Gup Shup

Khaleej Times Pakistan Supplement

2011-08-16T03:21:00.000-07:00

Wanted to congratulate all the people who are working to make a difference in the lives of many who need help. Keep up the the great work!

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/ramadan2011/rmd_story1.asp?xfile=/data/ramadannews/2011/August/ramadannews_August58.xml&section=ramadannews&

The birth of a new nation - South Sudan

2011-07-16T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've been in southern Sudan for over two years now, and it's been an emotional roller coaster. There have been tremendous highs and lows - from seeing a young boy who was wrongfully sentenced for rape to a jail cell with one meal a day for 10 years, be released only after six months to be reunited with his wife and child, to knowing about twelve, thirteen year old girls seeking shade under the chassis of a 6x6 truck from the scorching sun at the prison, trying to protect their infant children who were a result of incessant rape by the guards.

Yeah, I've probably seen more horrible things than good ones but there was no better feeling than the euphoria of witnessing the birth of the world's 193rd state - The Republic of South Sudan.

I've been living in Juba for the last few months and was very exited that I would be able to witness the speech given by the interim President of a new nation, live! Unfortunately, last minute work related activities required me to travel to the city of Kapoeta situated in the south east corner of South Sudan. At first I was really bummed cause I wouldn't be able to witness history in the making and would have had to watch the speech of Ban ki Moon and Salva Kiir on TV like everyone else even though I was in the south. I couldn't have been more incorrect.

Kapoeta is a big regional town, home to the Toposa tribe, but they are not the only ones here, the Nuer, and many from the powerful Dinka tribe (President's tribe) are also residing here. It is where the locals are, the actual people of this land. The people who have been part of struggle for Independence for over 50 years. Everyday people, cattle herders, black smith's, traders, and farmers - not the thousands of aid workers and dignitaries who were going to witness a dog and pony show in Juba. This was going to be original, this was going to be extemporaneous, this would be an outburst of joy unlike the planned activities of Juba. And yes, I wasn't disappointed for one moment.

I was lucky enough to be right under the flag of north Sudan (on the right) when it was lowered down by the state officials and the new flag of South Sudan (on the left) was being raised. I was right there when everyone stormed towards their new flag. It was as if one's favorite team had won the world championship and everyone stormed the pitch. There were thousands of people bouncing up and down to the beat of their new national anthem under their new flag. I had chills for 10 minutes. It was a feeling I will never forget for the rest of my life. I saw tears in the eyes of men from the SPLA (sudan people's liberation army) who had probably seen more horrific things as child soldiers than we can imagine. I could do nothing to stop the tears that trickled down my own face even though I had only been part of this land for two years.

This land that is the size of France with a population of 8 million has tremendous potential. It is blessed with tremendously fertile soil, it is rich with minerals and a proven 5 - 10 billion barrels (could be a lot more) of oil, making it the third largest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria and Angola.

That being said, there is virtually no infrastructure in the country. Up until last year there were 30 km of paved roads in ALL of South Sudan. There is a great shortage of clean water in almost the entire country, vast majority of people are illiterate and their life style resembles pastorals from 500 years ago. There is a shortage of health care facilities, electricity, and other social services. There are no markets, nor any industries that could promote trade and commerce. Over the last few years money has been pouring in from other countries in the form of NGO run aid programs which has kept the ship afloat. The money that has been coming in for development is widely being accused by locals of being warming the pockets of those at the very top. You see massive mansions and brand new Toyota Land Cruisers springing up everywhere amidst shanty huts in Juba. Corruption is rampant at all levels. No money that is coming to Juba trickles down to the other 10 states. Basically, it doesn't look good at all.

In addition, the South has always been very divided amongst various tribes that haven't coexisted harmoniously since like for ever. Over the last 50 years or so they had a common enemy in the North which they don't any more. There are already signs of discontent amongst the various militia leaders who had allied together to be part of the SPLA but now want a bigger piece of the pie. All of them want those Hummers and mansions. Yeah, I know I did say Hummers, there are plenty here.

Then there are unresolved border issues with the north in the oil rich area of Abyei (north west) and Nuba mountains (north east).

What a cluster **** right?

You hear all of what I've just said above dissected in 400 ways every day in the news. "Experts", mostly Arab mind you, use these "problems" to support their argument that "the south should not have seceded", or that they should have "waited for another few years till they could stand up on their own feet". Till they had an "infrastructure in place".

I abhor and detest these type of comments so much I can't every express it in words. "Wait" they say? Wait for what? being treated like shit for another 50 years. The reason why there is NO infrastructure, NO electricity, NO water, NO roads, NOTHING in the south is because they were under the North for the last 50 years. The North gave them nothing, except for war and misery, so how will being under them make things any WORSE off than they already are.

Whats the worst that can happen, they'll be a failed state? There won't be any development? WAKE up people they have been failed for 5 decades, at least now they will be failed but FREE and I'll take failed but free, over failed and oppressed any day, and so will all of you.

The hope of this country lies in its youth. In the hundreds of thousands who fled during the war into neighboring countries, mostly Kenya, who are dying to come back home and make something of themselves and their new nation. These are people who never were really Kenyan or Ethiopian or Ugandan even if they spent decades there. They were always Sudanese and now they are coming back. On my recent trip back from the US, I met two British Sudanese bankers who were coming back to Sudan. I asked them if this was just a visit or more than that. They looked at me as if I had cursed them out "We're coming back home, brother, home for good". It is this educated youth that gives me hope for South Sudan.

Will South Sudan be a bust or a major success? Only time will tell. But for me, I will never forget being part of history being made. It has left a mark that will never be washed away. I wish this beautiful nation the very best and I will do everything I can till I'm here to do my part in helping it.

Trip to Pakistan Part II - Mo and the merry men of Parachinar

2010-12-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

So after a mini hiatus I write the part II of my very contentious earlier post. I hope the folk who criticized me so vociferously do read this edition as well.

As soon as I got home in Islamabad from the airport I had forgotten about my encounter with the "smoking guy" and the police officer. I was looking forward to my sisters wedding which I was here for. As I had written in the last post weddings in Pakistan are a huge deal. When I mean huge, I mean really really huge. Festivities that go on for at least a week, one ceremony after another. Too much food, too much 'bling'. Sorry I digress, weddings in Pakistan can wait another day. Coming back to the dichotomy in Pakistan. In my last post I presented a bleak view of the conditions with the airport story but the flip side of the coin was shown to me on my trip to the mosque on Friday.

Fridays are always fun in Pakistan. You feel spiritual as soon as you wake up. There is something very mystical about them. Everybody cleans up well, wears sparkling white clothes, gels back their hair, puts on perfume to go to the mosque for 'Friday Prayer'.

I've attended the same mosque every Friday since I was about 10 years old, and now I make sure I visit it every time I'm in Pakistan. It used to be a very modest building back when I was a young boy but now its blossemed into this beaituful mosque having tall marbled minarets with an adjecent library and academy.

Before 2005, it used to be that one could enter and exit the 'house of God' without any fear but these days thanks to our 'true' believer friends, the 'Taliban' and the ones that they inspire, it feels like you are an Arab passing through an airport checkpoint in the US. Two sets of pat downs, all items to be displayed etc etc. But it has become an unfortunate necessity and I salute the boys and girls who are standing at the checkpoints as they are always the ones who end up loosing their lives when the crazy lunatics do decide to blow themselves up. For those who haven't been following closely, last year their were over 70 bombings in Pakistan, that's a bomb going off once every five days or so and most of them were at mosques or schools. Obviously, what else would you like to bomb to show your dismay towards the great satanic forces of the west right? Vulnerable worshipers and kids, makes complete sense!

I finally enter the mosque and get situated to listen to the lecture by the maulana prior to the namaz. After the Friday prayer you have kids going through the isles collecting donations while the management makes announcements/pledge calls for different charitable causes. One of these announcements caught my attention. The announcement was of group of young men who were in the local city hospital brought over from Parachinar (Parachinar is capital of Kurram Agency has an area of 1305 square miles and situated in KP province of Pakistan right on the border with Afghanistan) after deadly clashes while fighting the Taliban.

After the prayers were over and everyone was leaving I went over to the gentleman who had made the announcement to inquire more details. He directed me to another gentleman who gave me the phone number to a man by the name of Muhammad who was looking after the injured at a local hospital in Islamabad.

After calling a few different people I was able to get a hold of Muhammad who went on to explain to me that the injured were indeed civilians from Parachinar, some who were severely injured in fighting against the Taliban. The Taliban and their allies have been trying to get a foothold in that region for many years now but have been met with brave resistance from the local community. Their reasons for doing that are very straightforward, they don't want to get screwed over by the Taliban or the US drone attacks, if not the US army itself. For them its all about survival, the Taliban hate them and they don't particularly like the US army either. So if they don't fight, the Taliban end up getting a foothold in that area which would give them easy access to Peshawar and Islamabad. Furthermore, it would give the Allied forces in Afghanistan reason to bomb that area with drone airplanes which would also lead to civilian casualties. So the solution is to take up arms against the Taliban themselves.

After talking to him I was very intrigued and wanted to pay the hospital a visit. The next evening I took a break from the crazy wedding activities and headed over to the hospital where Muhammad was waiting for me. Muhammad who looked to be in his early thirties, an accountant by profession, was a pashto speaking typical 'pathan' in appearance; tall, broad, fair in complexion, and very soft spoken. If I ever brought him over to my house I can hear my mom saying 'Ali, why couldn't you ever turn out to be this gentlemanly'.

