And now for something completely different...

Well, okay, so it's not completely different. It's still about Pakistan. And still written by me in my inimitable style...so really, it's basically the same. Sorry - bait-and-switch there.

First thing's first - some of you probably know that there was a bombing in Pakistan today, but that happened up in Islamabad, and they think it was a Muslim suicide bomber - the people killed were Sunnis and Shi'ites who were gathered together for a Muslim festival that was about harmony between the sects - clearly whoever did this didn't quite agree with that. But the point of all this is that Islamabad is a long way from Karachi, this isn't an event that is likely to stir anti-American sentiment, and things in Karachi are fairly quiet. So things are fine here.

Second thing - my address as I wrote it below is slightly inaccurate. I left out one thing, and I don't know what kind of a difference it will make, but here's the complete and correct address for mailing things:
Amanda Goebel
c/o ECIL
29, Block 7/8, DCHS
Sharae Faisal
Karachi, 75350
PAKISTAN

Now, down to business. As a warning, this entry is incredibly long. It just is, there wasn't any way for me to do it otherwise. SO, if you're planning on reading straight through, get comfy, and you might want to get yourself a beverage.

Well, a little background....I'm here working on a rural roads rehabilitation program, and I'm working on the poverty reduction and resettlement component. Now, we're working with the provincial government on this project, and there's one guy in particular that we're working with a LOT. We practically have daily meetings with him, which isn't exactly my very favorite way to pass a few hours, as most of the time is spent watching him talk to other people on his cell phone. For the sake of brevity, we will call him G-man. G-man selected a couple of target villages for us to implement poverty reduction programs, but these places are nowhere near the project roads. The reason that this is important is that we are working on the roads to facilitate poverty reduction, and it's going to be hard for road improvements in one place to make a difference to a village that is nowhere near the road.

Our trip did not get off to a good start, as G-man and his driver had us follow them. And then proceeded to take the worst possible route to get where we were going. Instead of heading out onto the main road, he decided to take us down a side access road where people are double parked on both sides of the road. Did I mention that it's really only big enough to fit two cars to begin with? So, we were stuck spending 45 minutes weaving in and out of cramped, congested traffic, while assorted things on wheels flew past us on the main road next to us. Hamid, Judy, and I talked amongst ourselves about what this driver must have been smoking, because whatever it is, it had to be strong. We finally got out to the main road, doubled back over half the distance we had just painstakingly traveled, and made a U-turn to head out of town. Government drivers. Perhaps he gets paid per kilometer.

So we headed out of town, and we stoped near something resembling a bus terminal, which is filled with these wild, crazily decorated Pakistani buses - they're legendary, and you have to see them to believe them. By this point, I'm used to people staring at me, but I'm still not a fan of it - particularly when guys at the highway gas station just sit outside and blatantly stare into the car, as if I've got three heads, instead of just a very, very pale complexion. So anyway, we got back on the road, and headed up north. It's hard to describe what it looks like - the best I can come up with is a cross between the Moon and the Grand Canyon. There were these valleys and rock formations that looked like they were carved by a river, but one that has long ago gone away. It's endless shades of brown, with some patches of dusty green vegetation. It's very barren in a lot of ways, but it's really beautiful, and just this massive expanse of hot sand and rock, and I'm amazed that it can support any life at all.

So, we were barreling down the road in a company car - the one with the good air conditioning. I was reading and staring out at the surroundings, Judy was getting a little work done, and Hamid was in the driving zone. Then...we started t0 feel the a/c cut out. And Hamid pulled over. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous at this point. He turned the key in the engine, and it revved up, as did the air conditioning, so we all breathed a big sigh of relief, and got back underway. G-man's car was way ahead by this time, but that was okay, because we were fine with a little distance between us and his crackhead driver.

