Mohenjo-daro

A plan had been in the works since coming to Pakistan for myself and any other missionary who wanted, to go see Mohenjo-daro. Finally, a week ago we were able to do so. Luke and Denise had some friends come and visit from Islamabad who really wanted to see it as well. Originally another family was going to come and they were going to drive their truck, but they ended up not being able to come. So it left us one vehicle short. Luke was reluctant to take the hospital van as the last time it was out it stalled in the middle of the road and almost left them stranded. In the end though because of the amount of people and the insistence of Samuel (hospital administrator) that we have a police escort we had to take the hospital van. The police here are very careful when it comes to protecting foreigners, for they do not want to be responsible if something bad happens to us. It is not a police escort that you would have if you were an important person with police cruisers and such. The police escort here means that one police officer hops into your vehicle and rides with you. He has a big gun, which is supposed to make you feel safe, but one wonders if he really had to use it, would he be able to, and if someone did want to get us they probably would outnumber him. However, he does act as a deference for petty thieves and he came in handy. So the police escort and four families all went together in the old hospital van.

If only there was water in this public bath

           

Hot, dusty and bright, but we managed

Mohenjo-daro, literally means “mound of the dead.” The Pakistanis brag that it is one of the best archeological finds of the last century. The mound is actually a giant city that is said to be around five thousand years old. It had been covered and preserved by huge mounds of sand. It was not until the early 1900s that officials discovered it, and it took a bit longer before the site was excavated. Throughout the last century different archeologically digs have taken place and this ancient city of the Indus civilization has mostly been uncovered. Some argue that this has been a bad thing as now that it is uncovered the rate of decay of the ruins has increased exponentially. However, if it were not uncovered one would not be able to see and walk through the ruins of a city from an ancient civilization.

            It is now classified as a world heritage sight and had been getting support from the UN to preserve it, however as of late it has been given back tot he local authority and is not been taken care of as well. There are many signs that foreign money has played a big role in making the site look good. A huge Museum has been built on the sight and it houses many of the artefacts found in the city. There is a large fence that encompasses the whole site with a gate where visitors can enter and pay for admission.

            This was a bit of a surprise, as the admission prices were 30x more for a foreigner. It is not that a foreigner could not afford to pay the bigger price of admission that makes me question the disparity between the prices. It is the fact that huge amounts of foreign aid has been given to make the excavation of the site possible and has made the site what it is today. So one can argue that there should be more of a welcoming to foreigners to help increase awareness and garner more funds that way. It is also concerning as to how many of the funds raised through admission are actually used for the maintenance of the site. It is hard to believe that corruption and misappropriation of funds would not be involved in the money raised.

            Never the less, we paid the fees and got into the site. The city itself is much more vast then I imagined. I was thinking of a small little ruin, but instead there were multiple large sections of the city uncovered. Army barracks, college, community bath (literally looked like a giant swimming pool), residential quarters, shopping mall (well it would be the equivalent of a shopping mall today), huge granary, and many large cisterns for getting water. In the middle of the city at the highest point was a Buddhist stupa with rooms all around it for monks. The city was huge. I could have spent the whole day looking over and walking through it, but the people with me did not feel the same about the archeologically find as I did. So eventually I had to go. However I do want to go back again and check out more of what I missed, it is very fascinating. It was also frustrating not being able to understand what everything was. We had a guild that was helping us, but he spoke in Urdu. So our national friend John would translate a bit, but the guide would go on for five minutes and then John would translate in one sentence, “That is a well.” The funny thing is if that was the only thing the guild had said I would have understood. Thankfully there is a book that was written on the city, and it gives a bit more of the picture and scope of the site.

            One astounding part of the city and what the archaeologists keep reminding people of is the elaborate covered sewage and drainage system that was set up in the city. The astounding part is that this elaborate drainage and sewage system which was used 5000 years ago is still being used all over Pakistan, and in some cases this drainage system is better then what is currently being used in Pakistan.

           

Another interesting thing is that some of the streets are actually quite straight and most of the roads were laid out in a grid. The city planning on this 5000yr old city was quite sophisticated.

Bhutto family’s Mausoleum

When we finally left Mohenjo-daro we decided to go see the Bhutto family’s Mausoleum. The Bhutto family have been involved in the political scene of Pakistan for quite sometime. They are supposedly more socialistic in nature and “all about the people” of Pakistan. They also have a history of being “martyred” for the cause. Both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first Bhutto to become elected as Prime minister of Pakistan and his daughter Benazir Bhutto who was also elected as Prime Minister were “martyred.” They are both buried in the Bhutto family mausoleum, along with other family members.

           

The mausoleum is huge. It is about the size of a Wal-Mart super centre including the giant parking lot outside. Only the parking lot in the case of the mausoleum is actually just one giant concrete courtyard with three helicopter pads. It reminds me of the Taj Mahal, but not built with the same amount of care or detail, but still big and elaborate.  