Muhammad and I exchanged pleasantries, and while we made our way to the hospital ward where they were admitted he explained to me who these injured guys were, what and how they sustained their injuries and what all their needs were? Upon arrival I saw several men between the ages of 18 - 25 all having sustained severe injuries. Some with amputated legs, others with broken bones, shrapnel wounds, you name it. But what hit me the most was not the severity of their wounds, but the magnanimity of their spirit. Muhammad introduced me as a 'khairkwa' - (concerned person) from the mosque who had come to visit them, thank them and hopefully assist them. I was greeted by them like a brother, like one who had been fighting alongside them in Parachinar. A few of them went on to tell me how they received no support from the Government or any other sources in their quest to resist the Taliban, but their spirits were high and as soon as they got better they would go back, be it on one leg. They were doing it for their survival and more importantly for the survival of their religion. The message that they wanted me to convey to whoever I met in the west was that 'not all of us are like them, and we will not sit back let our lands be conquered and our religion be hijacked by thugs'.

After this very emotional meeting, Muhammad and I walked out while he explained to me how he has along with taking care of the wounded, been working with the community in Parachinaar for years now trying to build schools and basic health care centers in that region. He also explained to me how little support they have received from the Government and how most of his funds are from private donors, mosques etc.

Muhammad and I are in constant touch now and I'm pretty sure in the coming years after my Carter Center campaign is over I will move to the North West part of Pakistan and help him in his quest to bring more attention to this forgotten part of Pakistan where 'men of honor' still exist in abundance.

I had written earlier that Pakistan is a place where you will find corruption and apathy in abundance, but it is also a place where you will find selflessness and valour in people like Muhammad who will literally fight for the just cause till their last breath. For those who say that Pakistan is a failed state that will crumble soon, I say that you need come and meet Muhammad and his merry men of Parachinar and if you stay a little longer I'm sure you'll have no trouble in finding millions like him all over the country.

Love from Sudan

Trip to Pakistan and Referendum in Sudan Part I

2010-11-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

It's been eighteen months since I got here, and its seems like I left Minneapolis yesterday. Don't get me wrong I remember most of my most of my time here and its been a very tiring and rewarding time, its just that whenever I go back to the US or Pakistan I expect things, people, relationships to be just as they were when I left and that is almost never the case.
Take my recent trip to Pakistan a few weeks ago. As has been the case since I left Pakistan a decade ago, whenever I go back its a bigger cultural shock than when I go back to the US.

Part of it is cause things don't change at the same rate in the US as they do in the developing world. Whenever I visit Islamabad there is always more people, more roads, more traffic, more buildings, more shops, more police, more beggars, less order, less trees, less parks, less tolerance, whereas in Minneapolis things are not really changing at all - I think I like it better that way, I think I'll always keep a home there.

My trip to Pakistan this time was for my sisters wedding, my only sisters wedding, and those of you who don't know how big of a deal weddings are in Pakistan, go watch "Monsoon wedding" and multiply that by like four. That's how crazy it was - festivities that lasted for a week.

But I'll start my story with my journey to Pakistan. On my flight from Doha to Islamabad, I met this young lady who was on her first 10 day trip to Pakistan. She was going to evaluate the efficacy of a USAID funded program and was currently doing her master's in Public Policy. As it was her first trip to what "TIME" magazine calls the most dangerous place on earth she had many questions about Pakistan. How are the people like? Hows the food like? What are good places to go? etc etc. I answered her every question as truthfully as I could, maybe more truthfully than I think she would have liked I suppose.

Pakistan is a very confusing place, you will find extreme corruption and honesty at the same time, you will find apathy and enthusiasm also in abundance and it drives even a guy like me whose lived 18 years in the country absolutely nuts.

Lets take my flight back as an example, when boarding the plane from Doha all the passengers who were mostly Pakistani were relatively orderly, queuing properly, not being overly loud just like people from any other place, but as soon as the plane landed in Pakistan it was like all of them were bipolar. Even before the plane had stopped moving most of them got up from their seats and started removing their luggage, the cabin crew kept mentioning on the PA system that we haven't stopped yet but had no affect on what seemed like a herd of wilder-beast on their annual migration from the Serengetti to the Masai Mara. Bags were falling over, people started arguing and I was just sitting back and telling myself "yup, nothings changed, I'm back home".

I had told the USAID lady earlier during the flight that the problem in Pakistan is not that there aren't proper rules or policies in place, the problem is enforcement, and as soon as she saw these people getting up from their seats on a moving plane she looked at me and smiled.

Finally everyone got off the plane to get into the bus that had to take everyone to the terminal at the same time so God knows what the hurry for leaving the plane was all about. Once on the terminal, passed the immigration and customs to the baggage claim you could see signs everywhere which read NO SMOKING, in both Urdu and English but as I expected 6 or 7 people lit their cigarettes. I confronted one of them and pointed out the signs to him, to which he replied, I'm back home, I can do whatever I want. I pointed him out to a police officer who politely told me off "kuch nahin hota jee..cigarette hee to hey" - "doesn't matter sir, its only a cigarette". For the LOVE OF GOD, it is not "only a cigarette", its the law.

That is the problem in Pakistan, these same people who were probably day laborers, who are abused and overworked in Dubai but because there is someone who enforces the law no matter how inhuman that law might be, refuse to revolt or say anything, but in their own country take advantage of the fact that no one is there to enforce the laws.

To be contd.........................

Update from "Those of the Sudan"

2010-02-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day in a few months where I have nothing to do to the point where i'm finally writing something. Its 44 degree Celsius (111 F) in the shade and I have this fan in my office which is preventing me from dehydrating to death.
It's the middle of shipping season which means that the roads (gravel) in South Sudan are dry enough to have supplies shipped on them to the 16 sub-stations we have West of the Nile. All the food, construction supplies, fuel, car parts, UN food for training, you name it is shipped from Rumbek where the hub is to all over south west Sudan.
Working in a place like this you start questioning pretty much everything about life and nature, and inequality and well pretty much everything thing else that can be questioned. It bamboozles you when you see the things you see here and look at the calender to see the year 2010 written on it.
Most of the people living here in the South are at least 100 - 200 years behind the rest of the world. If you see a good house made of bricks with a water tank and lights, the first thing that comes to mind is the word "NGO" and the second "MINISTER".
Being a person of faith you get frustrated when you see people living in abject poverty, dying because of lack of basic facilities taken for granted elsewhere in the world. You try to do what you can, but you just keep facing one obstacle after another. You keep going and you keep getting hurt and it wears you down and you just hope you can keep going and not become cynical and turn into those people who you hated in the first place and were the reason why you come here. The people who are of the view that, "we are who we are because we deserve it. We live in a big house, have cold and hot water, have AC, a nice car, because we worked hard for it. Nothing is by chance" they say. "If you work hard enough you can achieve all that you want" is another one of their favorite lines. Well i can assure you, none of these people have been to South Sudan, or Haiti, or even the south side of Chicago.
Everyone on my compound, EVERYONE, works harder than I do. They work more, they eat less, they don't have a fan at night, they don't take antimalarial pills like me, they can't afford a thermos to keep their water cold. They work all day, but the combined salary of all my staff in Rumbek would be less than my salary. How f'd up is that for lack of a more appropriate word.
Yes, I know I know, I can state the reasons for this, their lack of education, no market structure, sixty years of civil war bla bla bla...... but the fact of the matter is that none of these can reasons can provide any comfort to the families whose kids die of malaria, typhoid, diarrhea, the heat, just simple every day things.
I'm not saying this because I'm ashamed of what I do or who I am and I want to run away into the jungle never to be seen again. I promised myself that I'll do something about and till the last useless breath is taken by me, I will keep trying! It probably won't change a thing, but I'll keep trying. I was taught by my faith that "saving the life of one person is like saving entire humanity" so, I will take it step by step, one person at a time and at least when its all said and done I can look up to the heavens and say, "well I did try, probably not as much as I could have, but you know I did".
One thing that I have learn't here, though which I'm sure all of us have heard from elders or read in books at some point in our lives, is that nothing except for the human relationships we make matter in life. That holds true more than anything when you come to a place like South Sudan. I once read this research that concluded that the majority of people on their death bed did not care about anything that they were leaving behind except for the human connections they had made in their lives. Not money, not cars, not their extravagant portfolios, nothin.g
I have people here that I haven't offered anything except for a few days worth of food, helped lessen their suffering temporarily, and greeted them with warmth, and in return they are willing to lay their lives for me. I say this with tears in my eyes but I would leave Sudan a content person because there is ntohing I have done for them yet I have been showered with so much love.
I remember when i was leaving town to go back to Pakistan and Minneapolis for the new year vacation, I walked out of my room and everyone wanted to see me off. We drove in multiple cars and everyone wanted to carry some little luggage of mine to the airstrip. How many people come to drop us to the airport when we are leaving our homes in the West? Maybe our closest friend or our wives and parents? And that is after you have spent years and years with them. Here, you have people who will show you so much love and ask NOTHING in return. And when you see such suffering for such amazing people it just breaks your heart and you don't know what to do except for looking up and yelling "WHY, why them with all the suffering and why not me, what is so much better about me"
Anyways, sorry about the mundane, depressing talk, and for all 10 of you who have decided to read on, on the bright side of things, I am supporting a few local business agricultural ventures, locally run NGO's, and bright local kids who want to go to university. Some of these ventures include girls' boarding schools run by wonderful missionaries who are overcoming tremendous obstacles to provide education to the local women.
I'm also supporting Sudanese kids who are trying to seek higher education in universities is East Africa as the educational structure in South Sudan is not good enough yet. I work with hundreds of Sudanese involved with the health programs and many of them are very bright kids who work with us as field officers and area supervisors, compound staff, etc and are unable to continue education after secondary school due to various problems at home.
I'm telling ya'll all of this because I know many of you have asked me on various occasions on how they can help. I'm in the process of starting a website dedicated to the people/groups that are being helped and also registering an NGO so that ya'll can be tax exempted as well, but that might take a bit. In the mean time if someone needs any details or wishes to help they can deposit money in my US accounts. I can provide you with the details upon request.

