Part two of my five-part postcard of impressions of my Pakistan visit is what I heard….
Sound
Pakistan hums with machinery. It is a powerful hum that, in certain instances, drowns out all other sounds. One barely notices the cacophony of Pakistani families who travel in packs, or hears the ‘Allahu akabar’ of the azan, the Islamic call to prayer, or even the jingles of the brightly colored and elaborately adorned trucks and buses whose hoods are decorated with a belly dancer’s jangled hip scarf.
This potent hum, however, is no white noise. It is the reverberation of back-up power generators that are found in most Pakistani businesses, hotels, offices and homes. With persistent outages that can last up to 15 hours daily, self-powered generators are the only viable option, for those who can afford it. I counted five outages sitting in my five-star hotel one night. Yes, Pakistan has an energy crisis.
Pakistan’s government has not adequately responded to this crisis. Rather than repairing outdated power plants that lack capacity production or resorting to alternative and less expensive sources than oil and gas, it has called for a reduction in supply, decreed that “marriage halls will no longer be able to host all-night wedding parties,” and has banned neon signs and brightly-lit billboards. To be fair, Pakistan is afflicted with a host of other plagues including insurgent violence, unemployment, inflation, corruption, weak governance, and crumbling infrastructure, made worse by this past summer’s devastating floods.
AP photo
Still, without solving the key matter of energy, the country has little prospect of economic progress or defeating the insurgency. “The shortages have crippled industry and led to rioting across Pakistan,” a BBC report says. Energy: Pakistan’s Catch-22.
Pakistani officials blame tax evaders for the problem. “Why should Pakistanis pay their taxes,” one citizen told me, “when they have to pay out of their own pocket for the basic services the government cannot deliver?”
While energy is ultimately a government’s responsibility to provide, it needn’t be government’s burden to produce. There are entrepreneurs that have ideas for solving Pakistan’s energy crisis. Wasae Shaikh, a scrappy and scrawny 25 year old I met at Karachi’s Institute for Business Administration, is one such person. Shaikh, a second-year MBA candidate, wants to set up model villages that produce solar and wind energy. National Geographic sparked his idea.
“I watched this episode about wind farms in Amsterdam,” the trim bearded Shaikh said to me as we stood underneath a large tree in the institute’s courtyard. He thought, “We’ve got wind here in Pakistan. The sun too. We can launch an alternative energy business using solar panels and biomass fuels,” he said pausing to look at me. “I want Pakistan to be self-reliant. We have to give it a try for our people. I want to do it for my people.”
Wasae Shakikh's Talentrepreneur shirt caught our attention on IBA's campus
“For my people,” was a refrain I kept hearing from Pakistan’s youth and its entrepreneurs. Their country may not have enough energy, but they do. And they’re using theirs to pull Pakistan out of its political and economic abyss. Young and bright Pakistani entrepreneurs, who have the option to leave, are staying behind to launch businesses, in such fields as textiles and technology, to help their country. Wasae Shaikh is one example. In the coming days and weeks I will give you others. Through their efforts, Pakistan, I believe, will continue to hum, not to the machinery of generators, but the machinery of this generation.
Poverty: A man or a woman? 
The take-away from day two of CGI is that development has moved on from the question of whether it’s okay to profit from the poor. Today’s CGI nugget: embrace the market. That’s where the opportunity, as 
“There are approximately 72 million people in this country,” AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told me soon after he was elected in 2003, “and I represent each and every one.”
Be afraid. After reading today’s New York Times off-lead 
Observing elections
In 2000, I traveled to Kosovo to observe that “country’s” first “independent” elections (Kosovo broke from Serbia). In honor of America’s own election day, here’s an excerpt of my experience, adapted from my upcoming book:
“No Guns Allowed” should be enough to get me thinking about whether I should keep the polls open past the 8PM deadline, which is what the rowdy crowd outside wants. Looking at the clock, I don’t have much time left to decide. The minute hand on the clock inches over 7:58. Angry shouts grow louder. Hard soled boots on cracked pavement make their way inside, rhythmically, insistently. I start to laugh.
