Julie's trip to Quetta - Day 2

(If you have not read the Prologue to this story and Day 1, please scroll down the page and read them first)

After a rather fitful and very hot night with not much sleep, I was taken by my armed guard to Karachi airport and arrived in plenty of time to catch my flight to Quetta.

Before the plane takes off and after all the various announcements, there are prayers for the safety of the flight, broadcast over the speakers, which certainly added to my own. This is the norm on all flights in Islamic Pakistan. There were two other women on the plane so I didn’t feel so much of a minority although I was still the only European woman.

As you approach Quetta by air you see a mass of brown landscape with large bare mountains surrounding this garrison town . As you get nearer to the ground you can see many of the fortified houses still in use. There is very little greenery to be seen.

The temperature on landing was 10 deg C, considerably cooler than the 40 deg C plus in New Delhi I had been getting used to. I had been informed that the hotel would be sending their shuttle bus to meet me and I was somewhat concerned to find it absent when I came out of the airport terminal .

I was greeted by a large number of taxi drivers that assured me that the shuttle would not be coming and it would be better to go in a taxi. I was at one stage surrounded by a group of these very keen taxi drivers when a very nice Pakistani business man, assessing the situation, intervened to say that the shuttle would be coming. He flew into Quetta quite regularly and I should wait with him as he was going to get the shuttle himself. The taxi drivers faces fell but they realised I now was no longer a potential fare and left me alone. In a few minutes the shuttle arrived and we sped off to the Serena hotel.

This is where all the foreigners stay in Quetta and it is built along the lines of the traditional mud forts. It is surrounded by a few security barriers and a number of armed guards.

After checking in I was due to meet with the journalist that had helped with the running of the schools in Quetta since the trust had first been set up. I had spoken to him, as had Richard, a few times before I left New Delhi and we had exchanged emails but I didn’t really know what to expect or what he looked like.

Shahzada Zulfica turned out to be a very helpful and entertaining man and was invaluable throughout the trip. He was accompanied by his nephew Fahim who attends to the many day to day issues of the schools and who was an equally helpful companion for the days I spent in Quetta.

Shahzada had borrowed a car from his uncle to take me around, a small white Suzuki car which like the majority of cars in Pakistan had no seat belts. I must say it did feel very peculiar getting into the front seat, which was the accepted visitors seat, without a seat belt. Thankfully Shahzada was a good driver and he told me he would drive extra carefully as I hadn’t got a seat belt!

So off we went to the first school. Both of the schools are located in a Bravi quarter of the town and where a big Afghan refugee population has integrated well with the local people. Many of the Afghans run small shops and ply their trades successfully in this local community. It is obvious when you go to this area that there is not a lot of money being spent on the upkeep of the infrastructure. The roads, or rather dusty potholed tracks, are a sight to behold and it takes some driving to get there in one piece.

When we arrived at the Syed Jamal Uddin school (named after a famous Afghan religious teacher) we were greeted with a line of Afghan girls waving flowers in greeting. It was a bit like being the Queen and I felt quite overwhelmed and embarrassed by this reception but that was their way of making me feel welcome.

I was taken on a tour of the school by the head master Abdul Harim and saw lots of children slotted into classroom much like sardines. They all sit on the stone floor which is cold and hard. Only the teacher has a chair and it did seem that she didn’t spend much time sitting on it.

Some of the children performed the Afghan national anthem for me and I was presented with more flowers as I sat with the teachers and we discussed their needs for the future. All of the discussion was well translated for me by Shahzada who actually speaks six languages and English particularly well.

The school has 200 Afghan girls registered. Sending your daughter to school is counter to the culture of Afghanis and to a certain degree Pakistan society, where the girls are kept at home to help with work. The school has tried to assist the families of the local people and to encourage them to send their daughters to school by additionally providing schooling to 150 boys, brothers and siblings of the girls in attendance so that all the children in a family could be educated at the same place.

There is no problem with where to park your car on the school run here as everyone walks to school, sometimes up to an hour each way and only a few fortunate ones have bicycles.

All of the teachers were very committed to the school and spoke mostly about what needed to be done to improve things for the students. The overwhelming requirement is for the establishment of a long term funding programme to give the school stability and the teachers an opportunity to expand the school so that it can provide classes and teaching to children over the age of 11. The schools at the moment only provide education up to this age. Teaching above this age would be more expensive as the teachers are more costly and the school would need to be expanded and possibly moved to accommodate the extra classes .

I even had three Afghan mothers come to see me to specifically to ask that the school be expanded so their daughters, who were getting older, would have the chance to continue their education. Without expansion the girls will simply go back home, bringing to an end, their academic learning and the good work that has been started. The consequences of this are that the stated objectives of the Afghan Educational Trust, to help to educate girls up to university level, will have failed. If only one or two girls can be helped onto university, the impact this could have on the Afghan community would be significant.

One of the issues that was particularly relevant to the funding of the schools was the high level of inflation that is prevalent in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Over the last two years the cost of basic food supplies like oil and flour have doubled. The rent on the school has gone up accordingly and the cost of supplies for the children, such as books and pencils, have been difficult to provide, as inflation has eaten away their budgets. A pencil that used to cost 1 rupee now costs 3 rupees, an exercise book once 5 rupees is now 25 rupees.