I'll leave you with a few "Only in Sudan" to lighten up the mood:

Only in Sudan - will MEN have plastic pink colored flowers on the handle of their bicycles for decoration. I repeat, MEN

Only in Sudan - will you see people driving their bicycles without any brakes and using their feet to stop themselves (true story)

Only in Sudan - will the same people be using different signatures each time they sign

Only in Sudan - are you LEGALLY required to turn on the hazard light of the care if going straight through a round-about (20 USD fine if you don't)

Only in Sudan - is it ILLEGAL to drive WITH sunglasses on

Slum dog Ramblings

2009-02-02T02:02:00.001-08:00

It was a blast from the past when I watched those kids playing cricket in the streets not worrying about anything else in life. Their attention solely dedicated towards making that one catch. A catch that mean't everthing to me at that time. A catch that was the only thing that mattered. Life was simple, my aspirations were simple. Everything is so convoluted now. I miss home, I miss having to make that catch.

The slums of Mumbai reminded of the slums of Nairobi where I used to visit. I wish I could take all you guys with me and re live that life. A life that without proper food or running water. A place where you might think there is nothing worth living for. But it was pure, it was simple, it was more real than anything I've felt in last nine years of my life in the West. As odd as it might seem, it was better, I was happier.

I think I'm meant to live amongst those people. A life that you might think is destitute. A life that I should want to run as far away from as I can after all my years of higher education here.

I need to go back and work in those slums …Knowing what I know and seeing what I have seen, continuing to live in this façade of a life would be a shame. It would dishonoring those HIV/AIDS widows whom I looked in the eye and promised that I will do everything to make the lives of their children better.

Please forgive me God for every second of my life that I delay in full filling that promise and give me the strength to full fill it.

What is this world coming down to?

2008-12-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

Israel in 'all-out war' with Hamas, this was the heading on CNN 10 minutes ago. "All out war", who are they trying to kid. "All out masacre" thats what the heading should read. Let me start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with Israel's desire to live in peace. But lets be honest here, do Katusha rockets that have killed one Israeli civilian in the last three days warrant the magnitude of response that has killed over 300 and wounded over 700 with NO end in sight!! Firstly, for those who say it is, shame on them. I am sure the great jewish people who faced the holocaust must be rolling over in their graves, wondering whether they even want to be associated with a country that is acting in a way that they fought against till their last breath. Secondly, does anyone in their right mind think that this is going to prevent further katusha rockets from being launched into Israel!!! Has everyone forgotten the war with Hezbollah in 2006. Lemi remind everyone here, the objective was to free the 2 Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah had captured. The result, 48 days of no achievement except for bombing the shit out of a hapless country. How much did that war help the security of Israel in the middle east? NONE what so ever.Why are we to think that this time around it will do anything different.

If we don't even get into the circle of who started what first, did Israel break the peace agreement or did Hamas by firing rockets? it has been all over the news media (even CNN agrees) that due to Israel's blockade there was a humanitarian crises in GAZA for the last few months. There was a shortage of Food, Water and Health Supplies and Israel was not allowing basic necessities to go inside GAZA till the rockets stopped flying into Israel. I don't see why anyone doesn't have a problem with this. Lets see, a fews rockets a day that injure people in Israel vs people being starved to death.

An all out ground invasion of GAZA, what in God's name will that accomplish. The rate of rockets being fired into Israel since all this started has increased tremendously. So if this is not going to stop HAMAS (a democratically elected government I should point out) than what the hell is it going to do except for killing thousands of innocent civilians and fueling hatred.

And how is all of this going to make Israel stronger in the long run. Somebody please explain that to me. Do you honestly think this will not fuel more hatred and possible suicide bombings targeted towards Israel and the US, who says that they are monitoring the situation - what the hell does that mean anyway.

And I do also want to state for all my dear Muslim friends out there, that the Arab countries are as much to blame for this Israel herself. The great nation of Egypt shut down its borders and will not allow any Palestinian to enter, so if you are a Palestinian living in Gaza you can't leave to save your life, you can't fight back cause you got nothing to fight with, all you can do is wait under the freaking sun for a bomb to come hit you so that it takes away your miserable existence. 10 years from now Westerners are going to wonder why the hell does a Palestinian kid whose innocent parent's were killed in a SMART BOMB attack by Israel want to blow up everything - he must be brainwashed. RIGHT!! ......... to be contd

Who is really to blame, and more importantly what next! Part I

2008-01-19T23:39:00.000-08:00

Musharraf, the President of Pakistan said on a recent ABC interview that Benazir had violated her agreement with him by coming to Pakistan early, and was partly responsible for her own death by allowing herself to be a target, as she exposed herself from the roof top of her vehicle.

He might be right in the literal sense, we all could see that had she not popped her head out of the vehicle she might still be alive, but that fact should not be that important. The real question is that, have we as a nation come to a point where leaders cannot come out of their vehicles to touch the people. Have we lost all notions of civility, justice and sanity.

You could keep passing the buck endlessly between the Government, Benazir herself, or the Pro-Taliban/Wahabi extremest elements, as to who is responsible for what transpired that day but ultimately the blame lies on no one but the people of Pakistan. There is no way out of the mess we are in unless WE ourselves do something about it. (details on this topic next week)

Stop expecting politians, AMERICAN Government, or GOD to do anything for you, because you yourself are either too apathetic or just too freakin synical to do anything yourself. These days it seems like there are only 2 types of Pakistanis left, at least here in the United States. The first kind are those who just don't give a fuck (pardon my language, but there is no other word in the English language that can capture the essensce of their reasoning other than f@#%). You will hear statements like "Pakistan is a failed State, it is hopeless" every time you talk to them. Its like they have nothing else to say. In their minds there can be nothing positive done, they will bore you with the 2 instances in their life where they were treated like shit in Pakistan and how everything is so hunky dory in their half a million dollar house in the suburbs here in the US.

The 2nd type of Pakistanis are the very learned and well read ones. They would have read everything on Pakistan's history, and follow the current well known academics who write books on the country. You would assume that there would be a better word to describe how these folk feel about the nation, but I'm sorry to disappoint you, they also really don't give a F@#$%, and I'll explain to you why I say that. You will here the same "Pakistan is a failed State" mantra from them like the type 1 Pakistanis. These are people who are mostly very self-centered, yes they have a desire and quest for knowledge, but it is unfortunately never to do something positive. It is in most cases to make them feel good about themselves, and give them bragging rights in a social gathering about how well informed they are on the topic of Pakistan.

You might have sensed my love for such people, but it doesn't come without reason. WHOP DEE DOO after dozens of books on Pakistan you came to the conclusion that Pakistan is a failed State(which I don't completely agree with, just for the record) . So what if you after hundreds of years of research recognized a BAD APPLE when you tasted one. What the hell does that realisation do for anyone in Pakistan? NOTHING!!! but it sure as hell pleases your ego in a sick and twisted way I guess. You realised that Pakistan is not doing that well, hell, an 8 year old in a remote district of Pakistan could have told you that and he didn't even have to read all them books to figure that out.

The REAL question is, what are YOU planning on doing about it. Cause if you arn't planning on doing anything, then my dear your knowledge is, I'm sorry to tell you FUTILE, and I'm sure because of the excellent vocabulary that you developed by reading the books you will know what that means.

So I hope and pray that this stupid blog entry has inspired all those who don't know shit to learn something about Pakistan before coming up with their wonderful assumptions, and all those who KNOW shit to please take the next step and try to do something about it. Do not sit around and wait for a Messaih to come, or Divine intervetion, cause let me be honest here, God doesn't have time for free loaders like us.

Stay tuned for next week's blog on the problem of growing extremism and its devastating consequences in Pakistan.....

As always I would love feedback as long as its positive and full of praise. (Hey, don't hate me for wanting only praise, after all I am a Pakistani, so I have to fall within my Type 1 or Type 2 definition).

Join the Pakistan Army

2007-07-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

A very interesting list of the different officials in the Pakistan Government that are retired or are currently serving in the army. God I should have been in the army.