We continued on our merry way, chatting amongst ourselves. Hamid is a very sweet man, and his English isn't bad, although it's limited. But we all had a good time making fun of G-man's driver ("crazy driver!!"), and he's generally fun to spend time with, Judy and I like him quite a lot. We came up to the crest of another hill....and the engine crapped out. At first, we were hoping that the automotive spirits would be smiling on us, but there was no such luck. Fortunately, we were right across the highway from a police station, so had we so chosen to go there, we probably would have been able to get help. We didn't, mind you, but we could have. G-man called my phone to, essentially, ask what happened to us, and we said we were having some car trouble, at which point he offered to come back and get us, which we gratefully accepted. We then called our office and Hamid spoke to the office manager (who Judy, quite accurately, refers to as "a useless oxygen thief") and told him to send another car. Hamid was, by this time, spending some time under the hood, and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the car.

G-man and his driver arrived, and all three of them clustered under the hood, at a loss as to the cause of our mysterious vehicular predicament, although there were rumblngs that the fuel injection was to blame. Suddenly, G-man came back and announced that Judy and I were to put all our belongings into his car, and we would go with him. We did so very reluctantly, as we didn't want to leave Hamid by the side of the road by himself. By this time, a police officer had ambled across the highway to see what we were doing there, and looked as though he was about to write us a ticket. Given all the things that they don't write tickets for in Pakistan, I was about to get quite upset at the prospect of getting ticketed for breaking down. However, he was just taking notes and trying to be helpful, so I didn't have to bust open a can of whoop-ass. (Not that I really would have. It's not smart to start fights with men who carry guns.)

As we pulled away in G-man's car, we looked back at Hamid, hoping very much that we'd see him again soon. We headed toward Hyderabad, stopping for lunch at the Pakistani equivalent of a truck stop. The food was actually quite good, but we had to stay away from the plate of fresh tomatoes they placed in front of us, and I have to admit to being uncertain as to the hygiene standards of our eating establishment. Well, really I wasn't so much "uncertain" as "frightened". But like I said, the food was tasty.

Shortly after getting back on the road, we were met by our police escort, who were to accompany us through to our destination - a different group would pick us up at each jurisdiction we crossed into, so this was our group from the district of Hyderabad. It was basically a truck full of men with large semi-automatic weapons, so any hopes that we had of keeping a low profile were basically out the window. We crossed the Indus River (the main river of Pakistan), and the scenery changed abruptly. We were suddenly in this lush, green, fertile agricultural area, surrounded by orchards and farms. We went around the outskirts of Hyderabad and got onto the side roads. As we drove down a canal road, there were kids swimming in the water, some dogs playing with them, women washing clothes.

The road was also quite congested, and the police decided to address this substantial problem by waving people out of the way. I am sure that none of you will be surprised to hear that when you're coming up behind a guy driving a camel-drawn cart, waving him to the side doesn't really do a lot, unless he's got mirrors mounted on the camel. It should also not surprise you that rear-view mirrors on camels aren't all the rage in Pakistan. Or anywhere else, I would imagine. The upshot of driving down a 2-lane road, where the lanes aren’t exactly what you would call marked, and people are passing each other constantly on any available side, paying little attention to that silly thing that people like me like to refer to as sight lines, is that one tends to see ones life flash before ones eyes on a semi-regular basis. It even makes one write in the third person, singular, apparently.

This, however, was the best road that we had the pleasure of traveling on until we made it back out to the highway the next day.

We continued to head out to the town closest to the villages we were to visit the next day. We had meetings scheduled at 5 pm with some people from the district government, and an NGO (non-governmental organization – a non-profit that’s supposed to be doing work in the community) that G-man was very keen to use. Judy and I, however, have doubts about their ability to do the work.

We continued on, through more agricultural lands, where I was informed, and could readily observe, that Pakistan is known for producing some of the best mangos in the world. As an American, I often find that it’s very easy to forget that our food comes from somewhere, other than the grocery store. I had never seen a mango on a tree before – it’s stalk looks like a long string, and the tree branches are weighted down by the weight of the fruit. It’s almost like a nature-made Christmas tree, complete with ornaments. We also passed groves of banana trees (do banana trees really form groves?), and fields of sugarcane – the fertility of the land is amazing, and we were driving down this small road, loaded with buses, trucks, rickshaws, camels, horses, donkeys, bicycles, and people on foot, underneath a canopy of trees that arch toward each other on both sides of the road, blocking out the sky. We also drove through small villages here and there, little roadside settlements of a few mud houses or, if they’re lucky, concrete one-room houses. Some of the places almost looked like they belonged in Africa.

