IN A WORLD CALLED PAKISTAN

From Pakistan (1)

This week, I’ve been travelling. For a good three days, I have been in and out of airplanes, trains, and cars, trying to get to my final destination: a small Punjabi town near the border of India called Narowal. Just so you know, I’ve gotten only five hours’ worth of sleep in these past three days, so you are allowed to imagine me as a red, droopy-eyed, sleep deprived maniac sitting in front of a laptop, internally banging her head over the crap internet connection.

Anyways, I’m here now. In Narowal, I mean. So let me explain a little bit of everything that’s going on:

       

     1. Mosquitos. I don’t think anyone has experienced the wrath of mosquitos more than I have today. Mind you, I sprayed my Mosquito repellent a good three times all over my body, I have repellent stuck on every electrical socket in my room, I am covered head to freaking toe in clothing…

                              …and I’m still getting bit.

      2. Roads. Imagine an ongoing road, and oncoming road, and a sidewalk all mixed together to form one road that isn’t even a road because it’s just dirt with rocks. Also, the driving here is a little more than atrocious. Seriously though, I have undergone what I call are “faux car showdowns”--when there’s a car coming towards us, and it almost feels as if we’re challenging each other to crash head on, but then an inch before the cars touch, both turn quickly and avoid a potential disaster.

      3. Dogs. So the CDC recommended rabies shots before travelling to Pakistan. Of course, before I came here I thought “Meh, rabies. I mean, how many rabid dogs can there really be over there?” (that was my reasoning to avoid paying $900)

32

I saw 32 rapid dogs on my way from Lahore (the city I landed in) to Narowal.

3freaking2

They were limping all over the place. I saw a few dead ones in towns I passed by and internally screamed. The funny thing was, nobody even noticed them. One particular dog that I saw had a mangled front leg. It was panting and limping and its distorted leg had these red warts on it. It was walking across the street we were driving on, and I don’t think one person, out of all the people walking around, noticed its presence.

This freaked me out to say the least. Every time I counted another dog, my heart fluttered in anguish a little more. I honestly did not expect to see wild dogs just walking around populated villages. 

I should have gotten those shots.

Ohmygod I can’t believe I saw 32

      4.  Dirt. It’s everywhere. Even the air has dirt in it. On top of that, it’s humid, so it feels like wet dirt is sticking to my skin constantly.

So here are some of the not’s so good things I faced (excluding the flimsy electricity that goes out every two hours; and the internet—that sucks too). But now that I have those off my chest, I want to mention all the good things I encountered.

      1.  The food. I always knew food was going to be a problem for me. It’s just too dang good. My aunts make killer kabobs and biryani and saalan. They have juicers to make delicious juices from the fresh fruit they get from the marketplaces. I’ll take pictures next time.

      2. The people. Every person I have met thus far has been so inhumanly kind and endearing that it kind of left me in awe. I had always been told that people in Pakistan were nice, but experiencing their generosity and affection first hand is quite another thing. Everyone is so connected to each other. All my cousins and aunts and uncles and neighbors, they have such a close relationship to each other.

Everyone is always laughing and smiling and joking around. The house is never quiet. The small kids play on the roofs of our little mud-brick houses, the ladies gather in the kitchen to make some chai and laugh and discipline the children, the men either help the women, or go out to their shops to gather some dough. It’s always busy, and I love it.

All my cousins gave me these flower bracelets as a welcoming gift.
They also threw rose petals at me when I first walked in through the door.

It’s worth everything to meet people like the ones I have been meeting.

Updates:

Collecting stories. I’ll be starting that this week.

Adviser- I’ll be meeting my adviser in Lahore (hopefully) this Monday. This Monday is actually a sort of Pakistan Independence Day, so all the kids will be out of school and there will be parties on the streets.

Video- I’ll be posting a video of this weeks adventures, hopefully by tomorrow. It really all depends whether or not the Wifi will be kind to me or not. It’s kind of difficult documenting everything, simply because people stare at me while I’m doing it, and also because things get so hectic that I can’t do it simultaneously. I am trying my best though. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for reading. Have a nice day! or night. it's night for me

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