Sadjet, Shafik, and Sadjet

Charming Child Labor

Another Bad Day in Kasur

I returned to Kasur to develop case studies of small businesses there, to be used for training and analysis. From a work perspective, the trip was a success (and I managed to stay out of the noxious leather sector). But as usual, somewhere the trip took a left turn, this time into the murky realities of child labor.

At an embroidery business I visited, among the dozen workers were three young boys, aged 10, 11, and 12, stitching beads and sequins onto silky fabric. They'd been working there for five years, eight hours a day, and earned less than $1/day. None of them had ever gone to school.

The reality is that their families have no choice but to send them out to work. When the choice is between education and eating, eating must win. There is no free education available for them, and when the opportunity cost of lost income is added to the mix, there is just no way the very poor can send there kids to school. It's a colossal state failure, which produces ignorant, illiterate citizens with no hope of meaningfully participating in a democracy (coincidence?), much less rising above their poverty. The situation breeds fundamentalism, ill health, violence, and a host of other social ills with affects which, I believe, reach well outside the nation's borders. Functioning democracies don't tend to go to war with each other. But countries where the majority of citizens are poor and illiterate have little to lose, and are at the mercy of firebrand fundamentalism.

I also knew, short of starting a school that provided free meals and possibly paid the children to attend, there was little I could do for the boys. I could have kicked up a fuss, but even if, by some miracle, the business owner agreed to send the three boys packing, what then? They wouldn't head merrily off to school. They'd either go hungry or find somewhere else to work, possibly a place where the conditions weren't as good as they were at this small business. So the children become a part of my case study, and hopefully will get local organizations thinking about this issue.

Still, even as I told myself this, my distress must have shown on my face, for my Pakistani colleagues kept asking if I was upset. Hell, yes, I was upset! Children shouldn't be faced with the dreadful choice of a full belly or an education.

After the day was done I walked into a shop near my hotel; it turned out to sell luxury fabrics (these things are not always obvious from the store front). "Pakistan is famous for its beautiful fabrics and exquisite gold jewelry!" the salesman enthused, showing me bolt after bolt of $50/yard handmade silks.

Opulence and poverty.

Open sewers in Kasur

Read This Article

I just returned from a long, grueling day in the field and am too tired to write about it. But just so you don't feel neglected, here's the link to a short but good article on what we're doing in Afghanistan: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001636.html

I think the author has hit the nail on the head about the need to stay the course and about the crossroads which Afghanistan and America have come to.

Kasur

A thick haze of pollution choked the road to Kasur. Wood smoke, exhaust, dust, and ground fog mixed to create a thick brownish haze. At times we could see no more than 10 feet from the front bumper.

Once in Kasur, the stench of leather tanning chemicals, open sewers, and rotting animal flesh added to the mix. My head began to spin, and just as I thought I was seriously in danger of fainting, someone handed me a medical mask. I clasped it gratefully to my face. The leather tanning industry makes up about 40% of Kasur's business, and though there are leather-free parts to Kasur, I didn't spend much time in them.

The sights were no better than the smells. Flat carts passed laden with slick, jiggly, grey "animal fats." Excrement from every sort of creature, including human, seemed to be everywhere. The residents dressed in rags, one young man wearing a woman's black knitted cloche hat adroned with a black-knit flower. I imagined an American woman tossing it into a Goodwill bin. There was an overall air of ill-nourishment - the children were scabby, clots of greenish snot dripping from their noses as they shot marbles across the garbage-strewn brick paving stones.

In the west we take the basics for granted -- clean water, clean air, sewer systems. I cannot imagine how people can get up every morning of their lives to face this kind of grinding poverty, slogging it out in these chemical sewers just to a dollar a day (if they're lucky) and do it all over again the next day.

Conspiracy Theories

My favorite conversation themes are trying to figure out what's really going on. Do the Pakistani authorities really know where Bin Laden is hiding, waiting to pull him out of a hat and present him to the US at some later date when nuclear power is on offer? Is the latest string of Afghan suicide bombings really being conducted by foreigners, or are Afghans jumping on the band wagon? Was the Pakistani president really ignorant of the US intention to bomb Damadola village in order to kill Al Qaeda's #2, El Zawahiri?

And now I'm rubbing shoulders with square-jawed, steely-eyed men working in nebulous positions within the US government, but even though they've probably got some good answers to these questions, they're not talking, and I can't ask. It's driving me nuts. Blathering on about the latest conspiracy theory is pretty much second nature to me, no matter who I'm talking to. With these guys I have to rein myself in or be subjected to withering looks and pointed silences.

Asking questions is so uncool.

I need to spend more time with aid workers.

A Blindfold and a Valium

All one needs to navigate the streets of Lahore are a driver, a blindfold, and a valium. The roadways are one unending game of Chicken as drivers create four lanes out of two (watch that donkey cart on the side!) and squeeze, Harry Potter-esque, between impossibly small gaps in traffic.

This is only my first day on the road with our office driver, but I'm having doubts about him. He seems to be careful of his own driving (good), but stopped twice on the way to the office to lean out the window and scream at drivers who offended him. On the way to lunch today we drove past a road-rage inspired street brawl, and the driver laughed while I cringed in horror.

