Thatta: First-Half -a "Mega-slum"
So if I had thought Rehri Goth (in Bin Qasim town, Karachi) was in a pretty bad mess and it couldn't possibly be worse anywhere else, well, I was quite wrong. Early in the morning, one of my friends (who also works at CHS) and I left with two of the main researchers (one is working on the Maternal-Newborn Health Registry (MNH) project, and the other, on an infant Brain development study) for Thatta, which is in the interior of Sindh, near the Indus River, before it meets the Arabian Sea, about 2 hours drive from AKU.Our purpose was to get an exposure to some of CHS' work in this very old, historic, and extremely poor part of Pakistan -apparently, there are over 400 NGO's who claim to be working in Thatta, but actually, just about none of them really do anything at all -it looks good for the NGO to say they are working in Thatta (that's how bad-off Thatta is), but since it's logistically challenging (bad roads / no roads, far enough to be a pain to commute daily from any major city, unsafe enough -gunshots, and other violence all audible and visible in this area -to actually maintain a base there...), the situation in Thatta has not changed much over the last 20 years.
We made visits in 4 different villages for the MNH project -the people here speak Sindhi, which is different from Urdu, and I loved hearing it at the first home we visited (hated it later... you know, whether or not a language makes a good impression on you really has a lot to do with who's talking... if the person speaking makes you sick, well, it's difficult to enjoying their drawling, lifeless tongue). But the first mother was warm, friendly, lively -her baby was born healthy, she was healthy, of course, she already had a bjillion kids and they lived in something that looked a lot like what we had seen in Rehri Goth -1 room made out of concrete / bricks / plaster, albeit falling apart, dirty, fly-infested (but nothing compared to what we saw afterwards)... then we visited some straw huts, huge buffalo, lazing about everywhere, massive piles of animal dung everywhere you turned, cess pools in the middle of paths, scrawny cats picking their way around, bony dogs with diarrhea, sewage water along the sides of all paths with big still ponds popping out every few meters, everyone walking around barefoot, firecracker shots, open gunshots (not at people, but just for kicks, shot up into the air), and of course more multiparity mothers, some old man raving about his spiritual intutions about rain from the overcast skies, etc...Not far from these villages, there are vacant factories of all kinds -sugar, textiles, etc... there's a forlorn government hospital too, but women can't go there, and with the monsoons, all the flooding made the hospital pretty much inaccessible anyway... quality of care, also likely dubious... One of the homes we visited, I noticed that the mother sat on the bed, her baby was bound tightly in a piece of cloth (likely causing some rash or skin infection unbeknownst to mum) and there not far from the baby's head, a handgun lay innocently too.
The saddest of all though, was when we went to visit a mother who had a botched abortion after being pregnant for 10 months and refusing a C-section because she didn't want a surgery to come between her and her responsibilities to her zillion other kids... 5 days later, she is still bleeding and essentially refuses to see a doctor. The glazed eyes surrounded me there. The flies were very bad here. But there was one little boy, maybe 4 years-old, with flaky dry skin from head to toe, red rashes and brown and purple discolourations from infection and the flies were eating him, clung to his clothing, his skin, on his eyes, in his known, all over his mouth, as he torturously sucked on some dark brown freezie, moaning, and trying to swat at some of the flies every now and then. We asked the mother and older children if he had seen a doctor. They said he was born with skin like that (probably some genetic defect... maybe epidermolysis bullosa, or maybe some kind of skin-collagen defect, or maybe an autoimmune condition... bad eczema or psoriasis with pustules, or God-knows what -I'm not a dermatologist) and they won't take him to a doctor because they would rather use that money to feed the rest of the family. He came close and opened his mouth and began screaming, crying, his head thrown back, his arms hanging limply at his sides, tears streaming down his cheeks between the flies, the flies were in his mouth, a bunch of his teeth had already fallen out, the rest had black roots and were deformed, and his gums were obviously also affected by whatever conditioned his family refused to get treated. The pain in that cry was heartbreaking. He held his tummy and his older sister made him lie down on the woven-cot frame. He had a stomach bug too, which was also going untreated. The family seemed annoyed... short of throwing him out of their house, they seemed to almost leave him for dead. I thought they must wish him dead, and there's no way he's going to make it. He's going to die a painful, miserable death, most likely, and no one will hug or kiss or coddle him between now and those last breaths, if they ever did. When I put my shoes back on after leaving the house, I noticed little flakes of red paan inside them.
