flood relief work in Pakistan

This is rather late. In August 2010, I had the opportunity to get closer to the frontline in Pakistan’s flood relief work. Admittedly, I have been quite aloof of all the happenings and developments thereafter with no reasonable excuse. In the next few lines, I will try to summarize my experience through pictures and words and hope it will shed reasonable light on the issues we saw on the ground.

For starters, we were sponsored to travel to District Khairpur by the Pakistan Medical Association, ours was a team of 4 people including a female pediatrician, a Harvard-trained public health specialist, a classmate from medical school and myself. We stayed at a guest house run by the Indus Resource Centre :

This guest house had very comfortable air-conditioned rooms with reasonable power backup and seems to host a number of social workers/volunteers active in the area. It also had classrooms used for local workshops, a handcraft workshop/shop and an in-house cafeteria for guests and staff of the IRC. All in all, living here was a wonderful experience and many thanks to IRC!!

Within the district itself, we were guests of a proactive member of the governing political party in Pakistan, an Oxford-educated lady with all the right connections and comparatively greater will to soothe the pains that the people in her district were experiencing. In summary, her vision was great and her efforts were tireless but despite the reasonably resourceful position that she was in, her hands were tied and her impact was limited.  Oxbridge and Ivy League trained legislators in Pakistan cannot do much in the face of inept bureaucracy.

Our objectives were multiple: we had the good ear of the area’s administration, a rarity in Pakistan for middle-class individuals and hence, an opportunity to introduce public health measures; we were on the ground and in the field and able to interact with the affectees and so we also decided to help them with their immediate medical issues by conducting mobile medical camps. Finally, we were trained and able and we decided to collect data from our experience and invoke our own academic and social circles to guide future efforts and aid.

After settling down on our first night, we visited our first IDP camp (internally displaced people) the next morning. Like most camps in the area, this was a public school which was now housing refugees from surrounding areas. School had been cancelled for an indefinite period. For now, I will leave you with these two photograph:

More about this experience in follow-up posts.

A concept of “Us”

The twentieth century has been one of unprecedented progress in science and technology. So rapid, indeed, has been the pace of advance, that humanity is haunted by the awesome specter of possessing a level of technical competence far in excess of the measure of wisdom that would ensure its use to the advantage of all. The instinct to favor one’s own kind (however defined), at the expense of exploitation of the “outsider,” or of despoliation of the environment, appears to be so ingrained in the human psyche that it is unlikely to be overcome by mere rationality. Yet, if we are to avert the ever increasing danger of destroying ourselves, and perhaps our planet, by careless use or misuse of our own inventions; if we are to avoid the bitter repercussions that will surely come from failing to assist the economic, technological and political development of those less advantaged than ourselves; if we are to utilize to the full the most precious resource that we have, human beings, then we must broaden our concept of “us” from its present narrow confines to embrace the entire human race.

-John Rovert Rathgam, 1992

Alternative careers in science

So I was browsing through the Sanger library yesterday and came across a booklet on alternative careers for scientists published (quite recently I think) by AAAS (publishers of Science, the journal). Interesting stuff, I must say. I have always considered writing or science journalism as something I would like to do. The niche and need for science writing in Pakistan is quite appreciable. I think the same applies to other developing countries as well. Science writing intends to deliver the fruits of scientific discoveries to the understanding of common people. More so, it also guides public opinion on scientific initiatives and ongoing research and in turn, funding. From AAAS’s point of view, its a speciality job!! One that you take up when you decide to walk away from the bench. I wouldn’t disagree in the Western context because you do need to concentrate in an area to create quality. But in the South Asian context.. I wonder.. the need may be so high that it may perhaps be justified for science undergrads and graduate students to pick up the pen and start writing.. I am sure conventional news editors will only be pleased with the cheap pieces of writing (if good quality) they will be able to buy off the market…

Science + law = Intellectual property law…. yet another area that was highlighted. How applicable it is in Pakistan? I don’t think I am even equipped to answer that question but perhaps one of my esteemed readers specializing in law can advise?

Undergraduates who major in science in Pakistan can also consider following it up with degrees in public policy (or a CSS) and joining the beauracracy for scienctific policy making. Alternatively, science managers maybe something on the rise as well. A few months back, I came across a resume where the lady was a doctor and pursued an MBA following her MBBS and was now on the lookout for a managerial job in the pharmaceutical industry. Definitely one I have thought of in the past..

