Contd....The layoffs, the pregnancy and the chaos that ensued

So hopefully on the 6th the judge will instruct Mike to buy a few cows and that'll be that and I'll get my assistant compound manager back.

Now moving on to yet another "only in South Sudan story". So I posted for this new "Office Manager" position around town to help out with inventory and accounting. The posting requires that applicants have an undergraduate degree and had like a whole list of requirements and about 10 bullet points of job responsibilities. I posted this on the 22th and the applications were due in until the 30th.

Everyday I would have one or two people drop off their application at the gate or come inside talk to me and hand their application over to me. Barring 1 the 8 or so applicants that I met did not really speak any English and certainly did not have an undergraduate degree. So finally, I asked one of them if he was indeed applying for the office manager job and what in his eyes made him qualified for it. Oh! I forgot to mention, his application job envelope said "transport officer application". So at this point I was totally bewildered. I thought, I was in charge of the Carter Center here, who's been going around advertising a transport officer job behind my back.
The guy whips out the posting of the Office Manager Job that he had made a copy of, (which in itself is pretty impressive for South Sudan) and points to the no. 5 bullet point on the job responsibilities section.

"No. 5 - Help the transport officer calculate the fuel being using on a monthly basis"

So in case its not clear yet, this guy was applying for only one of the responsibilities of the Office Manager job. I couldn't get myself to tell the guy that he had gotten this all wrong. We were looking for a guy who could do all the ten things listed. Not 10 guys doing one thing each. But I was like "Thank you Chol, we will call you if we are interested".
Then I went back to look at the other applications, and yes you guessed it all of them barring one were for "No. 5 - Help the transport officer calculate the fuel being using on a monthly basis".

The evenings here at the compound are actually pretty awesome. I made friends with these Italian folks that work for CEFA and we have a good game of 5 on 5 soccer three times a week. The rest of the evenings of the week it rains, so Peter Mawel (Papa Mike) the mechanic and I - Papa Mike being his call name during the war days here, sit and have some quality "hookah" with chai.

The best thing that happened this week was me slaughtering a goat, those of you who haven't done it, ya'll have no idea what I'm talking about but those of you who have, know that its pretty interesting. The interesting and kinda unsettling part of it all, were the thoughts running through my mind as the events of the goat cutting unfolded. Steffen, the former Op manager was leaving so he bought two goats for the last supper here in Rumbek. Now butchers all over East Africa just like in India are muslims, (never seen a butchery in Africa that didn't have a resident muslim slaughterer yet) as muslims arn't supposed to eat meat that is not Halal (the animal has to be slaughtered in the name of God so to speak, similar to Kosher, where a Rabai has to bless it). So me being the resident muslim had to slaughter the goat.

Now up until the point I actually did it, I'll be honest, I wasn't too sure about the whole thing. I mean, I like everyone else here is a big hypocrite when it comes to such things. I love all sorts of meat but killing the animal myself, naaah, I just want it in pieces so that I can cook it, I don't want to see all the blood gushing out and the animal being in pain for a good 30 seconds before it actually dies.

So Aloro, the turnboy took the goat down, grabbed the legs and handed me the knife. I asked him repeatedly if the knife was sharpe enough, and which one of the three I had there was the sharpest, cause I wanted this to be quick and dirty. Finally, I decided on which knife to use, pulled the head of the goat back and "Bismillah-e-wallahallah-o-akbar" and obviously the blood came gushing out and I kept going till I made sure I cut off the main artery so that the blood would come out faster and the poor animal would get out of its misery a bit quicker. Well as I said earlier the whole thing might have been 30 seconds tops, but something very piculiar happened that has me thinking even now. Up until the point that I actually did start the process of cutting the goat's neck I was very nervous, mainly for the goat. I didn't want to hurt it, it had done nothing to me and I felt really really bad for the poor thing. I didn't even think I would go through with it at one point, but the moment I started cutting into its skin, all that care and fear for the animal disappeared. All I cared about was getting the job done and nothing else. No more thoughts of how the animal would be in pain. I will admit I might have even enjoyed it a little.
Since then I've been wondering about how these things that we feel like - acts of torture or extreme violence are unfathemable for anyone to do, and we abhor everyone who does them, and we can't believe how normal people can do these things? are they not human? etc etc. Well I realised yet again today that I am as much capable of doing really bad things and enjoying them as any "lost boy" of the South Sudan child army. Humbling to know that perhaps there is nothing, absolutely nothing special about you except for the circumstances that you were born in.

