Untitled
on Pak'd Off (Pakistan), 08/Sep/2008 08:47, 34 days ago
Happy Ramazan!A couple of months have passed since I last blogged and much has changed. The weather is still suffocating but the monsoon is here and Lahore is flooded on a weekly basis. Mango season is coming to an end so I have been filling my time in other, less fruity ways, like learning Pakistani cooking and going on zoo visits with a charming Rastafarian wannabe. I was actually pretty impressed to find the animals in Lahore zoo looking active and healthy and then I spotted a family feeding wotsits to an otter.Another development is that I have moved placements once again. I am now on my 4th VSO placement in the space of a year and, given that there are only around 7 organisations in my programme, I think that officially makes me the (metaphorical) whore of the VSO Pakistan HIV& AIDS programme.To sum up for first timer readers, it had become apparent that my previous placement organisation was not in the least bit interested in helping me achieve the objectives on my work plan and I was feeling most frustrated after enduring two other failed placements. One thing I did manage to do was to enlist the help of a web design volunteer to build the structure of a website I designed for them. I then set about autonomously researching, writing, getting pictures and putting the whole thing together.I’m pretty proud of the end result although it’s not online yet (many issues there, best not to go into it). But after that was done it was noted that there was no point in dragging it out anymore and I have been moved to another, “rival”, organisation to sort out their website. It’s been 3weeks and I’m pretty happy there. The people are all very friendly and there are two officemascots, they are called Office Dog and Office Baby. O.B. is a very cute little girl who just turned 1 and enjoys playing with office furniture.However drama is afoot in the office at the moment! A few months ago the organisation sent a mobile testing unit to a village outside of Lahore, they tested 272 people and found 92 of them HIV positive, the majority of whom are female. This is a very shocking result for a country considered to be low prevalence for HIV& AIDS but what is more shocking is the reaction of the local institutions who should be supporting the newly diagnosed people. It seems that many of these people were infected via“therapeutic” injections from a local quack. The Quack’s practice was shut down but is working hard in the community to discredit the organisation and the local media jumped on that band wagon berating the Chief Executive and calling him a scare-monger. The local mayor has refused to let us work there unless he is given the names and addresses of all the HIV positive people and the local health officer and government official responsible for the HIV and AIDS programme in the Punjab are giving out false information about the individuals in question, writing them off as drug addicts and adding to the stigma.Stuck in the middle of this grotesque circus is the organisation trying to focus on providing care and support to the newly diagnosed people. The worst of it is that no international donor is, so far, willing to pay for medical treatment and care and support saying that their budgets have ended for the year or they don’t fund that kind of thing. The whole situation is shocking/tragic/disappointing/horrifying...the list goes on really. Nonetheless, being here while all this is going on has been an eye-opening experience. I have learned a lot and feel that it’s a shame I wasn’t placed them earlier. I’ve only got another two weeks and that’s almost the end of my Pakistan adventure. The last leg is a trip North to see the Fairy Meadows, Hunza valley and Gilgit which promises to be an amazing experience.I can hardly believe my time is nearly done. My feelings about leaving are mixed. I feel disappointed that my placement didn’t work out as I had hoped, but pleased that I managed to stick it out for a year in spite of everything that went wrong. There are many people I have met here that I will be sad to say goodbye to. I am also lamenting the end of my free Urdu classes now that I’m just starting to get the hang ofit and freaking out my Pakistani friends with my linguistic skills. However, apparently Urdu is basically the same as Hindi which is spoken in India and it’s very similar to Nepali so will be useful on my post-Pak travels...