me".

But, what a great Friday, indeed! Mai bohat khushi hai [I'm very happy]. Also 3 cheers for Phrasebase.com -it has officially saved my cheap ass by teaching me Urdu phrases for free (I wasn't about to get ripped off at the local bookstore for a phrasebook+CD: 1700 Pakistani Rupees... which is about $25... which is not too bad at home, but a freakin' rip off here, where one can eat meals for a day under $1, and get their legs waxed for literally $1.50!). Glad those 4 hours spent learning Urdu yesterday paid dividends so quickly!

[Photo above: Juma (CHS) Building courtyard, bird's-eye view... yes, by the way, 'Juma' is the name of the building, and also the same word for 'Friday' in Urdu...]

Anyway, I woke up in an obsessive sweat around 4:30 this morning (so much for almost getting over the jet lag...) and basically spent 2 hours tossing and turning constructing phrases in my head, and repeating them over and over, for when I had to address the CF field coordinators at work. Main janti hon kai mere Urdu achi nahin, lekhin main koshish karte he, seekengre... aap asta bolte, me samajti aap ka kaam, field mai, mushkil kya hai, etc, etc... really, it felt like the night before a big debate tournament in high school all over again!

But then I woke up, ate a nice 'Pakistani omelette' (i.e. french toast made with cardamom) for a mere 20 rupees, went into work, and said my rehearsed line, which was extremely well and warmly received, with kindness and understanding and appreciation for my efforts. They were patient with me, and then told me about their field experiences, main challenges and rewards, etc... that I may include these perspectives in my 'summary report' of my understanding of the Complementary Feeding project (assignment #1). All my supervisors also have been appreciative of my language efforts, and I actually was able to have fun with them more... felt like I belonged a bit better and that was really nice.

Then I met up with another doctor in the CHS department who also coordinates studies / field interventions, and we talked about what I'll be doing over the next 6 weeks or so. As it stands, I will be going into 'the field' (read: slums of Karachi) about 20 times total (probably not for full days though) to get that 'hands-on' experience at last, starting Monday. And for the rest of July, I will also be assisting this doctor in preparing a presentation that she will be giving for a jury from the World Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the beginning of August, since her proposal for a new maternal health and early childhood nutrition intervention was accepted for the "finals" in applying for World Bank funding. Isn't that exciting? I'm so thrilled!

Anyway, after spending some time reading through that proposal and the World Bank event FAQs, I accompanied my supervisor to the AKU School of Nursing (SON) to observe the training of Pakistani government Lady Health Workers (LHWs) by an AKU team on how to fill out maternal-baby registration / medical history forms (the only record of birthdays and thus, birth rates, for the country, and unfortunately, right now, the rest of the medical history of the mother and particularities about the baby tends to get lost, since it's not stored in any central database... just goes to show that Western models of record-keeping are not easily imported into developing countries that have massive populations and insufficient financial and technological resources, along with inadequate infrastructure for making these models sustainable...)

Anyway, the LHWs are government employed, with minimal education so even in training, there are significant challenges which remain to be seen at the level of effective implementation... you could tell they were all trying really hard, in all earnesty, to learn everything properly, but frankly, it was probably still too much information, in too short a time frame, and even if they are successful, those paper records just end up getting lost... my supervisor was saying that hopefully it will improve as more central databases are put in place to keep all these records straight...

Well, here I was thinking this would be a short entry and look how long it became! Off to visit with family friends for the rest of the day and spend the night... and I've got some pretty cool, novel plans for khushiali tomorrow, which I will fill you in on later this weekend...

XOXOXOXOX

P.S. I almost forgot, the Pakistani biryani free lunch was absolutely delicious -bilkul achi!

As I sweat and thirst under a Karachi sun...

I know, I am such a romantic -obviously. But the sweat, really is... well, let's just say for those of you who are averse to showering every day, this would teach you to shower at least once a day!

Anyway, so these to your left are just one of the many beautiful gates of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.

