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
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
'Story-Telling' in the Field
New Urdu words of the day:
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...
- 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)
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...
Sunday, July 12, 2009
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
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.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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.
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)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.
Friday, July 10, 2009
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!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
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...
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...
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