We were in the far eastern part of Pakistan, and actually ended up being quite close to India. The terrain is very hard to describe, but it’s like a cross between the mental images I had of the African bush, agricultural lands in Thailand, and small towns in India. A really interesting amalgam of places and people. Driving down the road, you also see trucks and carts loaded up in impossible ways that defy both gravity and geometry. Trucks with loads twice as high as the height of the truck itself, and others loaded down with massive bags of straw that hang out and over the truck, making it look as though it would collapse under the weight of the bags if they were filled with anything else. You also see accidents. We saw what had obviously been a head-on collision between a truck and a long-haul bus. Each was on a different side of the road, but they were still facing each other, with their front ends completely smashed in. There were a few people absent-mindedly picking up what had fallen out of the truck, and some men relaxing by the side of the road.

We finally arrived in Khipro, the town in which we were meeting up with everyone. As we head through Khipro, a small, dusty, brown town with narrow streets, the our police escort decides that turning on their sirens would be a good way to get us from point A to point B – again, I saw my hopes of keeping a low profile vanish before my eyes.

We were escorted into the office of the Nazim, or district manager. The interior of the country is quite a bit hotter than Karachi, which is on the coast. Well, it had been climbing into the 90s when we left Karachi that morning, and the Khipro Nazim’s office didn’t have a functioning air conditioner. There was bottled water all around, but there was just not a way to get comfortable in the office, so I had to rapidly accept that I was likely to sweat off a good five pounds, and that my clothes would all have to be washed thoroughly when I got home. Twice.

I was introduced around to everyone, and was noticing that I had been upgraded from “Dr. Judy’s apprentice” to “Amanda, our newest team member”, and was quite pleased with the promotion, as that’s the easiest promotion I’ve ever gotten.

The more rural areas in Pakistan are substantially more conservative, so we were fully decked out in our local garb, complete with head coverings and such. Women also do not shake hands with men, generally speaking, so I had to follow someone’s lead – if they extended their hand, I did the same, otherwise, I would just put my hand to my chest, bow my head slightly and say hello (or “asalaamu alaikum”, which I have completely misspelled, but it’s an Urdu greeting, I believe it means “peace of God”.) We all sat down, and there was much chatting and catching up as drinks and cookies were served. However, although everyone was very nice, about 95% of what was said was said in Urdu, which was a good preview of what would be coming the next day. I want to learn Urdu, but haven’t made much of an effort to do so yet, and Judy knows a bit of Dari, but it has more in common with Farsi than Urdu, so both of us were quite lost.

We began discussing project issues, and Judy took the opportunity to question the NGO present on their experience doing survey work to gather baseline data for studies such as this. Fortunately, this was the shortest part of the meeting, since they had no experience whatsoever with surveys, data gathering and analysis, or most other things that we would need from the NGO chosen to work on the project. We agreed that they would be given copies of the survey Judy and I had developed to gather baseline poverty data for these villages, and they would field test them in the villages the next day. The meeting eventually wrapped up, and much to our delight, Judy and I turned around to see Hamid walk in the door, almost 7 hours after we had driven away from him at the side of the road.

He drove us to our next destination, where we were to spend the night. It was the home of a good friend of G-man. This man is a very wealthy landowner who lives in Karachi and owns a large farm outside of Khipro. Although, I have to admit that his farmhouse didn’t exactly reflect his wealth. He’s having a new one built next door, and will be razing the current one to install a swimming pool. This might explain why he hasn’t done anything about the black mold that was coming down the walls of the windowless "master bedroom" in which Judy and I were to sleep. I also sincerely hope that his plumbing arrangements will be a little more sanitary in the next home – Judy and I were both uncomfortable with the thought of touching much of anything in the bathroom, and this is a woman who lived in a mud hut in an Ethiopian refugee camp for six months.