The Kosovars working with me pause only for a moment and continue with their work. They’ve been watching me come unraveled all day by the numerous complications that have arisen: missing names on voter registration lists; forgotten identification cards necessary to register; women who need help voting, like the one that’s just walked in with her grandson. I stare at them.
“Miss Elmira, Miss Elmira,” one of the Kosovar election workers, all of whom are men, approaches me as I try to regain composure. ”That woman—,” He points to the distinguished lady with grey hair tucked into a blue patterned kerchief that I’m mesmerized by. ”She cannot vote by herself either. They are asking if the grandson can help. What shall we do?”
Among the things that have complicated this election are women who cannot vote by themselves because they’re illiterate. Yup, women in the 20th century who can’t read or write, which is something no one seems to have alerted the OSCE about. That’s the group that brought me over to be an election observer. The OSCE is the international group that was tasked by that other famous international group, the UN, to organize and conduct elections in this former Serbian province that was until recently a war zone.
“Everyone votes alone – no exceptions,” is the OSCE rule.
Except, the OSCE also wants people to vote, which is what I decide is the more important rule to follow. Therefore I’ve been allowing illiterate women to be assisted in casting their ballot all day long. To do anything less would have felt like a betrayal of my own illiterate grandmother back in Turkey. She grew up in a small village in central Anatolia where it was “not appropriate” for a girl to go to school, which is what I imagine many of the Kosovar women here are told as well.
“Miss Elmira?” my young Kosovar colleague repeats. ”What shall we do?” I don’t answer him. I stare intently at the elderly woman who hangs on her grandson’s arm. The grandson is no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. He is awkwardly tall in that way adolescent boys can be, with long lashes and wispy childlike bangs that are mismatched on his grown man frame.
He, however, is not awkward. There is a reassuring confidence on this young man as he makes the case for why he needs to help his nana, as I hear him refer to her, fill out the ballot. Clearly he has done this before. And I recognize it because I too grew up helping my mother who was not illiterate, but who, when I was a child, struggled with English.
As early as I can remember, long before Kindergarten, my mother would have me talk to bank tellers, electricians and telephone repairmen because she couldn’t. She would speak in her native Turkish and I in English. They would speak to me in English, I to my mother in Turkish. I never thought much about how or why we did this. We just did. And I didn’t like it all that much. I especially didn’t like the bank tellers who preferred to talk to other customers and made us wait; tellers who when they did talk to us, were always in a hurry to get rid of us.
“Miss Elmira, Miss Elmira,” one of my election colleagues jolts me out of my trance. ”It’s almost 8 o’clock. What are we going to do about all the people outside? They are getting angrier. Some said they will burn down the school if you didn’t let them vote.” As I look around the damp, drafty, and dilapidated two-level school house, I realize I can’t stall any longer. I have to decide whether to keep the polling station open. I turn to one of my Kosovar colleagues. ”Let me go outside to see how many people re standing in line.” He tries to stop me, as does the security guard. ”Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go?” he asks, the crease in his forehead deepening.
“It’s okay,” I say. ”I’ll just take a quick peek. It’ll only be a minute.”
It does take me a minute to walk outside to see there is a crowd of maybe 30, or is it 40, men who descend upon me like a swarm of bees on honey, overpowering my sight and hearing. I run right back inside the school. This makes their voices grow louder. I tell the security guard to keep them out.
“These men are not happy,” the security guard tells me, not so much because I need a translation but because it’s the nicest way of saying, “I told you so.”
“Okay,” I say before he or anyone can ask me “What are we gonna do?” again. “Okay,” I repeat waving my arms up and down as if that will calm the situation. ”Okay,” a third time, “I need to radio into OSCE headquarters and ask for KFOR back up to help keep this situation under control.” KFOR is NATO’s military presence tasked with keeping Kosovo peaceful.
