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.