Till next week, Kwaheri

The layoffs, the pregnancy and the chaos that ensued

Hola my dear friends. I know its been two weeks and ya'll must have been very sad that I didn't write anything but it wasn't due to lack of events happening, it was actually because too much was happening. So fasten your seat belts for a very interesting thousand or so word entry.
So in the past weeks, Steffen the former Op Manager has left, Fred my deputy, his contract is not going to be renewed for next year, the compound manager Chol was also let go (he warned me that if I don't pay him the monthly health benefits that I had already paid him for the month again, I would be very sorry) and Mike the assistant compound manager is in jail for allegedly impregnating a 15-16 year old girl.
So essentially I am as Kasis (my favorite Isuzu truck driver) says 5 in 1 these days. This means that I am supposed to somehow get the compound day to day stuff taken care of, make sure that the millions of dollars of inventory is accounted for, do payroll, load the trucks with bamboo sticks etc etc, and oh yeah do my own job as well :)
Lets begin with the layoff story of Chol. Chol is this hot headed yet very respectful (well most of the time) local Rumbek Dinka (Dinka's the biggest tribe in South Sudan and Dinkas are known to be very short tempered people). Chol has had problems with other staff in the past and been responsible for creating some uncomfortable scenes over the years. Last year I heard he locked the Op Manager out of the compound just because he got into an argument with him and well he's the local guy and so the Operation Manager was not allowed back into his own compound until the police was called. And two week ago when Steffen sat with him to tell him about an incident from the past, he told Steffen to "shuttup". I talked to Steffen afterwards and Steffen was like "yeah, don't worry about it, it went really well, at least he didn't lock us up in our own compound again".
So my task was to tell Chol that we could not renew his contract and that he had to give up all of his stuff and leave the compound. We were going to pay him through the month and thats was going to be it. Now managers and HR people think they have a tough job doing that back in the US, imagine being in South Sudan having to do deal with this. Anyways, Chol was pretty cooperative until I paid him the remainder of what we owed him. At that point he's like i'm 50 USD short, "you didn't pay me the medical money for this month". I told him, "Chol you took out that money as an advance, which means that you can't have it again. It's medical allowance, it has to be once a month". But that somehow wasn't registering through to him. He kept on saying "you, you watchout, gimi my money, give it now and gimi a recommendation letter". Well personally it was just ticking me off, but I kept on telling myself that it wasn't about me and that I should deal with this situation in a calm, collected manner. So instead of getting beaten up in front of my staff, I took him in the room on the side and told him that I will pay him the 50 USD but he will have to leave right away without a recommendation letter. Well luckily that did get through to him and he told me to call him when the letter was done.
"Call him", I should call him when his recommendation letter is written. A letter that I dont' want to write by the way. Its a letter that recommends you if you done a good job, for cryin out loud. You can't demand it. Well that's what it should be right, not in South Sudan. It seems like people are entitled to everything here, and its not just the people, its every living creature.
The dogs, the sheep, the cows, especially the cows. Nothing, I mean nothing will move out of your way on the road. The sheep just sit right in the middle of the road sometimes, the mama sheep feeding the baby sheep, in the middle of the road, wallahi, I'm not kidding.
And God forbid if you hit a goat, well it'll be over 200 SDG = 80 USD. If you hit a cow, well you better be ready to shell out some serious dow. A good bull is going for around 500 USD here. I'm thinking of getting in the bull business myself. The Dinka's love to adorn the shaped horns of the bulls with ornaments.
So moving on the other interesting thing of the last two weeks. Mike my assistant compound manager is in jail. His crime you ask? Well a very common one here in the Dinka world. There are two things that you don't mess with a Dinka on. Yeah you guessed em, their cows and their women. Off course this is East Africa so people have many a wives, but its not uncommon for men to sleep with the wives of other men. And everything is kosher unless you are caught. That is what my friends happened to poor Mike.
Sitting on a friday evening having dinner with his family, a pickup full of police officers/SPLA - army people came to his house, picked him up, beat the crap out of him and threw him in jail. Usually how this process works is that if you elope with someones wife, you have to pay the family 7 cows or whatever the judge decides. Now if she gets pregnant well its more cows. And if its rape well then its even more cows and also jail time.
Now I went and met Mike in prison, he was his usual extremely quiet self. He showed me his beating wounds which I promptly reported to the visiting UNMIS (UN mission in Sudan) inspectors who were luckily in the jail at that time. They told me that they can't do shit anyway but they will report it to their seniors. Now Mike claims that this is all horse shit, they're doing this because he's a Choibet Dinka and not an Agar Dinka and hence they're giving him a hard time and all. His decision is on the six of this month, hope it goes well cause I do not want to layoff another kid right now.
to be contd

