It has been almost 3 months since my last entry? :) Never had much follow up on blog entries, so let me just sum up the main things that have happened in the meantime with my life.

 

Going to a Pakistani wedding

 

If you look at my pictures, you can find a couple from a Pakistani wedding that I went to. In fact it was the Shadi and Valima functions. It was my first time to go to such a wedding and it was really interesting.

 

I find it always amazing, how people here get so crazy over organizing weddings. They save up just to spend thousands to millions on 4-5 functions that happen during a wedding. They go into amazing trouble to host their whole families and friends, which can come up to 500 - 1500 people. The events are so huge I cant imagine something like that ever happening at home.

 

If you ask any Pakistani, why do people come to these events, the answer is simple. They come for the food and for the gossip. So far I have been to 2 functions, but at both of them people behaved like they haven't eaten in weeks. As soon as the food is served everyone jumps at the trays with the food. And exept for eating, the next best thing to do is gossiping. All the men and women come there to exchange information about each other, the more shocking the better. :) And apart from that it is apparently the best place to arrange marriages too. If you have a single daughter or son, niece or nephew, the best place to arrange a marriage is a wedding. All the aunties come together to exchange CV-like information and match up their kids.

 

Honestly speaking, I can't imagine going through something like this. I feel like its a huge waste of money. But I think the same way about european weddings too, so... :)

 

Going to Sehwan Sharif

 

For the first time, we visited a rural areas. We went with the NGO Fakhr-e-Imdad Foundation, which is organizing medical camps around Sindh province. On the 1st of March, they were organizing a skin camp in Sehwan Sharif in Dadu district. So on a nice sunny sunday morning of 5 am, we got out of our beds and went on a trip. First stop over was in Hyderabad for breakfast with the whole team of doctors. After that our journey of alltogether 4 hours continued. We got to Sehwan Sharif at around 10 am.

 

First thing that surprised us was the amount of people that were waiting for hours to get treatment. Living in the desert area of Sindh, these people have a lot of skin problems, but cannot afford to visit a professional. The doctors in the skin camp worked for more than 4 hours in around 40 degrees heat with people pushing themself to get treatment. The conditions that they had to work in were very harsh, but in the end they managed to treat around 3 000 patients in that short time, which is quite amazing. These camps make a huge difference for the people who are living in these rural areas, as they represent the only chance for them to get medical treatment for them and their kids.

 

After visiting the camp, we also went for a short visit to Dadu, to visit a friend of our host. We were taken to a typical family house, which was very simple and reminded me slightly of the houses we have in our villages at home. The family was very hospitable, they introduced all their 10 kids to us and also their relatives who lived right next door. Even though it was visible they don't have much, they were very kind hosts and offered us refreshments. Unfortunately due to language barrier, we couldn't talk to them much, so we ended up just smiling at each other.

 

All in all this visit was very nice and I don't regret the lack of sleep and long journey we had to go through. You can see some of the pictures on my photos page.

 

Roaming around Karachi

 

Visiting places around Karachi is sometimes the last thing we do. As we've been living here for almost 5 months, we sometimes forget to go around the city.

 

So on a Saturday, 28th of March, we decided that we'll go around a bit. First place we visited was Frere Hall, which we wanted to visit for quite a while now. The place has an old historical church in a middle of a beautiful garden. However no pictures are allowed to be taken there. The Hall itself is a run down library, where books are gathering dust. It seems that in Karachi, there is no culture of reading or libraries. We found only 2 people sitting in the library. One of them was reading a newspaper and the other one was a librarian. It must be hard to try to run an empty library with no readers.

 

After that we wanted to visit the National Museum, unfortunately we didn't manage to find it. However we managed to bump into one strange person on the street, who Katya invited to join us on our trip. This guy showed us the way to the Pakistan Airforce Museum. Even though me and Rahab didn't really feel excited to go there, it was a nice place. In fact it is a park, where you have different types of aircrafts displayed on the lawn. So we enjoyed the afternoon with an ice-cream in our hand looking around.

 

Going to Thatta

 

On the next day, all of us 12 took a van on a trip to Thatta. It is a small city about 2 hours drive from Karachi, that has much more historical places to visit than the whole of Karachi. Or at least it seems so. We visited a shrine, a masjid, lots and lots of tombs.

 

I don't really feel like going on and on about how interesting the place was, since you can look at the pictures on my photos page. However it was interesting experience to be stuck all 12 of us in a van the whole day, sweating together, walking together, eating together, visiting rural bathrooms (trust me, even 'kadibudka' is pure luxury compared to that), getting lost on the way and bribing the guys from one of the historical places, because we ended up going to the place from a different end, not knowing there was an entry fee.

 

All of these experiences make up what my experience of Pakistan is, sometimes chaotic, sometimes unorganized, sometimes too hot and too messy, but mostly an amazing place to be in at the moment.

 

Meeting with random people :)

 

The most often thing to do in Karachi however is to meet with random people. No matter if it's at work or as a part of social life, you have to meet all sorts of people all the time. This country is all about networking, socializing, meeting and gossiping. Sometimes it's fun and sometimes it gets annoying, but there's no escaping it.

 

In the past 2 months especially, I have met a lot of people that either stunned me with their intelligence, approach to life, enthusiasm, kindness and friendship or surprised me with their arrogance, ignorance and close-mindness. I have met people with whom I had amazing fun with and the exact opposite. I have met people who might just become my friends and I have met people who will for sure stay in my memories forever. Not that it would be that much different at home, but I guess at home, I don't go through that much action as here and my life is more of a routine.

 

In general

 

All of these events happening are probably one of the reasons why my mind is currently some kind of an emotional roller-coaster. My life is kind of confusing right now. My work life, my personal life... Trying to figure out where I want to go, what I want to do there. I have sort of settled down here already. Have a job I go to from Monday to Friday. Have friends to spend time with almost every day. Have people around me that I care about. Enjoy my weekends. At the same time, I have the feeling, that I am not sure whats going to happen next. So right now, I am just trying to live for the moment.