We were invited to sit out in the courtyard and have some drinks as dinner was being prepared. Alcohol is illegal in Pakistan, but many wealthy people have their own stashes of it, and sure enough, he had one of his servants roll out a cart full of liquor and bar snacks. So we sat out in the courtyard, where his son had a very nervous and distressed antelope tied up to a tree, and had drinks under the full moon. Forever. We were already tired, and the minutes dragged by – Judy and I both completely lost our appetites and longed to simply go to sleep, but we couldn’t offend our host. Finally, at 11:15, dinner was served. Everything was delicious, especially the plate of freshly picked mango that was brought out for dessert – three different varieties. We limped off to bed around midnight, and once we got into our room, I looked around and have never in my life been more glad to have the little super-lightweight silk sleeping bag that someone recommended I buy for nights I might have to spend in places with less-than-sanitary conditions. A quick glance at the sheets reinforced my feelings on this matter, as I unrolled my little DreamSack and went to sleep.

We woke up, and were treated to more traditional Pakistani food and fresh mangoes for breakfast, which was delicious once again. After a little more conversation, we took a tour of the farm and got to see all the different crops that the landowner's haris are cultivating for him. A hari is the Pakistani version of a sharecropper, and they are all very, very poor. The two villages we were to go to were populated almost entirely by haris, and it felt very strange to be driving around this man’s property in a nice, air-conditioned car, knowing that they people I was seeing working in the fields were lucky to make in one year the same amount of money that I pay for my student loans in one month.

We met up in the Union Council office of Kamil Hingoro – a Union Council is a unit of government, like a county, but smaller. The two villages we were to visit, Mau and Mataro Hingoro were both in Kamil Hingoro. We met with more district officials, and the NGO from the night before, briefly discussed a schedule for the day, and set out. We traveled first to Mau down a rutted and rough road that had been graveled at one point, and was now in a horrendous state of disrepair. It’s very startling to look out across the fields and see the women working, dressed in shockingly bright pinks, purples, blues, yellows, greens, and oranges, some with their entire heads and faces covered, in the middle of an expanse of dry brown. It’s one of the many ways in which Pakistan is a study in contrasts.

We stopped on the road to the village and were greeted by a man who was introduced to us as the landowner, and one of G-man’s best friends in the whole, wide world. The villages we were going to see were populated by his haris, and we were driving across roads that bisected his fields. Suddenly, the choice of villages so far from the actual project roads made more sense – any improvements we made to this particular road, which was once again, far removed from the project roads, could have the happy coincidence of benefitting the landowners. After some elbow-rubbing under the glaring sun, we moved on to the village up the road.

Mau is primarily Hindu, and therefore has the caste system. The people we met with were of the lower caste, and I promise to never, never, never again bitch about being “totally poor”. We talked to women who had to forego medical care because they couldn’t afford the round-trip bus fare of 20 rupees and the doctor’s fee of 200 – 300 rupees. That’s less than $4.

Being in the village was an amazing experience, and the people there were wonderful and curious, and I really don’t think they’d ever seen anyone who looked like me or Judy in their lives. It wasn’t the same kind of staring that I get in Karachi, and it really didn’t bother me. We crowded into a one-room house so that we could talk to the women, many of whom had their children in there as well, and spoke with them about their lives, their jobs, their health problems, and their children’s health problems, as every little boy in the village jockeyed for position at the windows to look in at us. Since we didn’t have a female interpreter, and they wouldn’t discuss a lot of their health issues in front of men (G-man had to act as interpreter – again, more on that later), it was difficult to have the conversation we wanted to have, but they were still wonderful women, even though we couldn’t really talk to them.

After spending more time discussing life in the village with the men, we were invited to have a drink at the house of the head of the village, a member of the higher caste. He didn’t exactly live in a palace, but he had an air-conditioner and servants, and it felt wrong to be served by people when there were families 200 yards away who never earned more than $250 in a year.

We moved on to the next village, Mataro Hingoro, and met up with the NGO to see how their surveying experience had been. As we were getting back into the car, keep in mind that the temperature was well over 100 degrees, and although the replacement car ran, the reason we didn’t take it in the first place was because the air-conditioning didn’t really work. I said something to Hamid about the heat, to which he replied “Yes, Miss. Oh, miseries of God!!”

We met with a bunch of people in the next village, and the village matriarch stood next to Judy and I, fanning us the whole time. That felt very strange as well, but when I tried to pantomime that it wasn’t necessary, she seemed to get offended, so I decided to take the path of least resistance and let her continue. The village children kept creeping toward the shelter where we were all meeting to get a glimpse at us, only to be shooed away by one of the men, and slowly creep back again when no one was looking.