General Pervez Musharraf (President of Pakistan)
Major General (Retd) Muhammad Anwar (President of Azad Kashmir);
Lt Gen (Retd) Khalid Maqbool (Governor Punjab);
Commander Khalil (Governor NWFP);
Lt General (Retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi (Federal Education Minister);
Col (Retd) S.K. Tressler (Federal Minorities & Culture Minister);
Lt Gen. Hamid Javed (Chief Executive's Chief of Staff);
Lt General Muneer Hafeez (Chief of NAB);
Major General Usman Shah (Deputy Chief of NAB);
Major General Shujaat Zameer (Deputy Chief of NAB);
Major General Abdul Jabbar Bhatti (Chief, Regional
Accountability Bureau, RAB, Punjab);
Air Vice Marshal Zakaullah (Chief of RAB NWFP);
Major General Tariq Bashir (Chief of RAB Sindh);
Major General Owais Mushtaq (Chief of RAB Balochistan) ;
Lt General (Retd) Hamid Nawaz (Secretary Defence);
Air Marshal (Retd) Zahid Anees (Secretary Defence Production);
Lt General (Retd) Saeedul Zafar (Secretary Railways);
Major General (Retd) Fazal Ghafoor (Ambassador to North Korea);
Brigadier (Retd) Abdul Majeed Khan (Ambassador to Tajikistan);
Major General (Retd) Salimullah (Ambassador to UAE);
Major General (Retd) Muhammad Hassan Aqeel (Ambassador to Thailand);
Lt General (Retd) Asad Durrani (Ambassador to Saudi Arabia);
Vice Admiral (Retd) Shamoon Aslam Khan (Ambassador to Ukraine);
Air Marshal (Retd) Najeeb Akhtar (Ambassador to Brazil);
Major General Syed Mustafa Anwar Hussain (Ambassador to Indonesia);
Lt General (Retd) Muhammad Shafeeq (Ambassador to Bahrain);
Major General (Retd) Agha Masood Hassan (DG of Postal Services);
Major General Farrukh Javed (Chairman National Highway Authority);
Rear Admiral Ahmad Hayat (Chairman Karachi Port Trust);
Rear Admiral Sikandar Viqar Naqvi (Chairman Port Qasim Authority);
Vice Admiral Tauqir Hussain Naqvi (Chairman National Shipping Corporation) ;
Major General (Retd) Muhammad Hassan (Chief of National Fertilizer
Corporation) ;
A Lt. General (Chairman Pakistan Steel Mills);
Lt Colonel (Retd) Akbar Hussain (Export Processing Zone Authority);
Major General Shehzad Alam Malik (Chairman Pakistan Telecommunications
Authority);
Air Vice Marshal Azhar Masood (Chairman National Telecommunications Authority);
Brigadier (Retd) Muhammad Saleem (Chairman NADRA);
Brigadier Mirza Babar Aziz (DG NADRA);
Brigadier (Retd) Muhammad Anwar Khan (DG NADRA NWFP);
Major General Raza Hussain (Chairman SUPARCO);
Major General Sabihuddin Bokhari (Surveyor General of Pakistan);
Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema (DG National Crisis Management Cell);
Air Marshal (Retd) Shafeeq Haider (Chairman Federal Public Service Commission);
Lt General Arshad Hussain (Member Federal Public Service Commission);
Lt General (Retd) Jehangir Nasrullah (Chairman Punjab Public Service
Commission);
Major General (Retd) Arshad Chaudhry (Member Punjab Public Service Commission);
Major General (Retd) Arshadullah Tarar (Member Punjab Public Service
Commission);
Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Aliuddin (DG Civil Aviation Authority);
Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Arshad Saleem (Deputy DG Civil Aviation Authority);
Major General Zafar Abbas (DG Anti-Narcotics Force);
Major General Syed Haider Javed (DG National Logistics Cell);
Major General (Retd) Inayatullah Khan Niazi (DG Auqaf, the Deptt. of
Historical Relics);
Major General Pervez Akmal (MD OGDC);
Brigadier (Retd) Rizvan Ashraf (General Manager OGDC);
Brigadier (Retd) Ishtiaq Ali Khan (MD Pakistan Mineral Development Authority);
Major General (Retd) Hamid Hassan Butt (Chairman Pakistan Railways);
Lt General (Retd) Syed Shujaat Ali Khan (Rector Engineering University Lahore);
Lt General (Retd) Arshad Mehmood (Vice Chancellor Punjab University);
Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Sardar Khan (Vice Chancellor Engineering
University Peshawar);
Captain (Retd) U.A.G. Isani (Vice Chancellor Islamabad University);
Lt General (Retd) Sardar Ali (DG National Institute of Public Administration) ;
Brigadier (Retd) Maqsoodul Hassan (DG Directorate of Education);
Brigadier Muhammad Ejaz (Home Secretary Punjab);
Brigadier Abdur Rehman (Director Health NWFP);
Brigadier Shadab (Secretary C&W Punjab)
Brigadier Anees (Chairman Punjab Privatisation Commission);
Colonel (Retd) Shahid Qureshi (DIG Sindh Telecommunications) ;
Colonel (Retd) Ghulam Hussain (Secretary S&GAD NWFP);
Brigadier Mukhtar (Home Secretary, Sindh);
Brigadier Zaheer Qadri (DG, KDA, Sindh and not Secretary C&W NWFP);
Brigadier (Retd) Akhtar (Secretary to Governor Sindh);
Major General (Retd) Imtiaz (Chairman Pakistan Athletics Federation);
Brigadier Saulat Abbas (DG Pakistan Sports Board).
Brig. Khalid Javed, DG Projects Directorate, NADRA, Islamabad
Col Talmeez Abbas, DG Dataware Housing, NADRA, Islamabad
Maj Tahir M. Alvi DDG, Project Directorate, NADRA, Islambad
Brig Safdar Husain Awan is the Secy (C&W) NWFP Brig Qadri is DG KDA;
Brig Mohtarim is Home Secretary Sindh
Major General (Retd) Hashmi, Registrar, Pakistan Engineering Council;
Major General (Retd) Anis Bajwa, Chairman PTDC;
Major Genera (Retd) Asif Riaz Bokhari, NRB;
Brig Muhammad Toseef Uz Zaman Khan, Civil Aviation Authority;
Brig Saeed Ahmed Malik, WAPDA Head Qtrs Lahore;
Brig Muhammad Iqbal, WAPDA HQ Lahore;
Brig Mushtaq Ahmed, WAPDA HQ, Lahore;
Brig Khalid Sohail Cheema, DG Pak PWD;
Brig Shamshad Khan, GM NWFP NHA;
Brig (Retd) Zareen Khan, Project Incharge Ghazi Brotha Dam WAPDA;
Brig (Retd) Mukhtar Ahmed Tariq, GM Admin OGDC;
Brig (Retd) Muhammad Hamayoun Khan, GM Procurement OGDC;
Brig (Retd) Sardar Javed Ashraf, MD KW&SB;
Brig (Retd) Nisar, IG Prisons (Sindh);
Brig (Retd) Zafar Ahmed Malik, Karachi Building & Control Authority;
Brig (Retd) Aftab Ahmed, DG PHA;
Brig (Retd) Dilbar Husain Naqvi, MD National Construction Company;
Colonel Rauf, IG Prisons, NWFP;
Colonel Asif Jamal, MD, Multan Development Authority;
Colonel (Retd) Najam ul Hasan Malik, TMO Rawalpindi;
Colonel (Retd) Hafiz Abdur Rehman Malik, MD WASA, Rawalpindi;
Colonel (Retd) Kanwar Muhammad Sherbaz Khan, GM CS&E OGDC;
Lt Col Muhammad Azim, GM NHA;
LT Col Naqeeb Amjad Malik, Manager CS&E OGDC;
Lt Col (Retd) Aziz ul Haque Mirza, Member (Operations) NHA;
Lt Col (Retd) Hafeezullah Awan, MD WASA Quetta.
Major General (Retd) Shujaat Ali Khan, Ambassador to Morocco;
Major General (Retd) Badruddin, Ambassador to Brunei;
Vice Admiral(Retd) Khalid Mir, Ambassador to Lebanon;
Brig (Retd) Muhammad Nisar, Ambassador to Argentina;
Brig. Sikandar Ali, Director, Anti Narctics Force;
Brig (R) Saeed Ahmad Rafi, Director General, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (He was inducted by Gen Musharraf into Foreign Service as
incharge of overseas polling for Presidential Referendum in April);
Brig (R) Mian Khalid Habib, Chief of Protocol, M/o foreign Affirs;
Brig Tipu Sultan, Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
Group Capt (R) Khalid Aziz Babar, Director General, M/o Foreign Affairs;
Naval Lt (R) Ghalib Iqbal, Consul General, Toronto (son-in-law of
former Air Chief Anwar Shamim) {Anwer Shamim is a Quadiyani and had
served General Zia {Ameer ul Momineen as per Jamat-e-Islami} , Anwer
Shamim has huge ranches in California, USA, which he
and his brother in Law Khursheed Anwer Mirza made through trafficking
Narcotics during so-called Afghan Jihad {the Time Weekly that carried
this news was banned in Pakistan in 80s}.
Naval Lt (R) Qasim Raza Mutaqqi, Counsellor, Rome;
Col (R) Salik Nawaz, Deputy Chief of Protocol, M/o Foreign Affairs;
Capt (R) Masood Akhtar, Deputy Chief of Protocol, M/o Foreign Affairs;
Capt (R) Shaukat Muqaddam, Counsellor, Dublin;
Capt (R) Zaighamuddin Azam Khan, Counsellor, Berlin;
Capt (R) Sohail Ittehad Hussain, Director General,M/o Foreign Affairs;
Capt (R) Khalid Durrani, Director, M/o Foreign Affairs.
General (r) Jahangeer Karamat, Ambassador of Pakistan in USA.
Brigadier (r) Ejas Shah, Director General Intelligence Bureau.

Back from Oblivion

2007-06-19T02:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written anything, don't really know why, partly because I’ve been lazy, actually completely because I’ve been lazy. But so much has happened in the past 5 weeks that I’ll be writing about it for a long time to come. On the 15th of May mike came back from his trip to India and told me that I was heading to Pakistan for a couple of weeks and access whether NWI (non-profit that I work for) can start a project in Pakistan. On the 17th I flew out to Pakistan. It had been 2.5 years since I’d been to the motherland. I was hoping to see it in a way that I had never seen it before. I were to go around the country and identify an area where we could start a health based, poverty reduction or social justice project. Mike had left everything up to me so I could do anything and I could do it the way I wanted.

The trip turned out to be a lot more than I had ever imagined it to be. I saw Pakistan in a way that I can only be grateful for. To me Pakistan was what I saw growing up primarily in Islamabad and Lahore, where i went to nice private schools, hung out with kids in souped up cars and an array of servants at their beck and call. I wasn't oblivious to the fact that there was poverty and despair among the majority of people but it was never to close to feel so it never hit me. It was something you read in the paper or heard on the news but never came into contact with yourself. This time around it was different. I was a different person when i returned back to Pakistan and i attribute that a lot to my experiences with ICROSS in Kenya.

I traveled through the southern Sind and the western Baluchistan province and on the way stopped over in the 3 major cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Met with lots of amazing people, ranging from devoted doctors working in a small town hospital for a lot less than what they could get in a big city, to government officials who really want to see their town, city and country progress and are doing their part towards achieving that. I saw pessimism in the cities when sitting amongst rich privileged kids and i saw immense optimism in the small towns and villages.

Was surprised by the work and reaction of some of my old friends. Most of them turned out as I thought, not bad in anyway but just oblivious to what is being done for development in Pakistan, but very critical of what is being done while sitting in their air-conditioned homes sippin on Rum n Coke but there were some that pleasantly surprised me and I will write about one of them pretty soon.

