Please pray for Pakistan

It has been almost a week since I left Pakistan after 11 days in a country that is reeling under the multiple crises of floods, political instability, price increases and cricketing controversy.

It is impossible to sum up any experience of a complex country like Pakistan in a single thought. I have reflected on two major themes. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the floods. The scale of devastation and not in just in terms of people displaced or land submerged is immense. How will people prove their academic record if their school certificates have disappeared in the water and mud that swept through houses and villages? How can families and communities prove their title to land when records have been lost and boundary markers swept away? How will people be fed when crops have been flattened and fields covered in mud and debris? With roads, bridges, power stations, railway networks all damaged in the floods, how will this infrastructure be rebuilt and how long will it take? How will the government, aid agencies and churches continue to meet the needs of millions of people who need food, medicine and shelter if the international community does not continue to donate aid? All these and many more questions, but no sure answers.

But I was also present when the newly-built St Joseph’s Church was dedicated by Bishop Samuel Azariah. I saw the almost-completed Central Church in Warris Road, Lahore. I was swept along with the enthusiasm and exuberance of the girls acting and dancing the parables in Sialkot. I was impressed by the commitment and sense of responsibility exhibited by people in Jalapur Jattan and Gujrat who see church land and property not only as their inheritance, but as a resources for mission and service. And the way that relief workers from our partners distributed goods to people affected by the floods with respect and dignity was noteworthy.

Pakistan remains in the grip of multiple challenges but the professionalism and resilience of many people made a lasting impression. They demand and deserve our respect, our support and our prayers.

More flood damage, and thoughts before heading home

On Sunday afternoon I joined a team from Church World Service and travelled five hours north to Khairpur. One of CWS’ local partners there  - the Participatory Village Development Programme (PVDP) gave a presentation on their work so far with flood affected communities in the area and the next day we visited communities that had been displaced by the floods. 

 

One community in the village of Agra had been ordered to vacate the school premises they were occupying so school could re-start. There were some thirty families and their livestock living in the school grounds. They said they had no houses to go back to as they had been destroyed in the floods. Some women were making craft items on sewing machines donated PVDP while two mothers brought their new-born babies to the health team. One was clearly undernourished. The health team saw 250 people in the course of the day.

We turned off the new road built on an embankment and bumped across pathways and fields towards another village, Tayyab Sheikh. It had been flattened when water two meters high had flooded their village. The community had evacuated to the road and lived there until the waters receded. About 50 families had returned and those who were able had begun to rebuild some kind of shelter from mud walls and thatched roofs.

The remains of the school at Tayyab Sheikh

The villagers had organised a makeshift school for the children under a tree. The only sign that there was any activity were a few sheets of paper with the outlines of children’s hands strung up in the branches. This attempt to provide the children with a school was both touching and pathetic and shows what a vast reconstruction effort lies ahead. Previously the girls in the village had not gone to school but when we asked the children who wanted to study there was a shout and a forest of hands were put up. Just yards from the flattened remains of the former school the children of this marginalised community knew the importance of education. I hope their cries will be heard and that a school for boys and girls will be rebuilt in Tayyab Sheikh.

Children at the makeshift school

Like the people in Agra they were Haris, landless peasant farmers. They were worried that the landlord would try have them evict them from their village even though they had lived there for generations. These kind of conflicts could be repeated all over Pakistan as the powerful try to take advantage of those with no land, little money, no power or influence. Property disputes, already a common enough feature in the country, are likely to escalate as boundary markers have been washed away. 

Next we went to Sukkur where we saw non-food items being distributed to 500 families. The packs included kitchen utensils, mosquito nets, soap. I was struck by the organisation and professionalism of the team from PVDP and the respect they gave the people receiving the packs. These were people who had lost their homes and their belongings and been forced to move, but the young team treated these people with dignity, showing them the contents of the packs and efficiently recording the details of the recipients.

Many more people were outside but only those registered with PVDP and CWS would receive the goods. This was all taking place in the premises of a Diocese of Hyderabad hostel (supported by Church of Scotland). It is also the base of a coalition of local organisations that works with children from a nearby community who live in slums on the banks of the River Indus. The children receive formal and non-formal education and two meals a day. Later we visited the area where they live and we met a number of families who were grateful for the cooking utensils, soap and mosquito nets they had been given. One woman was delighted with the mosquito net and said, “We get a lot of mosquitoes here – this is great!” I was not surprised they get a lot of mosquitoes – the muddy river water was only a few feet away and every few yards was a plank of wood suspended just above the water with a rigging of rags providing a minimum of modesty for users of these most basic of latrines. These people live in wretched conditions and the only help they receive is from Riverside Slum Child Project. Manowar Gill, project leader, is keen to do more with the community and it would be great if he could get partners and resources to allow this.