And then I suddenly understood something else, in the midst of a flare of internal rage. Maybe these mothers didn't want to not care for their children properly, but what if they didn't know how to care for them? Imagine you're a little girl born into these dirty straw slums, your mother's 9th child. No one kisses and hugs and coddles you. No one makes you feel like you're special. And while your male twin, at the age of 5 roams the streets, playing in dirty sewage water, or is told stories by your grandfather as they sit on a street curb somewhere, you're already changing diapers of your 2 younger siblings. If you were never shown tenderness and love, then how can you be expected to know what love is, what affection is when you start having your own children? And especially if you'll start having your own children when you're only 15 years-old?
Futile tears I did not cry -like I said, even my tear-ducts know that it's futile. I felt numb and I felt pain that I had to try not to feel anymore because what good would that do? I passed tissues and hand-sanitizer to my friend instead, wondering what happened to my own gentle heart... an addiction to suffering AND an inability to show love and affection, or really understand them... just glassy eyes, glazed eyes, unconscious-living in misery, filth, disease... no education (the local goons also see to it that the villagers don't get educated so that they can keep their power so the schools become barns for animals) and virtually no access to any kind of healthcare. They believe in rituals, they put charms on each other for 'protection' and they'll tell you "it's all in Allah's hands". You just want to tell them, "Allah gave you a brain so that you could use it, so please let's leave God out of this" -but there's no use. How do you reason with people who don't understand reason? You can't reason medically, you can't even reason with religious arguments? You can't reason at all, and the worst part is being at a loss to reason and explain it all even to yourself.
Thatta: Second Half (good eats and historic sites)
We had lunch at the AKU CHS offices in the main Thatta town -the chai was delicious, the fried potato slices with spices and scrambled eggs with peppers, masala and tomatoes (reminded me a bit of Turkish menemen), one tiny piece of mutton curry and a manni (Sindhi and Gujarati word for roti). It was the AKU chef who cooked everything so it was quite safe, and I only ate a little bit (and 24 hours later, I am fine ok, so don't freak out that I ate in Thatta -it wasn't street food).
Before heading back to Karachi, we made a stop at the Makli ka Khabrastan (Makli Cemetary / Historical Tomb ruins from the 14-18th centuries AD, also known as 'The Great Necropolis of Makli", which is a World Heritage Site)... although Thatta is a centre of poverty, it's also one of the big cultural / historical sites, and there are lots of ruins like these of previous rulers / dynasties in the Indian Subcontinent... they were really breathtaking -reminded me very much of when I visited the Ephesus ruins in Turkey, and sure enough the main big building was for a King who was a Turk. Although we did take photos with my friend's camera, since I don't have them yet, for now, I found some photos online that are actually similar to some of the ones we took, so you can enjoy these 2 photo collages instead ;).