Pakistan at this moment in time is a very exciting place to be in. There is development going on everywhere, people in cities and villages are more politically aware than ever, there is debate going on all over the 20 private tele channels, in villages people are asking questions, questions like "Why don't I have enough electricity? Why can't my daughter go to school? Its this optimism that I took from the place, not the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being sacked is a sign that things are deteriorating in Pakistan but that the amount of debate and criticism that the Government has received because of that was never imaginable before.

I will write more soon, love to hear anyone’s comments regarding this.

Love Ali

Helen of Nakuru (Part I)

2007-04-28T04:19:00.000-07:00

Who says angels are not to be found here on earth. The past week I spent time with a few that even Gabriel would be proud of. Meet Helen, she works as an ICROSS field officer in Nakuru, Western Kenya. Helen is part a great team of ICROSS field officers who provide support and training to the HIV/AIDS patients in and around Nakuru.

ICROSS has set up support groups in different areas around Nakuru for both HIV+ patients and volunteers. Most of patients have been abandoned by their family and friends and find refuge in their support group where they find other people like them, where they can share their stories, get love from them and the ICROSS volunteers. They are taught vocational skills, given medicine for their aches and pains and some diseases, but more importantly, the LOVE that they so desperately seek. The hug, the touch that they were longing for so long but no one was willing to give it to them.

Helen lives in Bondeini, about a 15 minute bicycle ride from downtown Nakuru. There, she heads a couple of support groups for both community volunteers and HIV/AIDS patients. She meets with the support groups once every week where she trains them on a wide range of things such as personal hygiene, nutrition, educates them on STD’s, proper use of condoms and how to make a living for themselves by making and selling necklaces and bracelets made of beads.

One of the many success stories at these support group meetings is MARY ACTIENG; she is part of the Bondeni group. She has been a member of the group for the past 2 years and was in good health and good spirits. Helen had found her 2 years ago in an abandoned house not far from Bondeini. Helen was out on a Home Visit to see another HIV/AIDS patient when the neighbours pointed out Mary’s house. Helen found a very weak lady lying on the floor unable to move anything except for her eyes. Mary had not eaten and drank anything for almost 4 days. Testing later on showed that her CD 4 (immune system test) count was way below the normal level. Seeing her in this state Helen started working her magic. She cleaned up Mary, cooked for her, stayed with her for a week till she got up on her feet. Helen got her necessary testing done, had her put on antiretroviral medicine and filled her house with food before leaving her. Then Helen contacted her family who had abandoned her, educated them on the fact that Mary is not different to them in anyway, she will not make them sick and finally convinced 2 of her children to start visiting their mother. Today, Mary was living the life of a reborn person and is very active in her support group as she feels that she can impact the lives of dozens of others patients like HELEN had done for her.

I accompanied Helen on her visit to the hospital in Nakuru where she met with a few of her support group members who were admitted in the hospital. (to be contd......)

Heading to Nakuru

2007-04-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Well i’ve been missing in action for the past couple of weeks, part of it was procrastination of putting in what I have on my journal on to the computer, I was in the Bush (forest) though, and part of it was just being busy and too tired at night to do anything meaningful. I’ve been enjoying my time with Jesse over the last couple of weeks. Jesse is a senior at Washinghton University in St. Louis. He is a very smart and level headed kid, anthropology major who like most intelligent people has no clue of what he wants to do with his life. The other day we were watching Al-Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and after the movie Jesse wanted to change to his major to environmental science, but i guess that documentary has that affect on a lot of people. I’m pretty sure most of you must have seen it but if not then please do, i guarantee you that it will change the way you think about the life you are living.

pics added (http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi )

Coming back to Jesse, he is part of a group of 28 kids from a bunch of liberal arts colleges is in the US who are in Kenya for a semester. Jesse in his last month is working with ICROSS as his Independent Study project. Jesse and I had been in Longausua, southern Kenya, mostly Masai land, monitoring maternal health care at the ICROSS clinic and working on a proposal for a small new project in the area. I’ve put the pics online. We both had a hell of a time, lived in the BOMA, a traditional Masai home. The captions and pics will explain it all. I’ll hopefully write in detail about what we did there and the project that we hope gets approved. After getting back from the BUSH jesse and I spent 4 days re-writing the entire Annual Report for ICROSS, probably made it worse. I’m going to attach a copy in the email with the hope that most of you ignore it but if you are brave enough please feel free to read about what ICROSS does.

Well today on the18th of April, I woke up to find out that I’m heading to Nakuru in Western Kenya. It is a city of about a million and ICROSS has several projects in and around the city. Although Kenya has about 7 percent of its population affected with HIV/AIDS the small towns around Nakuru have a staggering 1/3rd of its population with HIV. My job will be to get as many personnel stories as I can, put them up on blogs and websites so that you guys know about them. Look at the project from the Policy stand point. See where ICROSS and the GOVT policies are affecting the people and get to learn as much as I can from this whole experience. I should hopefully make it back on the 24th just in time to witness MILAN kick MAN UNITED’S butt in the UEAFA Champions League, go KAKA (Milan and Brazilian midfielder), thats right all you Man U lovers you’re going down, and also watch the KIWI’s take the ICC World Cup.

Well i’m going to call it a night right after this song “Man Atkeya Bay Parwa Dey Naal” by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, written by Baba Bulleh Shah is going to end, funny how a 17th century Sufi’s poetry is helping a guy in a remote village in Africa. Anyways most of you must be thinking i’m crazy.
Good night and good luck.

Perks of Having a Pakistani Passport

2007-04-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

Well what happened today was truly remarkable, certainly something that I will keep telling for a while. Woke up Monday morning realising that as I had only gotten a one month stay stamp on my passport for Kenya, I needed to get my passport restamped. Now I do have a six month multiple visa so I was going to have to go in just to get the passport restamped, no visa renewal!! Anyways, so I asked Danny what needed to be done, Danny acted as if it was going to be a no bigge, instructed Jose to take me to the place in Nairobi which was a 45 min ride on the Matatu (Public Transport vans). So Jose and I head out for our seemingly rudimentary journey. We got to the place at noon to find out that it was closed till 2:00 pm. Disgusted by the situation I asked Jose to take me to a bookstore as I needed a book on Swahili and also needed cheap but really nice sunglasses, I’m sure you guys know what I mean.

So we got the book which I love and the glasses which were 100 bob ($1.5), so far the day was going perfecto, got the book I wanted, got glasses and now was heading to get the restamping done. When I got to the place I proceeded to the first counter only to find out that my case was going to be dealt at counter 6. When in line at 6 the guy from 7 called me over only to tell me that I needed to go to 5 so I went to 5. Counter 5 had a lady sitting behind it, now whenever I see ladies I feel so much more relaxed, because more often than not they have a lesser of an ego and are willing to listen. So the lady tells me to fill out a form and see Yolander on the 7th floor. I thought, okay finally something in the right direction, a form is always a good start.

Jose and I head to the 7th floor, once we get there I see a sign saying INTERROGATION and thought okay, that’s kind of strange but who cares it wasn’t like they were going to investigate me right. From here onwards things started to insanely wrong. I got to Yolanda’s office and find another gentleman there who asks me how he can help me. Well I tell him why I’m there and he takes my PAKISTANI passport and tells me to follow him. He takes me into the waiting room of the Senior Immigration Officer, comes out after 5 mins and tells me to follow him again to the last room on the floor. The room looks kind of shady as it has bars and is locked from the outside. At this point I’m so bewildered that I’m tongue tied, I think I knew inside that this was not a waiting room but was in denial. The room had broken chairs and a table on one side. I was told to wait there till I’m called. Inside were two of my fellow INMATES; I like the feel of the word, me a convict, anyways, they ask me what airport I got arrested at and I think that they’ve lost it and tell them off. They both laugh and state the obvious to me, “You are arrested my friend, why you think they locked you from the outside”.

I wait there for about an hour thinking that this is a big mistake and as soon as the officer calls me everything is going to be sorted out but no one shows up. Now I start getting worried, start calling people, call Danny and Patrick at ICROSS tell them what’s going on. And then about an hour and a half later Jose shows up to meet the convict and tells me “Man you are arrested”, “I know that, you punk” I replied, “but what the hell for”, at that point I realised that Jose was more nervous than I was and thought to myself that this was not good. Jose went on to tell me that they looked me up on Google and found out the company I worked for in the US and somehow decided that I needed to be deported to either to Pakistan or back to the US. They told Jose to go back and buy a ticket for me and meet them at the airport in a day’s time. This did not make any sense to me, I did not overstay my visa, I just came to extend my stay within the dates of my SIX MONTH valid visa. I asked Jose to beg any officer just to listen to me, there had to be a confusion.

Well Jose left and I felt like laughing about the whole thing. This does not happen to real people; it happens in the movies, this really can’t be happening. But it was and I couldn’t do anything about it. Jose returned a couple of times without success and then finally the miracle happened; around 5 a lady showed up and called for me. She was an immigration officer, more like an black angel to me, okay I shouldn’t say black angel, for all we know angels might all be black but I’ll blame this one on Hollywood, they always show the white angel to be the good one. She takes me to her office and for the next half hour I go over everything with her, how I was just there to renew my stamp and I wasn’t illegal and had done nothing wrong nor was planning on anything like that. She looked at all my documents and told me what I already knew that there was NOTHING illegal about what I had done and there was no reason as to why I should be kept in prison.