           

Unfortunately they did not allow us access to the upper part of the mausoleum, so we only were able to see the bottom portion where all the graves are. There are two big shrines for Zulfikar and Benazir and many smaller graves for other family members. There are also places outside that one can buy things like flowers to “honour” the Bhutto’s memories (peer worship is quite big in Pakistan). There are also a lot of food stores so that the people who came would not leave hungry. It was quite the business.

            In the entrance to the mausoleum there were pictures of different members of the Pakistani’s People Party (PPP), the party that Zulfikar had found. All over the Sindh province there are many posters and pictures of the same type. They are a very popular party especially in this province. I asked what it all meant and was told that these were the martyrs for the party. I guess there are those that really like them and those that really do not, and here in Pakistan, if you’re not really liked by someone it usually means you end up dead.

            I was fascinated on how huge the mausoleum was for the purpose that it had. In Canada if a politician made a gigantic shrine to honour his family’s name I do not think he would be very well liked. It would be called wasteful spending. Here in Pakistan, it is seen as an honorific and gives the PPP more power.

Worlds biggest NIC card

Another fascinating item that I found displayed in the mausoleum was “The World’s Biggest NIC Card.” My Pakistani friend, John, explained that NIC stands for National Identification Card. Apparently Zulfikar Butto introduced the card to Pakistan, and as a publicity stunt created the world’s 1^st biggest card. It broke all kinds of records in 1973 and may have landed in the Guinness book of records. I am glad I do not have to carry one of those in my wallet.

 

On the way back

The way back did not disappoint us either. We were about half way home when Luc’s fear was realized: The hospital van had stalled. So John coasted the van over to the side of the road where we tried to get it started again. This is when we really appreciated our police escort. He jumped out and got a van to pull over. A couple of guys jumped out and tried to help us get the van started again, but they could not. About an hour later with no luck getting the van started again Luc began to worry more about our safety as it was starting to get dark. He told John that he was not worried about the

Kids playing in the dirt waiting for the van to get fixed

van and he was ready to abandon it if we could find another ride back. So we decided to push the van further up and off the road, and our police friend tried to pull over jeepnies to get us another ride out. The only one he successfully was able to pull over waited for about five minutes for everyone to get his or her stuff together, but when we took longer, the jeepny driver took off. We asked our police friend why they would just leave like that, and he told us that it was because it was a very dangerous area and they did not want to stick around any longer. That helped us feel safer. By this time Luc had called people back at the hospital and told them to come, and he sent two guys to the next closest town to see if they could procure us transport out. Our police friend had called his police station and told them that we needed more police. It was not long before we got another officer to help keep watch. As well Luc told me to keep my eyes open, so I stayed outside of the van keeping an eye out for anything that looked suspicious. Just after it got dark a police truck arrived with six more policemen. After that we felt a bit safer.

Most were glad that we had a police man withus

            Luc had been trying to get us transport out of where we were, but it would seem there was different communication going on behind the scenes. Luc’s mentality was to just abandon the van and get us back to the Hospital as soon as possible. However, the nationals who were with us thought differently about this, because they did not want to leave the van behind nor did they want to spend the money to get other transport. In the end a long time missionary came with the Hospital director, and a mechanic. The mechanic quickly worked on the broken van and he got it running within minutes. It was a loose connection to the gas pump that caused it to fail. The Mechanic temporarily rigged up the van so that it would run and get us home.

            It was a very long day, but we were very thankful to be alive and that nothing bad had happened. For me it was just another adventure, and I quite enjoyed every part of the day even getting stuck. It was a great cultural experience, but I have only been in Pakistan for two months and I know that I am pretty naive to the dangers here.  As a bonus they finally know what was wrong with the hospital van and can fix it now.

Learning Urdu: Why all the S’s and Z’s?

            Urdu has helped me see the intricacies of language. At first I was quite perturbed when it came to learning the Urdu Alphabet. There are 3-T, 4-Z, 3-S, 3-K, 3-h, 2-r, 2-d, 2-y, and 2-g sounding characters. The confusion comes when you have to spell a word, or pronounce it, as a lot of the time each one of those characters is just slightly different in how it is pronounced. When my language tutor was teaching me he came to Tay and Tey and pronounced each one. He asked if I could notice the difference. I didn’t. Now I can, but it is definitely hard to pronounce them correctly. The same is with the Rs. One of them is a rolled R that is quite difficult to pronounce right. In quite a few words it sounds like it is a d and in fact I pronounced it with a d and my tutor was satisfied with it. Now I know that was actually wrong it is an R vey similar to the English sound in “butter”. There is a different sounding Z as well, it is similar to the English sounding S in “Television” and is quite hard to decipher. Toi, a T sounding character is very similar to a D as it is an un-exasperated T. Once you understand all the nuances and rules, it starts to get easier, but still it is difficult to pronounce certain letters. One of the ks is a very raspy k sound like the Scottish word loch. Another k is more like q, but unlike in English where the u follows the q most of the time and sounds like kw the q in urdu is very much like a kh sound.