The architecture is really beautiful -classic Islamic-style geometric shapes woven together into stunning archways, domes and ceilings. Tombs covered in different Qu'ran ayats, Ayat al-Kursi and the Kalima over doorways. Turquoise and Lapiz Lazuli tiling and painted designs here and there (reminds me so much of Turkish Isnik tiles... surely those must have been imported designs...).It's nice that this beautiful little sanctuary exists in the heart of this poor area -but the sanctuary even is a symbol of the royal, the excess, the wealth even in its own time. I wonder if the people of Thatta feel that they own it, or that it belongs to them in some way. The only indication of anything would be the paan spittles on these architectural beauties. Perhaps it's fitting, but people are people. It's too bad they don't have anything -no land, no home, no nothing... nothing to be proud of, nothing that inspires love, thought, dreams, nothing that's really theirs. Maybe someone should start by showing them the beauty in this world -that belongs to them as much as it does to anyone else... I don't know. How does one light that spark? Any work here will take time and a massive committment -the reason why AKU is even allowed to intervene even in the little way we have begun to is because it has been in Karachi for 25 years, and in Thatta, acting in some form over the last 11 years... but the message is clear: We are here to stay, we want to work with you, we want to help you help yourselves; we will respect your traditions and beliefs, but we will not abandon you. That is something in which no other NGO in Thatta has succeeded -they don't act, and they can't stick it out. Trust does take forever to build though, it seems.
Friday Night in Karachi
We managed to make it back to Karachi in time for khane (just went to Noorabad Jamatkhana near AKU). Afterwards, a bunch of us piled into 2 cars and headed to the Chatterbox Cafe (with a delicious bakery called "Pie in the Sky") on Zamzama (an up-scale street in Clifton / Defence... kind of like the Karachi's Rue Laurier (Montreal), or Newbury St (Boston)...), for a farewell dinner for one of my friends who is leaving Karachi this coming week after having spent 9 months here (the same one who also works in CHS). They basically have more of a North America / European standard food (pristinely clean, salads, appetizers, a variety of main dishes and scrumptious desserts!) and prices (well, still cheap by our standards, but expensive by local standards), and atmosphere (granted the music is probably a couple years old, but still standard pop / hip-hop, etc...). It was my first time going into a place like this in the 5 weeks I have been here and it FELT SOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!! Especially after the day we had in Thatta. You just feel like you need to escape, pretend you're back home, pretend we don't live in a world, where I can pay 700 Rs for a nice dinner and a family of 15 has to live on probably less than $1 per day), a world where human life has no value unless it's a moneyed life...I shared a Thai Red Curry with Prawns (also again, I am still fine today -and I ate 2 prawns so take a chill if you're freaking out that I ate seafood) and rice with another friend, had the most yummy fresh mint lemonade (made with mineral water because I'm still OCD-careful in comparison to everyone else), and a Banofee cup for dessert (this is a very sweet British thing, made with caramel toffee, bananas, graham cookies or something similar, the version I had also had chocolate syrup and an icing-y cream... pretty good, although next time I will have the chocolate tart with fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream because I had a taste, and that must have fallen out of Paradise...)
Came home around 12:30 a.m., watched one of my friends climb her favourite tree in front of Women's Residences (things like this can only be done when there aren't a lot of people around, if you're a woman)... and well, there you have it: her 'fullest' day!
P.S. Piece of Trivia: Etiquette in Pakistan
Women never shake hands with men here, women only shake hands with women (no hugging etc, most of the time unless they're your best bud), men stare all the time all the time, and women do too... when people go on dates in public here, forget PDA -even hand-holding is scandalous (physical contact between the sexes is basically a no-no); if your head is uncovered it means you're single and 'available' (if you're a woman); a lot of the prostitutes here are covered from head to toe in burkhas; and note the power of the dupata (the scarf-shawl thing that all the women wear with all their clothes): you can be wearing the skimpiest, clingiest piece of see-through material, but you're socially acceptably dressed if you've got a duputa hanging from your neck; wear jeans and a baggy T-shirt and the stares you'll get will make you wonder whether you walked out of the house naked! Also, when you're out and about, don't smile. Don't take a rickshaw alone if you're a girl. You cannot visit a cemetary if you are a girl. You cannot go to the Sunni Masjid (mosque) for prayers if you're a girl. If a woman gets raped, she can only take it to court and have it recognized as such with (maybe) consequences for the perpetrator of the crime -get this -if there are 4 male witnesses willing to testify. As Munna Halwai might say in The White Tiger, Rights? "What a f*#$ing joke!" Women, heaven forbid if you live at all, here.
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