50th Anniversary

March 1st commemorates 50 years since Kennedy launched the United States Peace Corps. Since its inception, more than 200,000 Americans have served in 139 countries. And I couldn't be more proud to be a part of what I think is the strongest alumni connection to exist. Stronger than any university Alma mater, in my opinion. In celebration of the 50th anniversary, the National Peace Corps Association has been promoting Global House parties. So returned volunteers, current volunteers, parents of PCVs, current and former Peace Corps staff and the Peace Corps community in general attended and organized parties all over the world. 

I looked up the listing of parties and was surprised to find one taking place here in Islamabad. Ours was on Saturday the 26th, instead of the 1st, because it was more convenient to have it on the weekend instead. It was a potluck, where everyone brought something from their host country. There was food from Romania, Madagascar, Guatemala, Belize, Kazakhstan, Russia, Honduras and I'm forgetting a couple of places. It was a nice get together of about 15 people. It was really nice to feel like a part of the PC community again, because there's really nothing like it. It was also amazing to see that after having served so many years ago, RPCVs still wanted to celebrate so many miles away from home. 

No, I didn't make this cake =( And I'm jealous that I didn't have time to go all out like this, but I did bake!

We all decided to be cheesy and tell a story from our Peace Corps experience. Some were funny, some sad, some disturbing. One of the girls told us about the time she thought she was being abducted by a cab driver. Another guy told us about his experience with tear gas and protests when Bush was in Guatemala. Another about having to sneak across the Mexican border to get back to his host country when his passport expired on his trip home. I decided to tell them about the first time I successfully streupsed. And they tried getting me to streups the rest of the night, but I can't do it on demand. I think I might have lost the skill =(

Most of the RPCV's here are working for USAID or the embassy. I was definitely the youngest, most recent returnee. What I thought was amazing is that there were at least 5 couples there, and 3 of them were married to fellow RPCVs. One of the couples actually met on their first day of training. The other two met at alumni events similar to this I think, because they didn't serve in the same place. It makes sense, because you share something that is probably one of the most defining experiences of your life. I definitely want to join the Peace Corps again with my husband one day =) 

Outside perspective

Abu-man sent this to me, and I just thought it was neat to see an outsiders perspective of Pakistan. 

http://blog.dawn.com/2011/02/11/what-the-chinese-guy-said/

Islamabad IKF

The back of our office where the VDP prototype's are being built. We're literally out in farmland where I can smell the livestock.   

I've been working at the Islamabad IKF office since I came back. This means I've been working with Ms. Huma, the executive director and her team here instead. The Lahore office was more geared towards the Youth Mobilization Campaign, whereas the work here is more involved in the Village Development Program. However, the two are not disconnected. Last week, Mariam and I (the executive assistant who just left the office because she's moving to Karachi), gave 5 presentations to different grade levels at the Westminster College here in Islamabad. We talked to them about the VDP because they were having an event to raise funds for IKF. I seriously wanted to smack some of these kids. Some of the boys literally started laughing while we showed a video from the actual flood. Another one said something along the lines of how the flood victims didn't need school because they were just going to grow up to be farmers anyway. But then the good hearted students who wanted to get involved in the summer village development program came and asked for more details afterwards and made it all worthwhile.

 Some of the stalls at the food festival

Saturday was the international food festival held by the Westminster College. They had stalls set up for different places including: USA, UK, Canada, Mexico, South America, China, Japan, Myanmar, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Africa, Egypt, Yemen, Italy, Norway, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, India, and the four provinces in Pakistan. As an IKF representative, I was asked to be a judge for the food. Yep. I ate from every single one of those stalls. I was insanely full at the end. And had to take a lot of insulin! I was totally thinking of Amar Bhai and how jealous he would be! It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to see the kids get so involved. They had to learn about their country and had help from the embassies, and also set up visual displays. Some of them were really neat, like the Saudi stall had a little diwaniya set up in a classroom with arabic music playing. The Punjab stall had boys in dhotis doing bhangra. Hawaii had coconuts and hula dancers. I think some of my favorites were Saudi, Malaysia, South America and Hawaii. All in all, it was good.

Our IKF stall at the event

A student filling out a volunteer application form =)

New Seeds of Hope

After a couple of weeks of really long days at the office, meaning I didn't come home till around 8.00 pm sometimes, I'm finally back in Islamabad. The scheduled cricket match was postponed due to a couple of reasons, including security issues in Lahore that need a lot more time to be able to coordinate properly. So the match has now been postponed till after the Cricket World Cup. To pacify the kids, we still had a Recognition and Awards ceremony for them at Zaman Park. The top 5 achievers from each school were invited and the top 12 achievers from all of Lahore were awarded personally signed cricket bats from Imran Khan himself. It was supposed to be 11 to represent the players on a cricket team, but we had a tie. In total, we hosted about 750 students, teachers and principals from over 40 schools in an event designed to honor their efforts in providing relief to Pakistan’s flood affected farmers.

The event began with a Tala'wat of the Holy Quran, followed by a welcome address from Mrs. Fauzia Kasuri where she briefed the audience about the New Seeds of Hope campain, introduced the IKF team and then Imran Khan himself. Imran Khan spoke about how Pakistan's youth needs to play a pivotal role in bringing about a positive change. Then the floor was opened to the students to ask questions. Surprisingly, there was a prevalence of political awareness in Lahore's youth and a lot of concern for the future of their country. Perhaps because we invited the top achievers who were obviously the most motivated and driven from their peers.

One of the most touching stories was that of the efforts from the students of Aabroo. Aabro is a low income welfare school, which still managed to raise Rs. 100,000.

http://www.aabroo.org/projects.php

For the event, I was asked to be the Volunteer Coordinator. We had a little over 40 volunteers, and I had to organize all the tasks before hand and delegate them along with coordinate any issues that came up as we went along. Unfortunately, most of the volunteers showed up late meaning we didnt have time to organize things the way we were supposed to before our guests started arriving. Somehow, especially thanks to a couple of really hard working volunteers, we pulled everything off in the end. It was a little chaotic, but a great event nonetheless.

It was also really nice to get to spend this much time with my family in Lahore. I think the longest I've stayed in Lahore has been a long weekend since we lived here. I got to spend a little time with everyone, and I definitely really loved the time I had with my Nomi Khala. Even if it was just having coffee and updating her after work, or having breakfast with her in the morning before heading out.

 My dado when we went out for a family dinner at a local, traditional restaurant

My youngest cousin, Mustafa. He was super shy around me since he's not used to me.