The Work and the Inspiration

A lot of you have asked about what is it that I really do, okay so not a lot, but some of you have indeed asked and today I will try to answer that question and also state some of the more important things.

For those of you who don't know, I work for this organization called "The Carter Center". It has "Peace Programs", that primarily deal with conflict resolution, election observation, that kinda stuff, and "Health Programs" that are geared to eradicating and mitigating certain diseases. The biggest health program is the "Guinea Worm" program, which is as the name suggests aimed at eradicating guinea worm from the world.

Guinea Worm is a very painful disease where worms that enter your body have to be physically removed by a trained health officer and then preventative steps such as providing access to clean water, not washing or bathing in contaminated water, and purifying the existing contaminated water sources with chemicals need to be taken to eventually eradicate the disease. The disease which was even feared by the pharaohs way back in the day (only the second disease ever to be eradicated - I think small pox being the first) is making its last stand in South Sudan where it is extremely hard to track it. You guys can go nuts and read everything on this link.

So my job is to provide the operational and logistical support needed in South West Sudan to help eradicate the disease. The Rumbek base where I am the Operations Manager, (I like my title, its pretty fancy right :) ) services 10 - 14 substations west of the Nile in South Sudan. Substations comprise of a Technical Advisor, usually a young ex-pat with a Master's in Public Health who reports on outbreaks and trains local community workers and volunteers on how to fight guinea worm. So millions of dollars worth of medical supplies and equiptment, along with trucks and motorcycles are here at my compound in Rumbek and are passed on to the sub-stations around the endemic villages where the actual fighting the disease is taking place - and all of this is managed by yes, you got it, yours truely :).

So we get requests here everyday for something or the other, vehicles breaking down, generators needed, solar panels needed, pipe filter running out, personnel issues, management issues, you name it, and they have to be taken care of by the Rumbek office or if we can't take care of it then the head quarters in Juba Sudan will send us what we need and we'll pass it on, and if they don't have it then it comes in from Nairobi. Obviously there's a lot more to it and I don't want to bore you with the nitty gritty of why this is soo hard to do but lemi just say that there are no paved roads in South Sudan and it is the BIGGEST SWAMP in the world - so half the year (rainy season) you have tremendous problems in moving anything.

A friend of mine asked me what would otherwise be a logical question. Why was I so distraught over forgetting my $40 dollar Swiss army knife and couldn't just buy another one? Well to give you folks a clearer picture, a substation needed 10 meters of rope yesterday and the price of 50 meters of rope (shitty rope i might add) in the local market was almost US $70, so you can imagine that a swiss army knife at this rate would be no less that US $200 dollars if availible.

