Sometimes it all clicks

Standing at the back of the hall as the delegates to the conference began to assemble and the dignitaries arranged themselves on the top table, it struck me. Having already spoken to several of those here for what by any measure was an important event, several of them in Pakistan for the first time, I was already aware of their surprise. True, we were in the classier of the two five-star hotels in Islamabad, and true this was a somewhat rarefied environment far removed from the bastis in the teeming cities, but first impressions really do matter. They were surprised, among other things, by how smoothly events seemed to be proceeding, at the orderliness of it all and how at variance this was for some of them to their stereotypical view of the country and its people.

I paused and considered the complexity of the event. The bringing together of people like Professor Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, the chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Professor Dr Mohammed Hafizullah, vice chancellor of Khyber Medical University and Muhammed Mushtaq Jadoon, the secretary of the health department at the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. These were Big Beasts, the Heavy Hitters that had real power and they were there at the calling of a group of people I had worked with for the last 10 years. Then there were the delegates, a starry bunch of academics all from the field of the nutritional sciences, many from abroad including from the UK.

The conference was sponsored by the British Council and the HEC — which often gets a poor press here in Pakistan — but the work that underpinned it historically was that done by the Abaseen Foundation UK and Abaseen Pakistan over the last 15 years as well as the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Quietly and with little or no fanfare the two arms of Abaseen had forged productive relationships with the provincial and federal governments, UN agencies and the donor community. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are direct beneficiaries of their work every year. There is no corruption involved anywhere along the line — I have mentored and monitored some of their projects and have a close eye on the finances — and there is an investment in excellence all along the line. It never makes the headlines and perhaps it never should.

The Big Beasts all said their piece by way of opening the event, with the chair of the HEC actually delivering himself of a piece that was both on the mark and delightfully witty in parts, and we all broke for food. Unexpectedly, Professor Dr Ahmed invited one and all to dinner the following evening and equally unexpectedly at that dinner announced an interdisciplinary research grant between universities in Pakistan and the UK, as well as offering to set up an internet connection between the many schools involved in both countries.

Why I bother to lay this out in such detail and name a few names for you Dear Reader is because apart from this small piece in an English-language newspaper there will have been little coverage of this event. There were no TV crews and I did not spot any other print journos taking notes. Yet this was a conference that brought together the best of the best to address one of the biggest health problems that Pakistan faces, that of the nutrition of mothers and children and the creation of interventions to improve what all agree is a major health crisis. This was no mere talking shop; this was a review of work already in progress, of programmes that deliver to the neediest of people every day of the year. Here were the planners and implementers. They may be dreamers as well and the conference was perhaps the fulfillment of some of those dreams — I saw that quiet smile on your face Dr Mukhtiar Zaman — but this was the most concrete of realities, not aerie-faerie nonsense that disappears in a puff of smoke.

Bidding farewell last Monday to Helen Bingley, CEO of Abaseen Foundation UK, we reflected on a job well done. Sometimes it really does all just click into place — and yes, even here in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2015.

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