Oh well thats all, after a 6-month break…

Are there solutions to our problems?

When this blog was first started, it was meant to be a place for free flow of ideas so that we will be able to understand our problems and discuss possible solutions to such issues. Sadly we achieved very little along those lines perhaps because the list of problems that we face as a society is overwhelming. It is a quagmire that we have so far failed to untangle. There is corruption, poverty, crime, injustice, illiteracy, lawlessness, lack of civil sense, egos, self-praise…. the list is endless. Is there a way out?

It is a fact that the same problems have been faced by humanity since its inception. There has hardly been a time when there was no hardship, bloodshed or crime on the face of this earth. Does that also mean there will never be such a time? I don’t think the sane human mind wants to accept that possibility and hence our efforts in the direction of the absolute Truth. Human nature in itself does not appreciate crime. If it did, we would have never made this blog or had countless discussions over tea and lunch or in the quad or with family about why everything is so wrong! If it is true that man by nature is pure, why is there so much bloodshed in our world? Why is there so much injustice, so much crime, so many lies and so much suffering?

Are inequality and poverty the underlying reasons behind people’s sufferings? If so, communism and socialism should have solved people’s problems. However, is there a difference between communist societies and the central jail? Is every criminal or doer of injustice a poor person? Obviously not, you don’t have to look far beyond the leaders of our own country to find your answer. Perhaps then, poverty is not the only reason there is crime. But there is still some weight in the poverty argument because if I were poor, I would not have been writing this blog. If I were poor and had not had a meal all day, I would have been so worried about making ends meet, corruption would have been a word irrelevant for me. If I were at the verge of death by hunger, theft would have been justified in my mind. So perhaps poverty is ONE factor, definitely not the only factor because doers of injustice include poor and rich alike.

What else, then, contributes to problems in this society? Is it education? Perhaps..because they say education gives a person perspective. It enables a person to overcome our first problem, poverty. If you are educated, you are more likely to make an income and hence overcome your poverty. But tell me, is every educated person around you free from injustice? So many leaders and ordinary people have studied at Ivy League universities (supposedly the best in education we all dream of) and are still engaged in injustice. They are educated and rich and they are still corrupt or they still encourage injustice to meet their own needs. Perhaps then poverty and education are not the only TWO factors that are causing our problems.

What is it then, that is the key to our problems? What is it that keeps both, a poor illiterate farmer and a rich educated businessman, away from injustice, from wrong doings and makes them the ideal members of this society? Perhaps our answer lies in morality. If I were to put it more blatantly, I would say, our answer lies in the belief of existence of a Master and that of the hereafter. It is when this belief guides our lives in this world that morality, civic sense and rightful recognition and respect of people’s rights are automatically inculcated into our lives. It is not possible to have a society that is centered around the existence of Allah and still have poverty and illiteracy flourishing. On the contrary, the popular brand of this belief in Pakistan today seems to encourage the two instead of eradicating them. This flavor of God’s order in the universe that does not result in the well being of a society in this world and only makes promises for the hereafter is the THIRD problem we need to get over.

So the answer to the question, are there solutions to our problems as a society, is Yes. What we really need is an all-inclusive approach that at least targets the three problems identified above. Morality in its true sense cannot stem but from belief in Allah (called any name by different religions) and any society that centers itself around this belief is bound to succeed in this world and hence, in the hereafter. The need is for people who feel the pain to recognize this as definite solution to our problems and make an action plan to achieve it. I am not suggesting an overnight revolution of any sorts because there is no such thing as an overnight revolution. All revolutions in history started as thoughts and actions of a small group of people that were so attractive and useful that they grew in number and in space and eventually wiped off the status quo. All I am suggesting is we put our minds together and start working on solving these problems. We can start by recognizing the role of Allah in our own lives and guiding our actions accordingly. The rest will follow.

Happy Eid

Its the second eid of the year for Muslims at this time of the year. They call it Eid-ul-Azha (the Eid of Sacrifice). 

I was at the Eid prayers this morning and the Imam narrated an interesting story. A beggar once approached a roadside fruit seller. He said “Allah ke naam pe ek aam dedo baba” (Give me a mango to eat in the name of Allah). The fruit seller thought a few seconds, then looked for the older stock he had and gave him an overripe mango to eat.