All election observers were given a circa 1980-Jack Ryan-CIA-like walkie-talkie radio. ”Keep this on at all times,” we were told, “in order to get the latest information… And use them if you have any questions or require any assistance.”
I had vowed that I wouldn’t call in for any assistance. I had studied the entire manual thoroughly and taken a weeklong training to become an election observer seriously. As if I were back in junior high school where we were rewarded for raising our hands first or volunteering to kick off a discussion, I would be the model election observer — held up as a shining example.
I walk back into the room where the elections are being held and grab the grey metal box and call in, “HQ, do you read me? HQ, this is Ferizaj.” Ferizaj is the name of the small town I am assigned.
“Go ahead Ferizaj.”
“HQ, I’m in need of back up here. I’ve got several dozen Kosovars still lined up. They’re starting to get rowdy. Do you copy?”
“Copy that Ferizaj. Does that mean that you’re not close to closing down?”
“Negative. I need permission to keep the polls open past deadline.”
“Copy. Let’s get you KFOR back up and we can talk about the poll closure in a few.”
“Copy that,” I say as if I know anything about this language that, as I far as I know, is spoken only on the big screen.
I walk back out to the front door of the school where I’m overwhelmed by the smell of cigarettes and shouts.
After five minutes I hear a large vehicle approaching the school. I peer outside the window and see a large white light. All the men gathered at the front door scatter. That’s when I catch a glimpse of the huge tank that’s just pulled up and parked itself in front of the school. Several men in khaki helmets and khaki clothes get out. They’re all holding machine guns and wearing protective armor. Now I really want to laugh.
I open the door to the school and walk out. One of the soldiers approaches me and in a German accent asks, “Are you the OSCE person?” Speechless, I nod.
“Okay then. We’re here to keep the situation under control. You can go about your business.”
Okay then. I can go about my business – you see you angry, cigarette puffing Albanian bullies? I’m in charge here.
I’m in charge.
Shit. I’m in charge.
I walk back into the classroom where the voting is going on and take a deep breath. I rub my temples. It’s 8:05PM. There are at least 30 more people outside, some of whom won’t have the proper documentation or appear on this voter list. If I agree to let them vote, we’ll be closing the polls at around 10 or 10:30. A two-hour delay wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t also have to count votes. And if the count is anything like what’s going on in Florida, we’ll be here all night.
I’m tired. I’ve fueled myself on nothing more than coffee. My heart races at the thought of being here until the wee hours of the morning. I pace. It’s a regular sized classroom with high ceilings, a few worn wooden desks and broken chairs. There are a few alphabet posters on the wall. Education in Kosovo seems no different than it is in Brooklyn.
As I walk up one side of the room, I catch a glimpse of the elderly woman with the blue kerchief. She’s still got her arm tucked into her grandson’s. They walk towards me. My spine goes slack. Shit. I can’t handle another person yelling at me. I turn away and walk in the other direction toward the door and into the hallway. They follow behind.
“Excuse me lady, excuse me,” the boy calls after me. I stop and turn around. I’m cornered in the hall. There’s nowhere to go. No bathroom to duck into. No person to hide behind.
The old lady approaches me, opens her arms and puts her head against my chest. I let out a gasp, unsure of what is going on. My arms are paralyzed underneath this little woman, who won’t let go. One of the Kosovar election workers joins us in the hall. He starts talking to the grandson.
“The lady wants to thank you for giving her the chance to vote, – for giving Kosovo this chance for freedom.” She lets me go without uttering a word and again clutches her grandson’s arm. They walk away.
I walk back into the classroom and pick up the walkie-talkie.
“HQ this is Ferizaj do you copy?”
“Go ahead Ferizaj.”
“Thanks for the KFOR backup. With your permission I’m going to keep the voting going.”
“Copy that Ferizaj. You’re not the only one. It’s going to be a late night.”
“Great. That’s why were here, right?”