Karachi airport is much bigger than Islamabad, which makes sense because Karachi is somewhere between 15-30 times bigger than Islamabad. It was hot as blazes and crowded as we walked out of the terminal and right toward a giant McDonald's, complete with Playplace. The drive from the airport to the Marriott, where we're staying, was great. Karachi is much more exotic than Islamabad, much more vibrant and alive-seeming. The buses, the rickshaws, the shops, the people walking in the road, the birds, the monuments. We didn't have any time to explore, though, as I was already well late for my first meeting.
It's past 10 and I'm tired from day two of this post, so I'm not going to get into any details now, but basically I had meetings with AKES, AKPBS and AKHS, in that order. None of them went as well as I'd hoped, but it's okay. Under the circumstances it could have been much worse.
Ahsan was with me during the last two, and afterward we took a drive around Karachi a bit. Well, the nicer parts, I guess. We drove out to the beach (didn't you know? Karachi is a major port) and walked around on the sand just after the sun had gone down. Lots of little kids running around, a camel ambled by, some couples wandering, and some older kids riding four-wheelers in circles. After that we went to Bar-B-Cue Tonight, a colossal restaurant that serves any grilled thing you can want, except, obviously, pork or anything we would call barbecue. But it was actually really delicious; we shared a couple of dishes and ended up ordering a second helping of the lamb. I also had my first-ever glass of lassi, a yogurt-based drink, which was delicious and very refreshing.
The hotel's nice but unremarkable. It's a Marriott. One thing: The bed is nicer than the bed in the Serena. Amazing.
Anyway, slept very well last night, woke up this morning a bit before 7:30, had breakfast with Ahsan and a couple of other AKF folks who are down in Karachi for various meetings and things. They all seem to be traveling all the time from one city to another. At 8:30, a big (20-seater) van picked us up in the front of the hotel, along with oh my god I need to finish this later.
Long story short: Today we went to the field. More later, I swear.
Alright, it's morning. Birds I'd never seen or heard before are trilling outside my window. To save myself and everyone from confusion, I'll keep writing as if this were yesterday. So "today" means Friday, March 25. There will be a new post for "today," Saturday, March 26.
As I was saying, the big van picked me, Ahsan and Youshey from AKPBS up in front of the hotel. Youshey was coming along to help guide us around the temporary shelters and the water and sanitation installations. The ride to Sujawal took about 2.5 hours, at least an hour of which was taken just getting out of Karachi. And it's not even like the traffic was that bad. Karachi is just enormous. I became enthralled by the brilliantly painted buses and trucks, to which I alluded in my first post from Pakistan. Hoping to get some good pictures of them today; yesterday all I could get was a bit of video. I took lots of little videos.
Sindh is flat as hell and as such you get a feeling of vastness just driving down the road. It's easy to see why it flooded so completely. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine just how much water there was, to be anywhere from three to TWELVE FEET DEEP across the plain. As everyone saw in the footage of the Japanese tsunami, the wrecking power of water is awesome, in the "scary as shit" sense of the word.
Sujawal is a town of about 15-20,000 people in the middle of Thatta District, on the other side of the Indus River from Karachi. That is, the side that flooded. There, we visited a Family Health Clinic run by AKHS, which serves as a base for one of their mobile medical teams. They have a pharmacy, do peri-natal care including deliveries, offer health consultations and provide some advanced care. For the more heavy-duty stuff, patients are referred either to government hospitals or to the AKU Hospital in Karachi, e.g. in the case of the farmer who, upon returning to his village and fields after the waters receded, tried to commit suicide by swallowing insecticide.
Dr. Bisham, who runs 22 of these clinics for AKHS, was our guide, and got in the van with us when we left. We drove a while longer on the highway and then left the paved road, ending up at a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Temporary shelters are almost complete right next to the village, along with one additional shelter that houses the mobile medical team when it makes its twice-weekly visit. Families will be able to move in in the next week or ten days. But for the time being, they're still living in what can best be called squalor, in their devastated village. They have no income because their crops were destroyed; their houses, sagging wrecks, are unsafe; the ground is unclean because their animals have nowhere to go but in amongst the houses. Nowhere I visited in Afghanistan approached this in terms of sheer vulnerability and poverty. A few of the men showed us around, including their school and mosque (we didn't go in the mosque). They rebuilt the school after returning to the village, but the government-funded teacher hasn't returned since the flooding. So their kids are either idle or begging in Sujawal.
A tour of the nearly-complete shelters led to a discussion about improvements that had been made on the fly and then about what could be done to further improve the shelters. Basically, future shelters might have a solid door, slightly more clearance between the roof at the walls, and windows cut in the plastic sheeting that seals the houses from the wind.
We left that village and drove on to visit another mobile medical team. Their temporary shelter had been cut off by water last night -- apparently the ministry in charge of irrigation had left a tap open and now there was a small lake between the shelter and the road -- so they had set up shop in an abandoned school. People were lined up outside and inside a doctor, nurse and health educator were tending to patients. A girl lay on a makeshift bed with an IV drip going, the doctor asked a young boy some questions, the health educator was counseling a newly pregnant woman about nutrition. Flies were everywhere. Outside, an older villager explained how high the water had risen (twelve feet, you could see the high-water mark on the side of the school), how it had destroyed their village and how helpful the mobile teams were.
Our final stop was a village where the people had been able to move into the temporary shelters. They had set up the typical perimeter wall of thorny brush, with a single gate. This is to keep animals in and keep thieves out. We waited outside it for a minute while the men went and told the women to go back inside. Then we walked around, guided again by one of the older villagers. We saw how they'd set up their kitchens and the insides of the houses, installing their own shelves and bed mats. Such an obvious improvement over the wrecked houses. These villagers were having trouble getting water, however, because the water tanks had run out and it's too expensive to bring in more tanks. The village is just too remote. There was a debate between Ahsan and Youshey about the viability of installing hand pumps. Bore hills drilled to 30 feet had found brackish, undrinkable water, even this many miles inland. Youshey said that the next step had to be to drill to 80 or 90 feet, but Ahsan was adamant that in this part of the country, you'd have to drill to at least 170 feet to find fresh water, and maybe more. Too deep for a hand pump; the villagers would need a motor or to use animals to get the water. That's not realistic under the circumstances. The solution was left unresolved.
A bit sadder than I'd been in the morning, we piled back into the van and began the long drive back to Karachi. After a pit stop in Sujawal to drop off Dr. Bisham and use the bathroom (hellooo, loose movements), we continued on to a highway restaurant called Cafe Imran. There we had some hot tea with milk, just as a refreshment. It was very tasty. We got back to the hotel just after dark, around 7.
Upon being asked, I'd mentioned my desire to shop for handicrafts to take home. Youshey offered to drive me in his car to a mall in Clifton, the toniest Karachi neighborhood, and show me a couple of shops. I of course said yes, because how many opportunities in my life will I have to drive around Karachi with a native. Youshey is very friendly and his English is excellent. He's also a bit closer to my age than anyone else, maybe mid to late twenties. There was nothing really worthwhile in the mall, which didn't surprise me, but I'm still glad I went.
Back in the hotel, I realized I wasn't hungry, so I read a bit, watched a bit of crappy TV, and went to sleep. And now it's past 9 AM on Saturday, March 26 and I better get a move on if I'm going to see anything before we have to leave for the airport. One last thing: a few photos. Sorry to just throw them in at the end here.
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