A few minutes later, the beggar approached again and this time, he gave the fruit seller a 5 ruppee coin and asked for a mango. The fruit seller gave him a fresh ripe mango to have right away. The beggar then questioned: What is worth more in your eyes? A 5 ruppee coin or the name of Allah.

Burqa meets Bikini

Thats right. Just came across an Australian designer that has come up with Burqini. Its a special sports wear that combines a fitting hood upper with long pants to let Muslim women take part in a variety of sports including swimming!! Take a look.

Pakistanis: we abhor Mumbai attacks and desire the strongest punishment for those involved

As hell unfolded in Mumbai in the past three days, there was an atmosphere of disbelief and a feeling of detestment in hearts and minds of average Pakistanis. Sustaining bomb blasts is one thing, BOOM, they happen and people die but after a few hours, the community gets some breathing time, some time to absorb the shock and dealing with the aftermath (and sadly, we move on). But to live through sustained terror episode that lasted 72 hours is probably a lot different.

Perhaps the most important question now for Indians and the rest of the world is WHO were these people? We probably will never find out. But who ever they were, if these attacks took place in the name of Pakistan and in the name of Islam, I think these people have the most skewed perceptions of these ideoligies that I have ever seen!!

What is more unfortunate is a blame game that has started between archrivals, the last thing that this region or either country wants is armed conflict between the too. Indians have been traditionally overzealous when it comes to their motherland and have always been too quick to blame Pakistan for all the mishaps that ever happen in it. 

The truth is, today, Pakistan is burning in a fire that was created through its own intelligence agencies a few decades back. But mind you, it might have been stupid of them to fall into this ditch but it was not ISI alone who masterminded the entire operation. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA channeled millions of dollars and sophisticated weaponary to the anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan. These were the resources that led to the birth of Taliban. Once Russia was defeated in Afghanistan, the CIA pulled out its support completely leaving it upto the ISI and Pakistani government to deal with the aftermath of their misgivings. An entire generation had been brought up playing with AK-47s and hand grenades instead of teddies and cars. What we are dealing with today in Pakistan is this generation of Taliban and those who are influenced by their ideoligies of extremism. They have turned Pakistan into a complete war zone and have exported their ideologies and capabilities to all parts of the world in the name of Islam.

Mind you, we don’t know yet if the attackers in Mumbai have anything to do with the same extremists we deal with in Pakistan (now on a daily basis). But all terrorism where innocent people die should be abhored. When a bomb took off at McDonald’s on Sea view several years back, I recalled how I had been to the same restaurant only a week back. When some died, I recalled how it could have been me too. When I saw attacks in Mumbai, I realized how it could have been Karachi under fire and how many of us could have been the common innocent people who died.

Pakistan is for hire

We expect to be paid 100 billion US dollars for the dirty work U(S) are asking of us. Only 100 billion dollars and it will all be done, no problems. Actually, whoever pays our prices takes our services. So if U(S) can’t pay us, we might actually make it as bad as hell for ya..

Well, you know the drill, U(..S) have paid crooks in the past, under the table ofcourse, now we are just asking for our price out and clear!! and make it quick for if you don’t, Pakistan will come crashing down in a few days time. and there is no way I, Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, will ever let that happen. I will just take my price from someone else. I will be waiting for the check..

Open source Optical Mark Recognition: a handy tool for cross-sectional research

For a medical student, questionnaire-based short term cross-sectional studies are shortcuts to research papers. A little more effort in study design and we can turn them into some kind of case-control study or at least publish it in a fairly reputed journal, a feat for someone at our level.

While designing one such cross sectional study, a friend wondered if we can use a scantron-like system on our questionnaire to automate data entry. This would save us time and increase accuracy, at least relatively. On each questionnaire, there could be bubbles to shade for multiple-choice questions, just like SAT or TOEFL. Once we get the questionnaire back from our respondents, we would shade out corresponding bubbles for the choices they made. Then, we would simply run it through a document feeding scanner (not a flatbed, that would be way more laborius) and finally, run it through a computer program that would look at the scanned file, see what bubbles are shaded, translate that into what choices the respondent made and make it available in a format friendly to SPSS or some other statistical package. Looking at shaded areas and recognizing them is called Optical Mark Recognition or OMR.