I couldn’t thank her and God enough. Then came in another immigration officer, who I later found out was sent when Patti from ICROSS made a couple of phone calls to the Immigration Office. This guy asked the immigration lady for my file and she refused to give it to him (god I love her for that) but he went on to tell her that the reason why I’m being held is that I FIT the DAMN PROFILE and I needed to be kept for interrogation regardless. Now some of you must be wondering what the PROFILE is? WELL, I AM IN MY TWENTIES, MUSLIM, AND CARRY A PAKISTANI PASSPORT. YEAH YOU HEARD ME; I AM A MUSLIM THAT’S WHY I WAS BEING SUBJECTED TO THIS SHIT. Well my friends I never felt prouder of being a MUSLIM AND A PAKISTANI, if that’s what this world has come down to, then be it, I will fight back and not in the way they expect, not by blowing up shit but by reason, by intellect, by FAITH.

I was made to give a lengthy statement where I was deemed the accused criminal; for what? I do not know. But I gave it to them and if making me a MUSLIM makes me a convict then I’m ready to be in jail everyday for the rest of my life. All that talk about human rights and human dignity is horse shit if you’re a young MUSLIM in today’s world. The West wonders why people get crazy enough to do the mean things they do, well if a guy is accused of NOTHING and put in prison; he won’t exactly want to be your BEST FRIEND now would he. But we live in rational age; I still believe that this is why the best way to deal with this is with patience and reason and not with REVENGE, cause that’s what a lot of people in the west want; young Muslims to act irrationally, so that they can justify their own crazy actions.

Anyways, so after giving my statement to the immigration officer, I was told to wait while she takes my case to the superior officer. She also warned me that I still might have to leave the country right away. She came back after a half an hour and gave me good news, I could stay for another 2 months after which I’d have to leave, although remember my visa is valid for SIX months, but I guess maybe after 2 Months I’ll become a terrorist so I can’t stay more than that! But hey, I was still very happy, here a couple of hours ago I was in prison about to be deported and now I can stay longer. I really thanked the officer a million times. My passport was kept and I was told to come back the next day at 10 am as the people who would be able to do that were long gone. I picked up my bag pack and JOSE and I left the 7th Floor to find Patti and Boja from ICROSS waiting to greet us outside.

I was back at 10 the next morning was made to wait another couple of hours till I got my passport back. A free man again, haha, I could finally go out and help the poor again. Funny how the world goes after the ones that want to make it a better place.

Well finally I’m headed to Samburu in Central Kenya with Dante, Joe and Saruni for a week where I’ll celebrate my birthday and hopefully get to poor and suffering but happy people of Samburu tribe. I’ll be writing about that soon

Peace Out.
p.s check out the new pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi

Night watchman and the laziness of Kenyans

2007-03-24T13:28:00.001-07:00

Well, there's a lot that happened in the week that past and not a whole lot at the same time, I know I need to be institutionalized but I will explain. For starters, I haven't gone to the Bush, just chilled at the base, ate, worked out a lot, did proposal reading and report writing so in that sense nothing really happened but I also heard from Georgia, found out that I got into their Public Policy program so i'll be starting my grad school in september, meaning that I have my life planned for the next 5-6 years till my Phd is completed.

And then there was Pakistan's unceremonious exit from the world cup! huh! That was one of the most sad days of my entire almost 26 year old life. I was truely devasted, and I mean devasted, this was way worse than the last time i got dumped even, there are no words to explain the sickening feeling and then the news of Coach Woolmer's murder. At first I was just angry at the whole situation but now I sympathize when everyone involved with cricket in Pakistan. I pray Bob Woolmer's soul rests in peace.

I'm usually up till 3 or 4 in the morning as the internet starts working after 9 pm and my best buddies at that time are my favorite 5 people, 4 of whom are in the picture, a.k.a the guardians of the ICROSS Base. From Left to Right, Pili Pili - Maasai for 'spicy', the youngest of them all, Old Lion, Mrs Mama the mother of Pili Pili and Mr. Eyes Eyes sitting in the front (pronounced yes yes - doesn't mean yes yes though; Eyes means fast and agile in Maasai)

Eyes Eyes is the man, he's the skinniest of the them all but by far the ballziest, that dog's not afraid of nobody. You come at him with a stick and he'll attack right back, but I think he really loves me and as long as I have his trust none of the dogs dare to do anything. Pili Pili is just a huge little kid, just wants to play all the time and the Old Lion well, he like 15 years old but refuses to die, I'm told he was the shit back in the day, a hell of a guard dog and a playaa as well, it is said that he would dig under the fence and go out to party whenever he could, if you know what i'm saying. One of my favorite guys at the base though is my 3 am smoke break buddy, Charles. Charles is the night watchman at the base. He's a nice man with a very kind heart, has a wife and 3 kids and one on the way and makes only 6000 Shillings a month.

Now to put that in perspective, I spend around 500 - 600 shillings every day here, a decent meal is 200 -300 shillings and thats not at a Mzungu (white man) restuarant, cause Karen the city which is 10 km from here has a lot of Wzungus living there and a Salmon at the restuarant there is about 800 - 1000. This means that if my dear Charles were to go to Karen he could only have 7 meals with his whole months salary, don't know how he'd feed his family of 5 with that much money. But Charles survives and is happy, at least most of the days. Every night he tells me how he has pressure from everyone in his family to somehow make more money but he can't, he's been stuck making the same for the past 6 years, during which I'm pretty sure Gas prices along with everything must have doubled.

This brings to the hot topic amongst some people who I work with, the outsiders, the white people. What I get from them is that Kenyans are very lazy by nature. They are where they are because they don't like to work. Coming from the West where everything needs to be done ASAP, I can understand where they come from but I feel that they have got it absolutely wrong. I'll give you guys an example. Danny from ICROSS got shot in the leg a month or so ago and I went with him to the hospital to get his bandage changed. I think the time the nurse took to do the bandage was more than the time a 6 year child would take to do the same and during it she kept on having a conversation with a collegue, about what, I don't know but I can bet anything it wasn't about the complexity of the bandage. Coming out of there I was starting to feel the same way as westeners who come to this part of the world feel that KENYANS are soo lazy and they deserve to be poor bla bla bla. When i got back i mentioned this whole thing to Mike and Mike as he always does had a wonderful take on the whole thing. He was off the opinion that we in the West are unsettled and are trying to get somewhere, trying to establish our identity where as the people here have already reached their destination, their identity, they have a culture that can be traced back to thousands of years and thats just the way things are done here, slow and steady. I on the other hand think that for the price that these guys are being paid here they should work half as fast as they do presently. Lets take Charles for example; he make lest than $100 a month. Now please think about this a little, if you were paid $100 a month for a nightwatchman job, enough for 7 meals at a good restuarant in Kenya, would you being doing your job diligently, I thought not.

The talk about integrity and hard work all seems like bullshit doesn't it, hell, if I were in his position I would probably be the first to rob ICROSS. So the problem is not that these people are lazy, its that we would be lazier if we were doing these jobs at the pay that they are getting.

Well, any who, I'm heading to the field this week so i'll have a lot of pics and a lot to write, till then good night and good luck.

The EURO NEWS team

2007-03-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was very excited about this post. It was my most eventful few days, I got a chance to spend 3 days with two very exciting people, one, a free lance journalist and camera person, Terry Winn with an illustrious past and exciting future and a very calm and serene Julian Gomez producer from Euro News, and like icing on a cheese cake fantasy, I spent Saturday night with 28 very courageous and beautiful college students from 3 Universities in the US who are in Kenya for 4 months, studying and experiencing first hand life in urban and rural Kenya.Terry and Julian were here to film a documentary for the World Water Day, march 23, for which they were going to film the Maasai using the Solar Disinfectant Water Project to get cleaner water for their daily living.

Terry and Julian arrived late Thursday night and on Friday morning the Bush Team (Saruni, Joe and I) with its latest members, Terry and Julian left for Longausua - Masaai Land. On the way I learned about the fabulous stuff these guys had been involved with over the years. Terry I must say is 'DA MAN', a war journalist, worked in Russia for years, been in over 100 countries and also has a Non-Profit with a very unique philosophy behind it (www.pix-aid.org),a must view. On the way Terry shares his war time and Russian stories as we all enjoy the wonderful scenery on both sides of the Great North Road.

Finally we get to Longausua and I'm very excited to meet the kids in the school next to the ICROSS clinic. I had made a promise to them last week after seeing them kicking around what seemed like a paper football. I told them that I would get a real football for them next time I came. As I approached the school I saw the kids gathering behind me with huge smiles on their faces. I handed the ball to a teacher who was very grateful as he said that the football came when it was desperately needed. I wish you guys would have been there to witness the joy a small thing like a football can bring to life of dozens of kids. It seemed like a scene out of the movies, it was drizzling and dozens of kids were chasing after and kicking the new football that they were so excited to have. It was an image that could bring tears in eyes of anyone. But the tears I had in my eyes were tears of joy, tears that were thanking God for giving me the opportunity to witness this (http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi).

Next we headed for the Maasai Mantyata (kind of masai village - a collection of masai huts) where Terry was going to film how the Maasai use the Solar water purification technique. The Maasai are very adamant about having their particular way of doing things. They for centuries are used to drinking water right from small lakes and water puddles in the forest. The same water that their animals also drink which has led the numerous water born diseases being very prevalent in the region. The Maasai do not like to boil the water as they say that the taste of the water changes, so what ICROSS has convinced them to do is pour the dirty water in plastic bottles and put them under the sun for 6-8 hours, during this time the UV rays from the sun through the plastic inactivate a lot of the bacteria in the water for up to 48 hours, during which they can have the water to drink and to wash their utensils in. Pretty neat right, well they say the Egyptians invented this 2000 years ago. This method has reduced the water born diseases cases by 30 percent in the area in the last 11 years.One of the scenes that the guys had to capture was the women going down to the water source and getting the water, so we all followed a few women and little girls only 8 or 9 years old down to the water source. Please do go to pics to see how filthy the water that they previously drank without boiling looks like, it’s the same water that the dogs were having when Terry was filming the women pouring the water in the 4 gallon water bottles. Well after the water was collected we witnessed something very incredible, those 8, 9 year old girls strapping the water on their foreheads while it hung on their backs and walking 30 mins with it back to the village. Well, I thought I'd give it a try and trust me, I who thinks that he is pretty athletic would have barely been able to make it back and wouldn't ever try it again whereas these girls were carrying these bottles without breaking a sweat or having a frown on their face. They were just doing something they did every day. Makes you wonder what the hell we complain about in our lives; waiting an extra 15 mins for the meal at a restaurant, the traffic jam due to an accident, not getting our H1-B visas on time. Just thinking about the things that I felt were troubles in my makes be sick and ashamed now.