Family receives non-food items in riverside community

We returned to Karachi on Monday evening and woke on Tuesday 21 to the news that violence had erupted across the city and 17 people had been shot in targeted killings between rival political parties and groupings. The murder in London of Dr Imran Farooq had stoked tensions and the city was once again witness to gunfire and killing.

My last full day in Pakistan, was taken up with meetings with Rt Rev Sadiq Daniel, Bishop of Karachi, Rev Julian Justine, Acting Director of IBTIDA drug rehabilitation programme and with Church World Service. Each of these allowed for reflection on the current situation and opportunities for further cooperation in the future.

Pakistan is facing multiple crises and challenges. In the past 10 days I have seen how some people are trying to respond to some of them. Pakistan isn’t the easiest place to live, work and make progress but it is too important a place to walk away from. And there are some amazing people and organisations that inspire and encourage.

Children from the riverside slums having lunch at the Riverside Project

A closing word about the impact of the worst floods in 80 years to hit Pakistan. It is a sobering thought that the destruction of houses and schools, the displacement of entire communities, the loss of belongings and the turmoil all of this brings to suffering people is being replicated in thousands of villages and towns in Pakistan. The scale of this disaster is almost incomprehensible with statistics and numbers rendered meaningless because of their sheer immensity. I at least have seen the faces of a few people uprooted by this disaster and I pray I won’t forget Yunas at Tarnab, Diwan Masih and Pervaiz in Charsadda, Sher Mohammad in Tayyeb Sheikh or Shaukat and his daughter and Elahi Buksh in Sukkur.

Travelling south

On Friday 17 I travelled south to Sind and discussed various issues with Rt Rev Rafique Masih, Bishop of Hyderabad, including how Church of Scotland grants can continue to support diocesan priorities.



Mrs Caleb &  Bishop Rafique at St John's High School, built with WMC funding

On Saturday we went to Mirpurkhas where I saw the second floor containing classrooms, science and computer laboratories at St John’s High School. Church of Scotland grants had paid for this construction over the past two years and now the rooms have to be painted and equipped. The Principal, Mrs Najma Caleb, asked that her thanks be conveyed to the Church’s World Mission Council for this financial support. Students from the Muslim, Christian and Hindu faith communities all study at the school showing the diocese’s commitment to service to all, regardless of faith.

On Sunday morning I joined the congregation at the refurbished 150-year old St Thomas’ Cathedral for the communion service and was introduced by Bishop Rafique. We sang Psalm 99 in Punjabi to the tune of Auld Lang Syne and Rev Naseer John preached on being Children of God from 1John 3:1-11.

When I arrived in Sind on Friday, it was in time to see a dramatic presentation of the story of Ruth by girls and young women at the end of a meeting of the diocesan women’s fellowship.

They performers had obviously put a lot of work into this production. They knew their lines, had prepared costumes and knew their places. But as the narrator intoned her way through the Bible verses my feeling was “What has this to do with the lives of the women present, or those who endured drought earlier this year, those who are displaced in camps because of the floods, those who suffer from feudal violence and misogynist prejudice today and every day in Sind and elsewhere in Pakistan?”

Why does the Church not encourage and enable people to read, study, understand and use the Bible in a way that connects with their experiences and empowers them? This, of course, would involve risk, would involve giving away some power, would mean being challenged and maybe even changed, at least for those who are currently in authority and control the agenda.

To borrow a slogan, What Would Jesus Do?

Destruction

On Wednesday and Thursday I visited Tarnab, a village on the outskirts of Peshawar, Charsadda and Risalpur. Along the roadside there were a number of relief camps and piles of mud that had been cleared from roads that had been underwater. Fields were covered in mud and silt and many crops, even trees were flattened. Hundreds of houses are uninhabitable. A team from the diocese is assessing the damage to the homes of Christian families in preparation for repair and rebuilding. This will be a huge task and mobilising resources will take a monumental effort.