These are places where diseases like tuberculosis and polio are still plaguing their children, and most women die in childbirth. The problems seem so huge that it’s almost overwhelming, and it’s hard to believe that a job that pays $2 a day can make a huge difference in the life of a family, but it does. And yet everyone is able to remain generous and hospitable and kind.

There was a goat in the village that I had seen a picture of in the local paper earlier that day. This goat was noteworthy because it had a white mark on its left side that spelled out the word “Mohammed”, the holy prophet of Islam, in Urdu. This goat had also just given birth to a baby that was producing milk at five days old, an unheard of occurence. I couldn’t help but think of people who see Jesus in potato chips or things like that, but nevertheless, it was a very cool thing to see – I hope my picture came out.

From there, we went back to the Union Council office to have lunch and discuss more issues about the project. One issue that had been troubling both Judy and I the entire day was relying on G-man to be our interpreter. We would sit there listening to conversations in Sindhi and Urdu flying over our heads for 10 minutes. I would then ask him what had been said, to which he would reply “he says thank you” or some such thing. Needless to say, we felt as though we were missing out on something.

We were finally able to wrap things up, and get back on the road home, which Judy, Hamid, and I were all very much looking forward to. As we were going to get in the car, Hamid realized that he hadn’t unlocked Judy’s door yet, and she heard him say “oh, shit”.

Clearly, Hamid has spent a little too much time with Americans.

After some teasing from us, at which all of us ended up laughing hysterically (it was funny, but maybe not that funny – chalk it up to being tired, exhausted, and overheated), we got underway. We wanted to stop in Khipro for some cold bottled water, but when Hamid went to pull over, G-man’s driver leaned on his horn and unceremoniously told us that we were to keep moving.

Apparently, he decided that stopping dead-center in the middle of town, in the middle of the road with sirens blaring again, was a much better plan. Every time we stopped, all the policemen hopped out of their truck, with their guns at the ready. So stopping in the middle of the town, surrounded by the police, managed to draw quite a crowd. It was probably the least smart thing we could have done – not that I felt particularly in danger, but if someone had decided that it was a good time to take a shot at some Americans, we couldn’t have moved if we tried, it was like being in a fishbowl, and our car was rapidly surrounded by people. One thing that made me extremely uncomfortable was when a woman came up to the car, and knocked on the window, begging. This is something that happens in Karachi all the time, and it’s very distressing, but you do manage to get used to it somehow. What I am not used to, however, is someone shoving an old woman away from the car for my "benefit".

After water was purchased with much ceremony, we were on our way again, determined not to stop until we got home, despite G-man’s insistence that we stop for tea “just for 10 minutes” in Hyderabad. I hadn’t done it since the fifth grade, but I was going to fake being sick to get out of it if I had to. Fortunately, we were able to turn it down semi-gracefully, and made our way back to Karachi, past the wrecked bus and truck that were exactly where they’d been the day before, past more camels, horses, donkeys, trucks, buses, rickshaws, and women in their brilliantly colored clothes. I was so tired that I almost didn't notice the perpetual game of chicken that is highway driving in Pakistan.

Hamid asked if we would mind if he listened to a little music to stay awake, and of course, we didn’t mind. The drivers and policemen hadn’t been served dinner until 1 am the night before, and because of our car problems, Hamid hadn’t had lunch, despite Judy’s and my efforts to leave him with some supplies (a bottle of cold water, some crackers and chips – all we had in the way of road snacks), and our particular request to G-man that Hamid be taken care of and given something to eat as soon as we arrived at the farm. The result of all of that was that he was probably more exhausted than we were – but the music he chose to listen to was, seriously, an Urdu cover of “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls. That’s pretty high up on the list of things I never thought I’d hear.

We finally rolled up to our house at about 8:00 pm, having left the town over five hours ago, and traveled over 400 kilometers of roads, some of which were so poor that when we hit bumps, I would be bounced high enough to hit my head on the roof of the car. Hamid was glad to be home, Judy and I were glad to be home, and were even more glad to shower, change, and get some sleep.