The teachers, who all walk one hour to the school, as they cannot afford the bus, have seen the purchasing power of their salaries diminished and these need to be raised to help them maintain a minimum standard of living. Currently the teachers work from 8am to 12.30pm six days a week for 11 months of the year. They have two weeks holiday in the summer and two in the winter. Traditionally schools only work the morning session. Although some schools try to fully utilize their premises by offering an afternoon session to another set of pupils.

The staff very generously provided us with a lunch of fruit, cakes and drinks which we all ate together in the headmasters office in semi darkness as there was a power cut. This is apparently quite normal. They talked a lot about how they would like to see the school expanded and I do think they were pleased that someone from the trust had come to hear what they had to say.

From this school I went back to the hotel at around 2:30pm, where Shahzada informed me, there was an inaugural luncheon club meeting and he was taking me as his guest. So I then had to eat another lunch to be polite, including some pudding. The food was really delicious and I would like to have had more than one pudding but I was completely full up!

It was here that I became aware of how well Shahzada was known. He introduced me to a number of high ranking government officials including the head of the army in Quetta, the editor in chief of the biggest newspaper in Pakistan and the general manger of the hotel to name only a few of those I can remember. He is obviously very well connected but then as a journalist you would expect him to have his contacts.

At 5pm I was taken to Fahim’s house (Shahzada’s nephew and AET assistant helper) as I had been invited for dinner. His entire family including mother, father, four sisters, another brother, aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces had been assembled to meet me. You can imagine this was somewhat overwhelming. Lots of different names to try and remember along with their family relationship.

The first thing you notice when you arrive in a Pakistani family home is the absence of furniture (Richard would have loved it). In the main reception room there was a cupboard with the TV on it, carpets on the floor and then mats to sit on and bolster type cushions to lean against, a sink and that was it.

All of Fahim’s sisters and brothers spoke excellent English and they all wanted to talk to me about England and what I thought about Pakistan. It was not difficult to make conversation. Shahzada translated for the parents and aunts and uncles and we had some great discussions.

The nephews and nieces all sat very quietly and listened to the conversation. They didn’t seem to have anything to play with but just seemed content to be part of the family circle. This was something I really loved.

A lot of conversations revolved around family relationships. They wanted to know in my marriage who Richard was to me. It seems that husbands and wives are quite often related in some way distant or otherwise. They often marry by arrangement, their first, second or third cousins. This keeps all the money in the family (in the case of dowries and inheritances) and the families know of the lineage of the prospective partner. Of course there are some genetic consequences.

As all of the marriages in their family are arranged, it took me a long time to explain how I met and married Richard. One of the aunts I met that night, had only two weeks ago, had an arranged marriage to a Pakistani who had emigrated to America 18 years ago. He had come to Quetta and married her. He then left her to go back to New York to begin the process of getting her a visa to join him. She was still quite tearful as she had only spent nine days with him after she had married him, having only met him three weeks before.

Fahim had already been engaged since the age of six (he is now 20), to one of his cousins and spoke very warmly of his future wife and of their life together. He very proudly showed me many pictures of her. I also saw all the pictures of the aunts recently arranged marriage.

It was then time for what I thought was dinner, as a table cloth was laid in front of me and a great selection of cakes and biscuits, along with cups of very sweet green tea were produced. Once the table cloth had been covered with food everyone sat back and I was prompted to eat something of everything whilst they all watched. I was the honoured guest, so they were all holding back. Given the two lunches I had already had today this was quite a challenge! I mistakenly started with a large round looking biscuit which turned out to taste very nice but would be the sort of thing you could use to sustain you in a hike through the Kyber Pass! It had a subtle liquorice flavour and I mentioned that I thought Richard would like it if he had been here so they immediately said they would make a batch for me to take home.

Sitting back on the floor feeling like one of the ducks that had been force fed to enlarge their livers, I was then informed that that was just a snack and proper dinner would be served later! I have to say my heart sank as I was not only very full up but had been on the go since 4.30am and I was now starting to run out of steam.

However the Pakistani equivalent of Kendal mint cake must have given me an energy boost as the evening slipped by quickly with more conversation and also lots of jokes from Fahim’s father. Fahim’s mother seemed very taken with me and said that I should consider myself one of her daughters from now on and she gave me a shalwa kameez and a beautiful scarf gifts to take with me.

At 11.30pm (!!) dinner was served on a different table cloth and another lot of dishes were brought out. I somehow managed to persuade everyone that I had eaten enough and was no longer hungry. I felt as though I would burst, yet there was still one more cup of green tea to drink before I left, to add to the four I had already drunk that evening. As I don’t drink anything but water these days, this was also a bit of a challenge.

It was approaching 1pm in the morning and it was now time to leave. Sharzadza drove me back to the hotel and we found the gates were closed. The guard that opened them for me was about 25 years old but felt compelled to comment that ‘it is very late for you madam to be coming home’. I felt like a teenager caught coming in too late.

The end of day two.