There's a few semi decent restaurants in town, where most of the WFP (world food programme) pilots and other NGO people go to eat and drink, and a normal meal and drinks there for 2 people costs around US $50 - $60. So its like paying $50 to dine at a place no better than Waffle house or maybe IHOP. In short, the age old problem of pricing because of the laws of Supply and Demand has never been more evident to me than in Sudan.

Well now that I've kinda explained a little bit of the stuff that I will be doing, (I'm sure I'll add more as I get to know more) lets move on to the more important stuff. This past week I've been trying to figure out how the records are kept, where everything is? how to track it? how the finances are working? what personnel issues can arise? how to better manage the place etc etc, which by the way by graduate degree was all about - (MPA) and I used to think when the heck is this going to ever help me? Well it will now, and I guess I should have paid some attention to what the old men were talking to us about in class - little did I know.

So when you have all of these things on your mind you sometimes tend to loose track of what it is that you are really doing here, but every now and then something amazing comes up and you realise that your life here doesn't merely comprise of waking up, walking over to a metal container (office, pic on right), making sure all the sub-stations are functioning well, eat and then go to bed. That my friends is where Dunya comes in (pictured below)

She is who we call the gift of God to the Carter Center, Rumbek. She is very very tiny, I honestly don't even know how old she is and her mother passed away recently. Ayesha, the assistant cook/cleaning lady is her step sister who now looks after her. With Ayesha's salary there is no way she can afford to raise Dunya and that is where I guess I come in. So if I accomplish nothing in my two years here (which is to help eradicate guinea worm from Sudan) I will atleast be happy that God gave me the oppertunity to witness that little girls smile every morning and maybe, just maybe be able to make her life a little better.

If anyone wants me to give something to Dunya on their behalf, I would love too - ya'll can just put money in my account or we can figure out something - she obviously needs all the baby stuff milk and clothes etc.

A few interesting facts:

- So we don't have a fridge, (not enough power) but I was taught how to make a local fridge, pictured here. The way it works is that we wrap some bandages around the Nalgene bottle you see there and then put water in it. At night before we sleep we wet the bottle from the outside as well. During the day its like 100 degree but at night its pretty pleasant and the wind is blowing. The wind blowing causes the bandaged up bottle to cool and when I wake up for fajr I have nice cool 1000ml of water.

- The bathroom is open air, and there is obviously no shower. But lemi tell you, taking a cold shower under the stars after a game of soccer with the staff, is something that I cannot put in words. The sky over here seems so much starier (don't know if that is a word). And pouring water over yourself while looking up to a billion stars - priceless

- The staff and I have started playing soccer on the compound after work. It's been good for bonding with my staff. I seem to have gained their trust and respect, at least for now. Which reminds me that most of them DO NOT have any cleats for soccer or shoes for that matter so if anyone is interested in donating cleats or money for them, they can be shipped to Nairobi or bought from there and then brought into Rumbek when our trucks start moving to and from Nairobi in November.

Okay well this has been longer than what I intended it to be and still I haven't covered everything that I wanted to. I'll put up albums online but its very hard to do it from here as the internet seems to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it works and at other times it chooses not to.

Until next week, Kwaheri.

