Herding cats

For some in the party from Abaseen Foundation it was a first visit to Pakistan, for others it was a visit to a part of the country they were previously unfamiliar with, and for everybody it was a road-trip they are unlikely to forget for the rest of their lives — mostly for all the best reasons.

This disparate group was here to raise funding for the projects that Abaseen Foundation supports in Pakistan — schools, health centres and research programmes in partnership with the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Any reader of this newspaper or any other consumer of media output in Pakistan for the last many decades will be aware of the criticism levelled at NGOs, both national and international, for their wasteful spending of donor money, their allegedly doubtful ‘agendas’ and rampant corruption. To the casual eye it may be thought that all NGOs everywhere are to be tarred with the same brush — and if you think that then you are very wrong. So very wrong.

Abaseen Foundation (AF) in common with many of its ilk works quietly and with due diligence easing the burdens of the poorest of the poor and seeking to bring health and education services to remote or unserviced parts of the country.

Brick kilns dot the landscape everywhere. Their chimneys stuck up like exclamation marks in often flat landscapes. What are rarely seen are the workers that keep them going, poorly paid men and women who are sometimes but by no means always working as bonded labour, tied to their jobs by a debt they are unlikely ever to repay. Their children labour alongside them. They are poorly nourished and frequently uneducated. Their health, as is the health of all who work on the brick kilns is poor.

There are many such kilns near Peshawar, and it is in that area that AF has built a school and a health centre. We visited and the children were delighted to see us. A long-term study by AF has revealed that 40 per cent of them are under-nourished, most suffer to a greater or lesser degree from stunting and the hands of all that I looked at and felt were roughened and scarred. They have persistent skin conditions and look tired and jaded. A local philanthropist provides a hot lunch six days a week from his own pocket for 500 children. A very considerable sum of money. The difference it makes is incalculable.

Miles away there are happier children in another school. Noticeably better fed and undoubtedly well educated. The school is on the edge of Fata and buses kids in from miles around in an area where government schools are thin on the ground. It is light, airy and desperately in need of maths and science teachers.

It also needs an extension — which is why the 20-odd Abaseen Cats were being herded around some of the more spectacularly beautiful parts of the country, and by the time they all left on the night of Wednesday last they had raised over 50,000 GBP which will go a long way towards providing said extension. The foundation stone was laid during our visit and the work of finding the money to build it is going to go on for years. The AF fundraisers will be back next year and probably turn their attention to Chitral.

As the Muslim world approaches the holy month of fasting it is good to know that there are still people out there that extend a hand to those who are hungry — and not just hungry as the result of a voluntary abstinence. Many of the Abaseen Cats were not Muslims and came from a range of other faiths — and none. It mattered not. One of their drivers was the humanitarian imperative and they choose to exercise that imperative by taking away the memories of the beauties of Pakistan at the same time as making a difference in the lives of some of those who are the neediest among us. The kids on the brick kilns are unlikely ever to visit as we did the glories of the Passu Cathedral Spires. And the Abaseen Cats are never likely to be as hungry as those kids either. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.