A little research and I found that there were no open-source or freeware/shareware OMR solutions available except one developed by Aaditeshwar Seth at Udai Waterloo Chapter. It was called the Udai OMR tool and developed for an Indian NGO initially, later made available for all NGO and non-profit use. The tool is written in Java and although it is not the most user-friendly piece of software around, it is the only free OMR software and it actually works. Once you make a questionnaire with the right spots to shade using the templates they provide on their website, you first scan an all-bubbles-shaded questionnaire for the program to recognize where to look for. Then, you assign variables and values to all sites recognized and finally, you start reading your forms. It reads one form at a time and writes the data to a text file. So for each page/form, you have to run the program again and it makes a new text file.

About 3-4 days of continuous fidgeting with this and then about a day to automate so that multiple pages can be read in a sequence and the data is handled and stored into a quick database and there, the next study I am part of is using OMR

iyav.org is a fraud

I came across this website, http://www.iyav.org/. Its a website for an organization called International Youth Alliance for Victory and it goes on about how they are holding a conference about domestic abuse and women’s rights over 8 days in October 2008 with the first 4 days in USA and the last 4 in Netherlands. Be aware!! this conference is a scam, an internet fraud that wants to collect money from you. 

I found the conference interesting and decided to write to the given email address. In reply, I was sent several details right away and how everything would be worked out by the conference organizers to arrange my travel, visa, ticket and stay in the USA and in Netherlands. All I was required to do was make a booking at a hotel in Netherlands that they have made arrangements with for 4 days. This was needed to facilitate my US visa as proof that I will leave / disembark from USA upon completion of the first leg of the conference. 

The hotel they mentioned had the website http://www.marktlaanhotels.com/. So I decided to write to hotel and ask for my reservation and received an almost instant response within a few hours. All along, I was told that the only requirement that I had to fulfil RIGHT AWAY was pay 240 pounds to the hotel to confirm my reservation either through wire transfer or through Western Union. Once I sent the receipt, they will arrange for my US and Netherlands visa, all by themselves, and even arrange for my ticket to be delivered to KLM Airlines in Pakistan so that I can collect it and travel.. Exciting, isn’t it? Everything paid for, visa arranged, all for FREE?

-Thats when it struck me. All of this was too good to be true. This was too good a deal, who are the sponsors I questioned? They said UN Youth Fund and Citibank America, I searched online but found no such instance on their respective websites.

-On further thought, I realized my entire conversation took place over email over a weekend. Between the so-called conference organizers and the hotel, we exchanged about 8 emails in 36 hours between saturday and sunday, are they absolutely that vacant to reply every email in a few hours that too on a weekend?

-On every attempt to call on the US number given,  I met the answering machine

-Both websites look like they have been designed in someone’s backyard. For an organization that claims to have held such a conference for several years, this is unlikely. 

-The only venue information they mention for the conference in Memphis. Now if I recall correctly, there is more than one city called Memphis in the USA. On further, probing they did not respond.

-The information text about domestic abuse on their website has been completely copied, you can make sure for yourself by copying the text and searchin for the whole paragraph on google. You will find the entire paragraph there.

-Finally, WHOIS information on both websites traces back to a similar physical address and essentially the same webserver.

Beware!!! this is one of the most organized scams I have seen so far on the internet. This person, whoever he or she is, tailors every email sent to the person addressed so that it is almost impossible to detect that this is a fraud. I request the authorities to identify this person by using the wire transfer information or western union information that they send on email:

Bank Name:              POSTBANK NETHERLANDS

Account Name:           A O AMADI

Account no:               34 90 569

IBAN:                        NL38 PSTB 0003 490569

SWIFT CODE: BIC:    PSTBNL 21

ADDRESS:               kruisweg 32, 2011 LC    

CITY:                        Haarlem

COUNTRY:                The Netherlands

Western Union:

FIRST NAME: Augustine Obinna

LAST NAME:  Amadi.

ADDRESS:               kruisweg 36, 2011 LC    

CITY:                        Haarlem

COUNTRY:                The Netherlands

Please don’t fall for this scam. Especially youth from India and Pakistan, it seems this person has targeted his activities towards this region specifically.