Hole in the Ground and Wireless Internet - The journey to Africa begins, again

It's been a while since I last wrote anything. I mean I did have to write tons of papers the last 2 years being in grad school and all but I didn't do much blog writing. But luckily for all you (total of five) people out there wanting to know what I'll be doing in the coming months and years, I'll be writing routinely so that hopefully ya'll can live in Rumbek, Sudan without actually living there or travel all over Eastern Africa vicariously through me.
Leaving Atlanta airport I was only hoping that I didn't leave anything important behind, (and I can't seem to find my swiss army knife, so yes I guess my fear wasn't unwarranted) the sometimes crazy but unbelievable rewarding life of living from room to room with your life in 2 bags and a carry on hadn't quite sunk in yet.
And why would it. Africa is supposed to be so exotic, how could there be any problem. Even I who has lived and worked in the vush and had faced the cumbersome seemingly insignificant day to day problems like lack of clean water, heat, mosquitoes, etc etc was all geared up to go there and help eradicate disease and suffering from South Sudan. Little did I know that those day to day things were going to come and bite me in the behind pretty soon.
From Atlanta I flew to Dubai. It was a 13 hours flight, I got a good 5 hour sleep. I stayed at the Dubai airport for 6 hours before I boarded the Kenyan Airlines flight to Nairobi. As soon as I entered the plane it hit me, Ah! that pungent smell of body odor. We think desi's have a problem, desi's got nothin on a native African when it comes to BO. Don't get me wrong I'm not one of those "omg I can't breathe here, I need to get out" kinda person but still it requires some getting used to. Even before the plane took off there had been 3 arguments in the near by seats over luggage and there was no hostess in sight to mediate anything. I don't blame them though, its not like anyone was listening to them anyway. But everything bad about the quality of the plane from the earphone jacks not working to the thing shaking like its wings would fall off at 30,000 feet was forgotten once lunch was served and I heard the hostess say "It is all halal". Ah!! music to my ears.
So a note to myself and everyone, if you want good service, a nice plane but bland food, travel North West, but if you are looking for some good African cooking fly Kenya Airways.
After landing in Nairobi, I got in line to go through customs and heard my name being announced on the PA system. Not again, I thought, not this early, the police interrogations (see this posting for details, Perks of having a Pakistani Passport) already? But no, it was just them telling me that my work permit for South Sudan was ready and I needed to pick it up before my flight to Juba.
In the waiting lounge to go to Juba I made a few friends from the UN Security team before we all got on what seemed like a 30 seater plane and landed in the Juba International Airport, Sudan an hour and a half later. From the airplane, Juba looked liked any other East African place; red surface, a few trees, roof tops made of aluminum sheets, very little paved roads and some slum like neighborhoods.
When I said international airport, please don't bring the thought of JFK or even some small airsptrip in some small town back in the US. It was more like a Flea Market in South Georgia. Our luggage was being tossed out of a tractor trailer and on to a very dusty pavement where we had to grab our belongings from and run them to a counter where airplane officials would inspect them by opening everyone's bags, so no belt, none of those fancy machines that go beep, just humans. On second thought, the machines were there, people just went around them.
After about two hours of waiting on the pavement outside the airport door my ride Mr Jacob finally arrived to come pick me up. Apparently there was confusion over what time I was going to come. Kinda fitting though, the new Operations Manager not picked up from the airport due to lack of operations management, made me feel that I was needed. :)
The compound here is pretty big, there is a big garage where the vehicles are fixed, small offices on one side and the dinning hall, bathrooms and living rooms on the other side.
This is a staging area for me as I am flying to Rumbek on Friday, on a UN plane (thats the only means of transport in and out of there as you can't go by road- i mean you can but its pretty impossible) where I will be stationed.
Oh, the most interesting observations of the day before I forget as it is getting really late,
I heard a worker of the compound - a native Sudanese, enjoy a "Chinese", yes a Chinese song blasting over the radio. I am interested to find out now how much chinese influence is prevalent in the region. There is wireless satellite internet all over the compound and solar panels power half its lights, but on the flip side there is no clean running water and one has to squat over a "hole in the ground" to take a dump (pretty common still in rural areas all over Africa). Yes people, "a hole in the ground" - see picture. Some of the extreme and bizarre discrepancies only to be found in Africa.
Signing off, will write more soon, I've taken Larium for Malaria tonight and its supposed to give vivid dreams and can cause hallucinations, lets see what happens tomorrow, God knows my dreams are almost real already.

Slum dog Ramblings

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?

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

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).