Entire streets were flattened in this part of Risalpur

 

In Tarnab a number families are currently sleeping in the church hall, itself damaged as their own houses are too badly damaged or unsafe. Everywhere flood waters have undermined the foundations and as the buildings settled the structures cracked. I saw house after house with collapsed or cracked walls and roofs, broken floors, ruined furniture and some rooms that had been swept away. As the ground dries out the houses will settle further causing even more damage. The floods have not only damaged buildings. Government offices and schools have been wrecked and important records have been lost. Children have lost school books, ministers’ libraries have been destroyed. Cooking utensils, bedding, clothes are buried in mud or destroyed by flood water. Businesses have suffered as stock and equipment has been lost to the onslaught of water.

The people I met were extremely resilient and thankful for the assistance they had received. I didn’t encounter any hostility towards me or the people from the diocese. I did hear about people who have been unable to return to their homes to try to rescue anything from the wreckage, the emotional stress of seeing their family home destroyed being too much for them to bear. Many will carry emotional scars for a long time as these communities rebuild their homes, businesses and lives.

Pervaiz Ghauri in the wreckage of his house in Charsadda.

"Everything we worked to make this home since 1977 has been destroyed in one night."

 

In Charsadda I joined diocesan office bearers to deliver relief goods to Muslim families and Bishop Humphrey Peters has appeared in press conference with Muslim leaders showing common cause. Building interfaith relationships and cooperation is important when tensions are running high but this itself is building of several years of interfaith work initiated by the diocese following the 11 September 2001 attacks by al-Qaida and the wars and invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

One of four trucks being loaded with food supplies and non-food items. This consignment was being delivered to Muslim families in villages near Charsadda.

Lahore

Bishop Azariah at the St Joseph's Church dedication in Pandoki, on the outskirts of Lahore

Sialkot

The Parable of the Ten Virgins performed by the girls of St Columba's Hostel in Sialkot

 

 

Meetings

Monday and Tuesday were full of meetings with people from Diocese of Sialkot, the Church of Scotland’s historic centre of mission work in the Punjab. Connections go back to 1857 when the first Church of Scotland missionaries arrived. Rev Thomas Hunter and his family were killed in the uprising that is known as the Indian Mutiny in Britain and sometimes called the First War of Independence in Asia.

(I am reading William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal about the fall of the Mughal dynasty that was caused by the uprising – thoroughly recommended).

The first meeting was with the leadership of the church. They are unhappy about the proposed changes to the way Church of Scotland property will be managed. This isn’t surprising as they have been used to the old arrangements and see the changes as a threat. However, it was disappointing to meet such resistance to change.

Tuesday was quite different. People came from Jalalpur Jattan, Wazirabad and Gujrat, places whose names resonate through the Church of Scotland’s mission history. Some were elders, some were sweepers, some were young, educated professionals, some were farmers. (I could keep up with the conversations in Urdu but the Punjabi was a struggle!)

These people are excited about the proposed changes. They see this as an opportunity for more control and more responsibility over how the property is managed, used and developed. They see the changes as offering them more security for their homes and institutions that are on church land. They see the changes as an opportunity for mission and service to the wider community, Christian and Muslim.

It was profoundly moving to hear these people talk so warmly about the Scottish missionaries from the 1950s and 1960s and how they cherish the land that the Church of Scotland acquired for the Christian community. This was their inheritance and they wanted to ensure the land would be used in way that honoured the past and would be a resource for the community and for the church in the future.

One man said that in the Punjab a farmer knows the land as his mother, and so the Church of Scotland’s land was the community’s holy mother.

It was impossible not to be moved by the enthusiasm of these people, but equally I was touched by their courage. Many of those who spoke were poor, nearly all were quite powerless but their commitment to their church and their community was tangible.
How often do people in authority need to listen to and learn from those they claim to lead and represent?

On Monday evening I took Catherine Nicol out for a meal. After a sumptuous Chinese dinner Catherine took the rare opportunity of having a bit of a walk through the bazaar. We eventually stopped at a rickshaw stand to get transport back to Christian Town and asked a driver about the fare. He thought for a moment and replied, “Christian Town? Miss Nicol’s school? Eighty Rupees.” He didn’t know that Miss Nicol was about to get into his rickshaw but Catherine is so well known in Sialkot that she has become a landmark!