Today was a scorcher and as my "real" first day of work, I spent not 1 hour like Monday, but 2 whole hours 'working'. Welcome to the developing world. At least once I know a bit more about my particular 'assignments', I can get on with it even when everyone else decides to spend hefty chunks of their day doing aram (which means 'taking it easy'). But for now, I've gotta just go with the flow as it were. This morning I was at the Community Health Sciences (CHS) offices by 9, when I met about 10 Complementary Feeding Program (CF) field-coordinators (who work in 10 different low-income 'towns' of Karachi, enrolling, monitoring / following-up with mothers who agree to have their babies be a part of either the fortified cereal-control or meat-intervention CF program starting 6 months of age, while they continue to breast-feed them -the point is to see whether meat will improve the babies' ability to 'thrive', including weight gain, neurocognitive function, head circumference, as well as their zinc, iron and other micronutrient status).

Anyway, so lo-and-behold, approximately none of those 10 field-coordinators spoke English... and my Urdu is, well... more or less non-existant. So there was lots of smiling and gesturing and fragmented-word-dropping. And then one of them, smiling at me, turns to another and says "Urdu nahin bol sakti... bohot mushkil..." Of course, this, I understood perfectly -basically, it more or less translates to, "wow this one's in deep shit if she's going into the field and doesn't speak Urdu". Having finished reading the thick CF Background and Protocol packet, I was given 2 more packets to read -the field study questionnaire forms and more detailed protocols -and then asked to return after lunch.

Anyway, the photo above is of the Juma (CSH) Building courtyard -pretty much all the courtyards at AKU are like this: fountains, trees, marble benches, tiling near archeways... very serene and beautiful.

So naturally, I read up the packets quickly, came home and checked e-mail, then set out to take some photos of the campus before waking up one day, realizing it's the day before I have to leave and that I haven't taken any!

Above is the stairwell of my building, "Arman Rupani", in the Women's Residences -notice the way the bricks are placed with those 'holes' providing natural ventilation, and on the right of this picture, the outer wall's "weeping" plaster, mentioned in my last post, allowing the building to stay cooler in the hot desert Karachi climate.



Here above is a little collage I made of 4 photos:

the top 2 are of my residences again, the left one being inside the res complex, and the right one, the outside;

the bottom left is mainly to show you the Pakistani crow at the bottom -these are abundant here, like seagulls back home, and they have this interesting black, white, black pattern, which I thought was different for a crow;

the bottom right is a painting of a Qu'ran ayat done by the famous Ismaili artist Gulgee, in one of the administrative building hallways.

This second collage above is mainly just more AKU central campus buildings, courtyards, including the hospital waiting area / courtyard on the top right, and the Aga Khan School of Nursing on the bottom right (this is right around the corner from my res!).

And so basically, when I went back to work, it was about an hour's worth of checking out the field study materials and "there's no work for you right now, so hang tight, and things will pick-up once you start in the field next week -for now, go home". So I did. But after the morning's mortification, I decided to spend the next few hours finding an online phrasebook and writing down common and useful Urdu expressions (which I will try to memorize over the weekend), before heading off to meet new friends and visit with older acquaintances.

Dinner in the cantine this evening was actually pretty good -a spicy, vegetable biryani, that was surprisingly less oily than the other caf food I've had here so far, which was nice. And then, I went to Noorabad Jamatkhana with one of my new friends in res, and that was quite an experience! The khane is essentially right next to the AKU campus, and although there is no AC, there are an impressive 96 ceiling fans in the prayer hall alone, and about 10 open windows. Also, the ceremony is rather different from what we do in North America and in Europe, in terms of the order and mixing of prayers and rituals. It was kind of bewitching I'd say -moving, but the heat and exhaustion (of the heat) made it all almost hypnotizing as well. Needless to say, people probably thought I was a nutcase, wiping away tears during a simple ginan (which is a South Asian Ismaili tradition, very much like singing a 'hymn').

Well, it's nearly midnight, so I'd best get to bed... that jet lag will hopefully be completely worn off soon. Love and miss you.

Welcome to Pakistan!

So, yes, I am in fact alive and well, since I arrived here in Karachi 2.5 days ago. Can I just say I have never spent so much time in airplanes and airports as those 36 hours between Montreal, Heathrow, Dubai and Karachi. 3.5 meals, 3 movies ('The Reader', 'Frost Nixon' and 'Three Coins in the Fountain' -all excellent films, this last being a 1954 classic with the same dashing actor, Louis Jourdan, who plays Gaston in 'Gigi' (1958)), 1 book (Confessions of a Shopaholic... hey, we all need a little light reading every now and then!), 5 hours of sleep, 1 creepy dude sitting next to me on the plane, and 13 hours spent waiting between flights later... I finally got to say 'hey' to the very sweet girl from Human Resources at the Aga Khan University who got me all set up with a luckily air-conditioned dorm room prior to my arrival and met me at the airport with her driver. Yes, this is how it works here, people have drivers (and just like the South Asian colonial 'motherland', they drive on the left side of the road).

