DAY 1 PAKISTAN-TRIP BEGIN
Hello friends and family,
Thought I’d give you updates as often as I can!
So here’s entry number uno: (if I’m rambling and have run-on sentences that don’t make any sense, keep in mind I haven’t slept!)
After a two day round the world trip with a six hour layover in Doha, Qutar, Zach, Andrew (our DP) and I finally made it to Karachi, Pakistan
where Ali, Zach’s friend from college greeted us. He’s an encyclopedia of knowledge and has been educating us from the first car ride into the city on both the political and economic state of the middle east. In addition, he has personally undertaken the responsibility to ensure that all our needs, safety included, are met while we’re here.
Tomorrow should be an incredible day of filming… We’re headed to Khairpur (in the Sindh region of Pakistan–South Pakistan which is safer than the north but a place where kidnappings are not uncommon) with the head of the DIL program which is a school program set up by Pakistani American women for girls who wouldn’t normally get an education. (The school is set up at people’s houses and the classrooms rotate from house to house every semester (in backyards/livingrooms–anywhere they can squeeze the kids) so there’s no added costs and overhead of running a school…just the remarkable teachers!) We’re going to a remote farm town to see the progress of the program. Should be inspiring to say the least. (We’ll be leaving the area “before dark” as advised)…
Karachi is a much cleaner city than any city I visited in India (New Delhi and Bombay namely) with similar slums but much more seeming organization…But with the Bombay attack and retaliation, 28 people have been killed in Karachi in the last three days all minutes from here…pretty scary to think about…
Another interesting thing is that there is no nightlife in Pakistan–no dance clubs, bars or anything given that alcohol is against the religion…so people go out to restaurants here as their source of entertainment…
Last tidbit for this entry about Pakistan: While there is 1 movie screen for every 8000 people in the US, there is only 1 movie screen per 300,000 people in Pakistan! Some things we just take for granted I guess…
Anyway, had breakfast and lunch with Ali who gave us a guided tour of “Defense”, a military area in Karachi (named much like “La Defense” in Paris) on the coast of the Arabian sea. Imagine a gorgeous shoreline that smells like the worst rotten eggs you’ve ever smelled…that was what we experienced today…mixture of pollution and people and industry apparently created that incredible stench…We drove by what must have been the only golf course in Karachi but we all agreed that playing a round of 18 enduring a smell like that wouldn’t exactly be high on our list of priorities…
Otherwise, just got back to the hotel…Ali put us up at his corporate housing which is the only internationally stamped secure hotel in Karachi…After the bombings, they just added two extra levels of security before we even enter the hotel grounds…
About to have dinner with Ali and then hitting the much needed hay! Haven’t slept in over two days! (I don’t count plane sleeping)…
Will keep you posted on what we see and learn tomorrow!
Miss you and hope to hear from you!
Love,
Rads