            I did a bit of research on why there are a great many same sounding letters and strange nuances within the language and found out a few facts. According to the Urdu Dictionary and Phrasebook the language developed out of the main language that was spoken in the Deli region: Khari Boli. This is the base language for both Hindu (main trade language of India) and Urdu (main trade language of Pakistan). The Mongol invaders who took over the Indian sub-continent brought over Persian and Arabic influences and the prestigious and educated population soon adopted these into the language. It was also adopted and adapted for the military and has been called a military language. Thus, the reason why it has so many same sounding letters is, because it has taken so many words form Persia and Arabia and the surrounding area, and they are spelled with these different letters.

            As I was learning these characters and now I am starting to read the words, I started to think how silly it really was to have so many same sounding letters and words. And as I was looking down on Urdu as a “dumb” language I started to realize that English is no better. English has many same sounding words that mean different things, like there, their, and they’re. English has same sounding letters, for example why does English need a “c”? An S or a K works just as well. Or a Q, when a kw would work for words like “kwik”. An x is a pointless letter; English speakers could do just as well with a Z or a ks for zilophone (why put a y in there when it should be an I?) or aks (yeah that's a way easier way to spell axe). So I have come to the realization that there really is no perfect language. I think maybe one could be made, but like culture, language is something born out of much percolation within people groups. An artificial language is very hard to make people adopt. Thus I will learn to appreciate one of the languages of Pakistan, just as I am learning to appreciate the culture.

Taking my Bukri to the vet

A few days ago I had to take my Bukri (female goat) to the vet. It either ate something that it should not have or it was still adjusting to the food I was giving it. There is a lot to think about when taking care of goats for the first time. I had gotten quite a bit of advice on what kind of foods I should be giving and what I should not be giving. Problem was the advice was different depending on whom I talked to. It is like making cae (tea) here, but I will get into that another time. Thankfully after talking to quite a few people (possibly goat experts, well they owned one or two) I finally found two kinds of food that would be good to give my goats. It was great language learning, as I had to practice a lot of my Urdu to figure it out.

            Anyways, the Bukra (male goat) has always been in great shape. In fact when I brought the guy home he would just munch on dry leaves and sticks and would not even touch the green stuff. He jumps around and plays, but the Bukri was a sorry sight. She had straight up diarrheal, was very stinky and would not play. So after a week of this, I broke down and went to Saleem’s house. I brought my language teacher Asif with me as Saleem is okay with English, but still struggles quite a bit and I know a bit of Urdu but struggle a lot. So Asif was a long just to make sure we were all on the same page.

            First Saleem was telling me to rent the hospital van, but I thought this might be a bit messy for the hospital van so I told him I would pay for a ChinChi. For those who have no idea what a ChinChi is, a ChinChi is a versatile taxi in countries like Pakistan. It is motorbike operated carriage. It is cheap and small and it can carry whole families and their goats. At first I was a bit apprehensive about taking the goat on a ChinChi, but I remembered I had seen stranger things here in Pakistan (I was just talking to my fellow missionary Bo, and he was telling me a story about seeing a donkey being loaded on a ChinChi, I’ll tell that story later). So we went and the ChinChi driver thought nothing of it. The only time people looked at us weird is when they figured out I was a white man with a goat.

            We finally found the vet down a quiet street. We brought the goat up the relatively clean steps and then tied it to the railing. The bukri proceeded to soil the clean stairs, and again no one seemed to care. The vet came out of his shop, took one look at the goat and went back in with Saleem in tow. They spoke some fast Urdu and then he pulled out a sachet of medicine and gave it to Saleem. We then left and I again pulled my Bukri up onto the seat beside me and we travelled back home. Asif told me that the vet had given a little medicine I was supposed to give half the sachet today and if it was still not fixed, possibly more tomorrow. Then, because Saleem said that the goat had a temperature he stopped off at a pharmacy and grabbed some medicine to bring down the fever.

            When we got home, he got a syringe and we gave the bukri her medication, which turned out to be the equivalent to Tylenol and Imodium. Who knew these things would also help a goat. I was a bit sceptical that it would help, but sure enough Bukri has normal small droppings and jumps around and tries to head bunt people she does not like. It could be the medicine and it could also be the fact that I moved her to another patch of grass where she cannot eat vines (some vines can be toxic to goats). Also, because Asif was worried that she was getting cold at night where the temperature plummets to 10 degrees Celsius at most, (he’s never been to Canada) I built her a little lean-to.

Because we care!