A (normal??) day in Pakistan

This morning I woke up stupidly early for a Saturday morning as we were running a reflective workshop, so I had to get to the office to organise things. The workshop was to learn from and review our Early Childhood Care and Development project in Seren valley, which had to close because of the attack on Plan and their subsequent withdrawal from NWFP. Although our 100 ECCD centres and 2500 children are now without a donor, many caregivers are running the centres without being paid. This illustrates the depth of commitment and change that has taken place in the communities.

But anyway, that wasn’t the point of the session, which was to review the whole project, decide what lessons we had learnt and any recommendations for future ECCD projects (particularly relating to sustainability). Quite a tall order for a Saturday when people were fasting. I was seriously wondering how feasible it would be to run an intensive session when people can’t eat or drink, and on their day off. But I was really impressed with the commitment and interest that people showed. It was a definite learning experience for me - we had to cut a lot of sessions because of time issues. Also, I was facilitating one of the groups, which wasn’t exactly one of my strong points. By the end of the day I still wasn’t able to cope when groups of Pakistani men talking loudly in Urdu completely went off on tangents for 10 minutes and ignored what we were supposed to be discussing. Oh well.

So the session finished one and a half hours late, and 5.30 (ye Pakistan hai). We then waited for two hours for Iftar – the breaking of fast. I was able to catch up with people from Mansehra, hear about all the people who I haven’t seen since February, and who I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to. I caught up with someone who was shot twice in the attack on Plan, and heard about what some people have been doing since February. One guy is working in Peshawar with an NGO supportig schools in FATA – I will be writing in more detail about this later as it was a really interesting discussion. (The western media equate Pakistan with FATA with terrorism, so it was really good to hear about dedicated and committed individuals who are working to bring long term change in what must be one of the most difficult areas in the world.)

At the Azaan (call to prayer) we all congregated on the roof of the office and started eating Iftar – fruit, drinks and then samosas. There were even some doughnuts. It was a beautiful sunset, and very peaceful sitting there listening to the call to prayer coming out from all areas of the city, eating and watching the sun go down.

After that the men who wished to prayed on the roof, and then we had a proper meal – chicken biryani.

Twenty minutes later a huge explosion reverberated around the whole of Islamabad, 50 people died and the entire Marriott hotel has been destroyed. When will this end?