Last night my Pakistani colleague made an illegal U-turn across three lanes of on-coming traffic. When someone else did the same thing fifteen minutes later, cutting in front of her, she exclaimed in exasperation. She did, however, have the grace to laugh at herself when I pointed out the hypocracy.

Islamabad has a new "safe driving" campaign, which hasn't made its way to Lahore, where it is more desperately needed. Perhaps the government has given Lahore traffic up as a lost cause.

All I need now is that blindfold and valium.

???

The anti-American demonstrations continue in Pakistan, though I have yet to see any of them. I do find it ironic, however, to read interviews from raging Islamic fundamentalists bleating their outrage over the deaths of "innocent women and children." It's the first time I've heard fundamentalists giving consideration to the lives of women or children.

However, in spite of the rise in anti-Americanism, so far my own reception in Pakistan has been much the same -- mixed. Most folks are friendly, even after I've told them where I'm from, but there is the occasional odd occurence that leaves me scratching my head.

For example, an American colleague and I asked a taxi driver if he'd take us to the Serena, the largest and best-known hotel in Islamabad. He didn't appear overly enthusiastic (which was strange in itself - usually cabs stalk me as I walk down the street), but he agreed. When we got in the cab, however, he professed not to understand where or what the Serena was (which was unlikely), and stared at me in such an odd fashion that I suggested we get another cab and got out of the car. Our exit was ruined, however, when my friend discovered her jacket was stuck in the door. I finally had to go around the car and open the door myself to extricate her. The taxi driver parked next to him took us directly to the Serena with a smile.

Was taxi driver A being deliberately dense to frustrate the foreigners? Was it all a misunderstanding?

Pity the poor kitemaker...

There Oughta Be a Law...

Or there oughta be someone to slap legislators silly when they start dreaming up new laws. Most laws take away someone else's rights, and if I were elected to the legislature I'd run on a ticket of obstructing as many new laws as possible.

Pakistan has taken this legal folly to new heights. Most recently, Pakistani lawmakers have made it illegal to fly kites and to serve food at weddings. The rationale for these laws is that the poor are spending too much money on both activities and need to be saved from themselves by banning them. In today's paper there was a complaint that the rich were getting around the wedding laws, for the more laws Pakistan creates, the more opportunities there are for pay-offs for the enforcers to turn blind eyes.

Blasphemy is also illegal, a law much abused of late, with neighbors irate over property disputes sending each other to jail for blaspheming. And pity the non-Muslim, a blasphemer by nature.

Back in Pak

Imagine my sinking feeling while on the flight from London to Islamabad, BBC news reported just how angry the Pakistanis were about the supposed American airstrikes against some homes along the Afghan/Pakistan border. Fortunately, everyone was pleasant to me in the airport in spite of my US passport. While getting into my car, two friendly porters even tried to get $10 from me, though they had not carried my bags. I laughed. Hollowly. And didn't pay.

Then I collapsed in my guesthouse for a short morning nap and slept until dinner time, blissfully unaware of the anti-American demonstrations that had taken place until I read about them in the newspaper shoved under my door.

It was a telling paper. Aside from the articles about the missile strikes, there was an article about homelessness in America and shoplifting in America. There were also several apologist articles about fundamentalist Islam.

The most depressing article, however, was by a young educated woman, who wrote to explain why she wore the full body veil. Apparently, she'd been curious about her other acquaintances' decision to veil, but resisted it until an unveiled classmate of hers was kidnapped and then murdered when she refused to marry her kidnapper. At that point, after three days of soul searching, the author of the article decided that a good Muslim woman should cover up, head-to-toe and she now does so. The remainder of the article explained how much closer to God she now feels thanks to her chador, and that she's a better Muslim for wearing it.

Hm.

Bad Omens from the Romance Gods

I thought I'd diversify my collection of antique Halloween postcards and move into vintage Valentines. The Halloween postcards have been a delight for three reasons: 1) They're cheap and cheerful; 2) They're easy to store; and 3) I like reading other people's mail.

So I surfed on over to eBay and bought a few. The caveat with eBay, however, is that one's working off of pictures of the item, and they're not necessarily as detailed as one would want. But at only $2-3 a pop, I wasn't too fussed. Still, imagine my surprise when the first Valentine's postcard arrived in the mail:

"To my Valentine,
Tis a lemon that I hand you
and bid you now 'skidoo'
Because I love another-
There is no chance for you!"

It was sent from Hicksville, Ohio, to a poor sap named Clarence. No message on the back.

My sister thought it was hysterical, so I handed it off to her and figured it wasn't a total loss.

Then the second vintage card arrived. This one was quite charming - a lovely drawing of a woman in Victorian dress and a cupid. I puzzled over the spidery handwriting on the back, hoping for something, if not salacious, than mildly romantic (it was postmarked 1910). It read:

"Hey old pal. I don't know if you've heard yet, but I've got bad news. Our friend, Mr. Lindey was killed when the bridge collapsed..."

Pakistan Bound

Literally. No, not my upcoming trip, but bride kidnapping and the rescue of unwilling British brides from Pakistani villages. The Weekly Guardian, a UK paper, recently published an article on the "extraction" team at the British consulate in Islamabad, which rescues the girls, some as young as 14, and sends them back to England. It's impressive and dramatic stuff, and I wonder if the US Embassy helps young American citizens in the same plight.

Check out the article, "The Rescuers" at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1663179,00.html