After the Euro News team got their footage we headed back to the base. It had been a very tiring day and the next day turned out to be the same where we went to a different location to shoot the Masai girls getting water and the Euro News crew filming it. We had a addition to the team though, Jesse Goldfarb, an American boy who is a junior at St.Louis University and will be working for ICROSS in a month's time. Hopefully Jesse and I will be involved with a lot of development projects in the months and years to come.After we got back Saturday evening, Mike sat down with Jesse and I to go over what he had in mind for us for the next few weeks as he is heading out to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to develop the maternity health programs in those countries; which brings me to the part that I am most excited about. Mike has been talking to the director of CARE international for East Asia including Pakistan about a project dealing with women’s' rights issues in Pakistan, and as the whole ICROSS philosophy is getting the project done without the bull shit involved in the middle, which means not paying the outsiders to come and use up most of the money of the projects for things like staying at the Holiday Inn for a month, but to train from within the affected community as no one knows how their problems can be fixed better than the community itself. If the solution comes from within the society rather than from a outsider, that’s what makes it credible, that’s what makes it work. Anyways, so guess who is going to setup the project, Yes!! it will be me. When Mike told me that I’ll be flying to Pakistan in a couple of weeks to talk to the leading social justice activists there and try to figure out all the logistics, for that moment, I was the happiest man on the planet. I thought I wouldn't be able to do something like that for years in Pakistan. Maybe after my PhD. and that also was a maybe! but here was my chance, within my first 2 months of Developmental work. It is more than a dream to be able to serve my own people, even before the start of my grad school. I have a million and a half ideas already in my mind on how to write the proposal, how to get to all the people, Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis all over the globe to contribute to this. To reach out to all who think that changing the lives of hundreds or thousands requires some sort of a miracle; one that certainly they are not capable of. But if a guy like me can be a part of something like this in 2 months then I think each and everyone who has the desire to do this can be part of making that change.

I would greatly appreciate any help that you guys could give me in identifying who to meet or ideas for where there the greatest need lies for such a project, or any other advice that you guys want to give me.

Badae.

2007-03-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

The past 2 days I spent with Joe and Saruni among the Masai removed all the doubts I had about staying in Kenya or with ICROSS. I had the oppertunity first hand to see what no tourists get to see and it was truly a life changing experience.

On Tuesday the 6th of March Joe and Saruni were heading out to Nyonyori which had one of the first ICROSS outpatient centers built in 1986. For that we whould have to travel 1.5 hours South of Ngong passing Kiseria, (safe land - in Masai language) a town where the Masai women walk tens of miles to come and shop, and the men sell their goats.
The Masai are the warrior tribe of East Africa, they are fearlous people who live is extreme harsh conditions, consider the entire land to be their home, they are sheep and cow herders and will travel tens of miles each day with their animals. They can stay without food and water for a couple of days and just keep walking with little rest. I'm not talking about 200 pound grown men doing this, I'm talking about 70 year old women. They used to be expert hunters and you will hear countless tales on how the Masai Warrior would kill a lion with one spear and a shield. The Masai have been researched to have less than ordinary amounts of adrenaline in their system, a low than normal heart beat and muscle mass.(PICS ONLINE: http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi)

At the Outpatient center in Nyonyori I was greeted by Mr. Johnson who is the nurses assistant at the place. The nurse was off for the day. Like all the Masai he had a big smile on his face when he shook my hand. A tall man about 6 feet, slim like all the Masai, opened up the center for me to view. Inside were 2 rooms one for the patients to wait in and the other for the nurse's examination. Johnson explained to me that the common diseases that were treated at the center were diarrhea, typhoid and malaria. They see an average of 10 - 20 patients a day and also provide vaccinations for polio and tetanus. There's probably a lot more he told me that I am forgetting cause of the my remarkable IQ of 55. This was the only Clinic within an hour driving distance in any direction. The Masai people walked 30 km to get to the clinic to be seen by a nurse, mind you this is not a hospital, there is one small room where the meds were stored and meds are supplied by the Kenyan Govt on a quarterly basis. If there is a shortage of supplies ICROSS chips in. Mr. Johnson is a trained health professional from ICROSS while the nurse is an employee of the GOVT. Just like in Nyonyori, ICROSS partners with the Kenyan Govt in most of these Clinics.

Johnson told me that he has seen tremendous progress over the years where training and treatment has led to the number of diarrhea and malaria patients decreasing greatly over the years.

ICROSS like hundreds of Organizations may not be running perfectly there maybe holes here and there but the work that I see them doing first hand in the remotest areas on Kenya where there is no REDCROSS, no UN or other major Non-Profit presence is tremendous. Even if I do believe some of the stuff thats posted in the comments for the earlier blog, how do I discredit the information, the joy that is displayed to me by a Masai who tells me how ICROSS has changed his life for the better.

It doens't matter if Mike Meegan lied about where he did his Phd from in a grant proposal, what matters is that he has been here for 27 years setting up a community health system, remember COMMUNITY in there, where trained locals are treating and improving the lives of other locals. The bigger picture is not what Meegan or ICROSS are doing, its the fact that there are thousands of locals who are helping themselves out and ICROSS is just aiding them in doing that. I will write about meegan and what he's done, again not just what i've seen but what hundreds literally hundreds of Intellectual minds have said about him, remember non of us are perfect, but this post is not about that, its about the incredible Masai.

We left Nyonyori at about 6 pm to head back for our 1.5 hour journey back to the base and on the way Saruni the wise Masai, sang Masai songs and explained to be what the background for each one was. He enlightened me with Masai war tales, on how they used to hunt lions and the songs that the women would sing when the men took the animals to higher pastures during the drought which hits every 10 years.
The next morning Joe, Saruni and I were planning on leaving for the Dr. Joe Barns Clinic in Longasua which is Masai land, about a 3 hours drive south, very close to the Kenyan - Tansanian border. Joe had advised me to take my camera as we would be seeing a lot of wildlife along the way. We left at around 11 am, picked up nurse Sylvia from Kesayria (the masai town from yesterday an hour away from the base) and a long sanitation pipe as a new bathroom was being built at the clinic. We got on the Great North Road which I was told runs all the way down to South Africa. On the way I took pics of the animals I saw on the sides of the road (pics online). We got to a town called Sibili which was about 15 km away from Longausua where the clinic was - here we had Nyama Choma (goat meat), the best roasted goat meat I ever had, tender enough to melt in your mouth. The diner was in a small hut where there were several Masai's eating. There were broken wooden benches, raggy curtains but there was also George Michael being blasted on a small color cable TV. We washed our hands with what was boiling water to me and then according to Masai tradition dried it with paper (thats what they told me but I think they were just trying to save on their TP budget). Then came the cook with the meat on a wooden platter, he cut the meat off the leg of the goat in front of us and we had the raw meat dabbled in salt which was placed on the four corners of the platter. I can't say this enough, but that was the best goat meat I have ever had in my life. After the meal we were now off to Longausua, another 15 km, shouldn't be too long I thought, wrong, it was all on a dirt road that was not fit for a bull to walk on, let alone a truck, but God Bless the Toyota company for getting us there. On the way we saw ostriches, antelopes, hiennas and the Masai, some of them dressed tradionally and others wearing uniforms. Sylvia told me that these are all kids who go to school situated right besides the clinic. This mean't that there were kids walking up to 30 km a day to go to school. Here is where you truely see the thirst for knowledge, we think we like to learn, we think we deserve things, tell me, is it us who deserves a college education or these first and second graders who walk 30 km a day to learn? It reminded me of how glad and blessed I was to be here and strenghened my resolve for spending the rest of my life trying to make things better for kids like these in the world. Their only fault was that they were born to a Masai family instead of the Hilton family, but then again who's to say that they want to be born to a Hilton family. Come to think of it they would hate it, the Masai's are said to be one of the most serene people on the planet with no depression what so ever, so maybe the Paris Hilton or Brittany Spears should have been Masai, maybe there'd be a lot less craziness in their lives.

To us who have lived most of our lives in the West or like the West even in third world countries, the end matters. It's always about the result, the score, the conclusion and never about the journey. To the Africans its about the journey to get to destination and not the destination itself, a concept that if we learn to appreciate or even understand we'll be looking at things from a whole new perspective.