I was welcomed with some 40+ degree Celsius heat (with humidity) -apparently, this is too hot for the mosquitos (so at least these are minimal, as are my risks of acquiring malaria, fingers-crossed). I was met at the dorm by 2 other Canadian ex-pat interns / employees of AKU who brought with them a healthy dose of welcoming care, unconditional friendship, wise advice re: locking up your stuff so it doesn't get stolen, where to eat and how to dress, and bearing bottled water, OJ, TP, chips, cookies, tea and sugar. Soon after my dear family friends arrived at the dorm with further supplies, including local currency and cellular telephone. Yes, I was very pampered, taken care of and quite honestly, spoiled (which has continued up until now so far).

Meanwhile, I did notice the rainbow-splashed buses with locals literally jumping out during 'rolling-stops', families of 4 sandwiched onto a scooter weaving its way through traffic, and children selling balloons in the middle of the street over the last few days, with a dusty haze of heat rising up between run-down strip malls, construction sites and apartment buildings, and frequent power outages across the city (some recently dying electrical wire near one of the dams was apparently the culprit, and well, if you thought Hydro-Quebec was bad at fixing stuff like this up in an efficient and timely manner, you ain't seen nothin', which sucks particularly for the less wealthy who do not have generators, and so some literally stay up all night fanning their children to sleep for lack of functioning fans or AC).

I slept strangely that night (hey, there's a 10-hour time difference, so it's gonna take me a few days for the circadian rhythms to entrain to this new light-dark cycle). The following morning, I was given a tour of the AKU campus (which is really gorgeous, lots of marble and red brick, and architecturally-environmentally-adapted 'weeping plaster' walls, trees, fountains, beautiful Islamic architectural motifs, the libraries are beautiful, the medical facilities are quite impressive, as is the athletic complex... the campus landscaping and motifs are breathtaking and so much so that I shouldn't bother describing them, but will try to take some photos in the near future to share with you), watched some orientation DVDs, learned that the Primary Investigator for the project I'm working on is actually out of the country until the end of the month, met instead with her under-supervisor and other research assistant, acquired a thick background and protocol packet to read and was then told to go home, read up and rest up for a couple of days before showing up to work.

So naturally, I called up our good family friends again (I really should just say 'family' from now on), their driver came to pick me up and they having been taking care of me since yesterday evening with such love and hospitality in their lovely home, with the comforts of air-conditioning, a comfy bed to sleep in with no little ants crawling around the floor (I know, for a dorm in Pakistan, this really isn't that bad, but after scorching in the heat and the exhaustion of jet-lag, not having to deal with this is very, very nice), home-cooking (various chicken and ground beef curries, green lentils, fresh chapattis, rice, home-made baked fries, rice, a diversity of pickles -carrot, lime, garlic -and chutnees, homemade lemonade with salt to rehydrate), lots of fresh fruit (different kinds of mangoes, delicious green apricots, lotus fruit, almonds, lychees, etc...), family chatter, and motherly TLC. Today I met more of the family, helped out with some shopping (even in Karachi, a mall is a mall is a mall... except you can get your leather wallets and bookmarks engraved with your name, and buy Indian suits and jewlery, and the DVD store sells pretty much a very wide-range of knock-offs, and you can buy books at the bookstore for literally half the price we pay in North America!), visited a local fabric market, ate some more, tried on a bunch of my adopted-mom's clothes to borrow while I'm here and accessed some internet at last (it will probably be at least another day if not more before I get connected in my dorm room).

Anyway, it's back to AKU tomorrow morning to take care of said Internet concerns, and tie up some loose ends before starting work, most likely nice and fresh Thursday morning. I felt kind of badly at first about 'slacking off' so early, but I guess I was given permission to do so and I haven't even been here 3 days yet, so might as well take a bit of time to get started on the 'right foot'.

That's all for now -will keep you posted on my adventures over the coming 7 weeks! Love and hugs to you all...