Badae (later)

NGANDO and the ICROSS meeting

2007-03-04T00:11:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was by far the most eventful day of my journey so far. Cherie and her Girlfriend, no it wasn't a typo, I really did say girlfriend - kate who's here from London for 2 weeks needed to be dropped off to the Wilson's local airport as they were going to Mombasa, the costal city of Kenya for a 2 week lying in the the sun on the beach trip.
Elle and I were the unlucky one's to drop them off. On the way to the airport I saw a huge mosque (Fatima - tuz - Zahra). It was a very inspiring feeling, can't really explain why but made me feel very proud. Got back, started working on the Annual Report for ICROSS, about an hour later different field officers started showing up and we all were called into a monthly ICROSS meeting. Now before I go into what happened next, I would like to tell everyone what ICROSS is. ICROSS was started about 30 years ago by Dr. Mike Elmore Meegan a very famous anthropologist from Ireland, and Dr. Joe Barns (www.icross.ie); it has created numourous rural health programs in Western and Southern Kenya to reduce the rate of preventable deseases, malnuitrition among the locals (including the very famous Masaai people), improving community water and taking care of the terminally ill, ones mainly infected with HIV aids. There's a lot more to what they do but if anyone wants to know I will be glad to send out their annual report for 2006.
Now back to the meeting. None of the field members were Mzungo's (white people), everyone was local, everyone one who was incharge of their respective areas was from that area, Slyvia was a nurse who worked in the South was from there, Saroni worked with the Masai and was a Masai himself. The only 2 people who were not Africans by birth were Dr Meegan and myself.
The first thing that struck me about these people was that they were more genuine and true to their cause than anyone I have ever seen in my life. They really believe in what they do and it is not about the money, cause there is no money. These people get paid barely enough to support their families, an amount so insignificant that we might spend that much on our groceries or on laundry in a month. For me it was a great experience as I heard stories from everyone on how they are touching the lives of people everyday, Habeseeba, a nurse and local health worker for ICROSS was works in KISII in western Kenya was telling us an incident in which there was a guy from that area who had HIV aids and other STD's that had infected the entire area around his groin, he couldn't move, couldn't go to the bathroom, couldn't eat and was left alone in a secluded part away from his house to die. That according to Habeeseba is very common in Kenya where everyone will abandon the sick and leave them to die. When ICROSS got to the patient he couldn't move, couldn't talk, even his mother had stopped cleaning and trying to help him out. Habeeseba and her team cleaned the guy, got him on nuitriants and antibiotics, they kept coming back and doing that and in 2 weeks time miraculously the guy walked several kilometers to the ICROSS office is KISII one day to meet the team himself. He was healthier, talking and could walk, someone who was left to die by his own family. To the people who ask me why I'm here; tell me, would anyone be at a place other than in the company of these great people. If I could become a fraction of the human beings that they are, I will feel that I have succeeded in life. We all read about Mother Teressa and Nelson Mendela and the work they did and you feel that the world needs a lot more people like them, but I witnessed 10 mother Teressa's today and have no doubt in my mind that I will see hundreds of them in the coming months.
These people have suffered most of their lives but are HAPPY, a lesson that all of us need to learn sitting in our airconditioned homes watching Grey's Anatomy and feeling depressed. Shame on all of us. Saroni taught me something this morning that I hope I never forget for the rest of my life. I saw him and said "Habarigani - hello" and he like always replied "Mzuri sana", Mzuri meaning fine and sana meaning 'very', I asked him why does he say he is "very fine", rather than just "fine" and he told me that as long as you are not ill - sick, everything is very fine isn't it? So my dear friends these people have nothing that we feel is important in life but have everything that they feel is important for being 'Mzuri Sana'
After the meetings that lasted most of the day, Elle - who was given birth by Dr. Meegan and is considered his son, took me to his birth parent's house. Its was about 10 km from the ICROSS base, a shanty town by the name of NGANDO. Elle wouldn't consider them slums as he said that houses are not entirely made of mud but the closest reference that I have in my mind to where his parents lived are the French Colony's in Islamabad where the poorest Christian community lives. He took me to all of his relative's houses and then to see his grand parents who where in a traditional Kikuyu kitchen where a pot of water was boiling on a wood fire and there was smoke all over. I sat with them for a while, like everyone they shook my hand, they were very old but their spirit was very young, you could see through to their heart with the way they smiled at you.
After that we walked on the main street or downtown Ngando where they were no street lights, kids running all over the place, seemed like a carnival and when I asked Elle if that happened only on the weekends as it were a friday, he told me that this was what happened every night.
Elle then took me to a local diner, where we choose what type of meat we would have downstairs with the buther and then went upstairs to wait for our lamb feast to be cooked. It was an unbelievable sight upstairs, everyone was dancing whether they were eating or not, music was playing so loud that you couldn't hear the person next to you even if you yelled. It was all Kenyan music with bad sound quality so I wouldn't say I was enjoying it but I loved watching everyone dance. I think dancing is in the blood of all Africans, everyone had a sense of the beat and was dancing with rythm. Finally an hour later, i'm not kidding an hour later the meal arrived, it was in a big platter, only MEAT, the lamb meat we choose, I loved it cause I love lamb but only meat! no bread, no rice.
By the time I got back from there I was too tired to even think. Set my alarm for fajar which I again did not wake up too, being the mushriq muslim that I am and called it a night.

Pics Online

2007-03-02T04:14:00.000-08:00

Okay I finally figured out a way to get the pics online, it takes me 1400 hours to get them online, but hey what else do I have to do other than playing with the monkeys.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi

Buush Team

2007-03-01T23:51:00.000-08:00

Woke at 8 this morning, made breakfast, seems like i'm back in college, waking up making sure you eat something before going out. Had left over parathas from last night's dinner with my desi eggs ka ommlette. They call parathas chapitiz here. The tea here is wonderful and being a big Chai guy I love my cup of tea, full of flavor and the milk is soo rich.
Came into the office this morning started working on formatting the ICROSS annual report when I met the BUSH MEN; Gatiba (joe) and Saroni, the field warriors. They work in the field offices all over kenya. They call themselves the BUSH men and soon i'll be part of the Bush Team as well. I got my first lesson on the Masaai people from Saroni; about their 9 major clans and the 9 sub clans. As I was getting my lesson a Masaai mother that ICROSS works with, came to the offices and I had my first encounter with a masaai which extremely enjoyable. The woman looked way older than she really was. She had a big smile, extended her hand towards me and said "Sava", being the dumb foreigner I said "Sava" back only to be corrected by Saroni to say "Aeva" back.
My first impression of the Masaai was that they are wonderfully kind people that lead a life of extreme hardship.
Well I'm going to go back to formatting my Annual report now. I wish I could upload my pictures but this internet is killing me, well iI'll keep trying and hopefully get them uploaded this century.

So it begins

2007-03-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

The trip from Heathrow to Nairobi wasn't bad at all, watched Babel on the way, really sad movie;had a really nice conversation with a Norwegian gal who was going to work at the Embassy in Nairobi. Landed in Nairobi at 9:30 PM local time. Cherie, who is from the UK and has been working with ICROSS for 2 months now and Danny who is going to be my mentor and is the Manager at the base came to pick me up. It was a 45 minute drive to the base in Ngong, which lies on the southern outskirts of Nairobi. The drive back reminded me a lot of my country of origin, Pakistan. The same crazy driving on the pot hole filled roads. The same amazing smell of polutants in the air, the same gas stations (CALTEX) that I forgot existed since I've been in the US. Danny told me how just beyond the sides of the road was the safari where during the day time I would have seen Girraffes and Zebras. After getting back I was shown my room by Cherie who is extremely warm and loving. I like the room, its small, reminds me of a guest house room in the hilltop city of Murree in Pakistan. I finally got a chance to meet Mike Meegan, the guy who had started ICROSS almost 30 years ago. As expected Mike turned out to be a very very smart man, the kind of person you would gladly pay to listen too and never get bored. I had dinner during my conversation with mike and cherie and got in bed early so that I could start early the next day. The next morning I couldn't wake up till about 9:30, the jet lag had got to me, although I don't really believe in jet lags but still I was really tired. Took a hot shower, made an omelette and went over to the office with is right next door. Got a briefing from Cherie as to what she needed help with. Then she took me on the mini-bus to Karren which was a 10 min ride; the buses here are just like the "Hiace" in Pakistan. Karren's a place where all the white people live so there was a huge grocery store, kinda like Cub Foods where you could find anything and everything from the West. Went to the money exchange place to get some cash and took a bigger bus back to the base in Ngong.I have a meeting with Mike in a bit where he'll go over what i'm supposed to be doing here.

In Transition

2007-02-27T23:14:00.000-08:00

Okay so I finally made it to the Minneapolis airport without forgetting too many things. I was supposed to clean out my room, clean the house take out the trash and put everything of mine in storage, well I did everything except cleaning the house, pretty sure nasir my roomate is going to be livid but hey, he can't yell at me for another 6 months about it so all's well.
I was so proud of myself for thinking that i didn't forget anything this time but as soon as i got on the plance i realized, no ipod and no sunglasses and i could live without the ipod but sunglasses, it was depressing, but i somehow managed to get over it.
First time flying British Airways over the Atlantic, i must say its not bad at all, i got 3 seats all to myself and one of the hostesses promised me that she wouldn't let anyone come sit in the 2 empty seats beside me. I got muslim food a.k.a vegetarian but i was really impressed by the service. Got to see the 'Prestige', wanted to see it for a while but never did so that was good. I can't get a hang of this British lingo yet, the hostesses would be walking up and down saying 'any rubbish, any rubbish please' and i'm thinking how the hell can you say rubbish and please in the same sentence. Anyways, got the Special Search AGAIN at minnepolis, can't quite figure out how i'm always the one who is randomly chosen by the computer.
Well i'm sitting at Heathrow waiting to board the flight to Nairobi, can't wait for my African Safari to begin.

Adois.

Aaaghaaz - the beginning

2007-02-19T19:21:00.000-08:00

So finally this blog thing begins, the thought that whatever i'm writing has the potential of being read by other people online is kinda scary. I mean so far I always thought I make the most sense in the world to me, i can't understand why people can't see that my point of view, which is almost always infalible, anways, well now i've lost my train of thought, okay i remember. So today finally I got the stupid transit visa to England, I had to pay 72 dollars just so that I sit my ass down on the Royal airport for 8 hours, or maybe 6, you know how many kids in kenya can be fed in 72 dollars, I don't even know but i will in a week, the flight is in a week and I'm pretty pumped. Oh! I finally got my Laptop as well, its pretty sweet, wasted the past 3 hours going over things, trying to figure them out with looking at the manual. I'm not crazy, its just a thing with us Engineers, we don't like to look at manuals. Waiting on the new camera that I ordered and I think I'll be all set to say goodbye to Minnesota, my home away from home for the past 7 years now.

Gup Shup

2007-01-20T14:09:00.001-08:00

Coming up soon....