Pakistan Archives - Fulbright Student Program Blog

Lighting Pakistan, One Village at a Time: The Story of a Fulbright Alumnus Changing Lives for the Better

September 7, 2017

Hassaan Idrees, 2014-2016, Pakistan (right) taking a selfie with kids from the village of Revi ji Dhani, excited to see lightbulbs which will allow them to play and study until late in the evenings.

Hema, an eight-year-old girl, is one of five siblings living in the village of Revi ji Dhani, located close to the Mirpurkhas-Umerkot highway, a perennially drought-ridden area in Pakistan. Every day, she wakes up before the crack of dawn to fetch water from a hand pump at a distance of two miles. It is a winding, nasty route that she has to maneuver in the dark, for there are no streetlights, and snakes and wild dogs run amok in the desert bushes. Panting and sweating on her return, she has to get ready to go to a dilapidated public school situated a mile away. Hema has trouble finishing her homework under the grim gaslight at home: it’s inadequate, expensive, and dangerous. As her father runs a small store in the village, however, she is one of the fortunate few to actually attend school; the vast majority of children in Revi ji Dhani have to assist their families with herding cows or woodcutting to make ends meet.

Hema belongs to an unbelievably impoverished community: more than 46% of people in the Umerkot district, with a population of more than 700,000, live with less than $1.90 a day. Rural female literacy is less than 10% in this district. Access to the grid is limited to the main town and larger villages, and still suffers from daily blackouts. Smaller villages and hamlets have power outages for as long as 18 hours a day or are not connected to the grid at all. With little or no power, the local economy suffers, and life is tough.

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Foreign Fulbright

Participating in an Open House at the Islamic Center of Manhattan, Kansas

January 4, 2016

Hamza Rehman, 2013-2014, Pakistan (left) engaging with a diverse, interfaith crowd at his local mosque’s open house in Manhattan, Kansas. The mosque event sought to dispel common myths and stereotypes about Muslims in the United States.

Pakistan is a country rich in cultures: Pathan, Punjabi, Baluchi and Sindhi, amongst others. As a Fulbright Student at Kansas State University, I aimed to convey some of Pakistan’s diversity and ethos in my fiction and non-fiction courses as a part of the Master of Arts in English Literature and Creative Writing program. To the United States at large—through conversation and interactions, I brought to life Pakistan’s historic Indus Valley Civilisation and its vales, mangrove forests, the Baltoro Glacier, the snowed-in Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush. To my Kansas State (“K-State”) peers in fiction workshop, I highlighted Pakistan’s diversity in my writing and engaged its many tongues and motley racial make-up: from blue-eyed, dark-blondes to tan-skinned, black haired characters.

Given Pakistan’s own ethnic and lingual heterogeneity, I was surprised when a K-State PhD candidate in Psychology solicited my help for a peculiar reason: because I was Pakistani, he wanted to use my voice in an “accents study” for his dissertation as an example of the “Arab accent.” Although I lauded his project and agreed to volunteer, his geography seemed off to me. After considerable explanation from my side, he reluctantly came to appreciate why I didn’t sound Arab: South Asia isn’t a part of the Middle East! He had said, “But it’s the same thing, right?” I responded, “No. Here’s a map. For an Arab accent, I’d begin with the Arab world, and even there, Arabic varies from country to country, and even city.” He narrowed his eyes incredulously, realizing “Muslim” didn’t always imply “Arab.” In that moment, the world became bigger for him, became less “U.S. and the rest.”

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Foreign Fulbright

Volunteering for the Food Fighters: A Weekend at D.C. Central Kitchen

August 13, 2015

Sundas Liaqat, 2014-2016, Pakistan, poses at the entrance of the D.C. Central Kitchen, an organization that prepares 5,000 meals daily for smaller homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and NGOs in the DC area

My name is Sundas and I am from Pakistan, a poverty-stricken and underdeveloped country. I am passionate about poverty alleviation, particularly through women’s empowerment and children’s education. To help enact my goals, I am currently a Fulbright Student enrolled in the graduate Social Enterprise Program at American University in Washington, DC. My academic focus is specifically international development.

Because of my goal of becoming a social change agent, and my desire to honor the ideals of what it means to be a Fulbrighter, I volunteered to help prepare meals for the homeless at the D.C. Central Kitchen in December 2014.

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Enrichment Foreign Fulbright Fulbright-Millennial Trains Project

One Year Later: Fulbright-MTP Participants Reflect

May 22, 2015

The Fulbright-MTP Participants after a panel at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City at the end of the 2014 MTP journey. Form left to right, Ammar Mohammed from Yemen; Alyas Widita from Indonesia; Katie Nikolaeva from Russia; Anser Shaukat from Pakistan; Silvia Tijo from Colombia; and Patrick Dowd, Fulbright U.S. Student Program alum and MTP founder.

The 2014 Fulbright-MTP Participants after a panel at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City at the end of the 2014 MTP journey. From left to right: Ammar Mohammed from Yemen; Alyas Widita from Indonesia; Katie Nikolaeva from Russia; Anser Shaukat from Pakistan; Silvia Tijo from Colombia; and Patrick Dowd, Fulbright U.S. Student Program alumus to India (2010-2011) and MTP founder.

For the second year, the U.S. Department of State is funding Fulbright participants to join the Millennial Trains Project (MTP) journey as an enrichment component of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program. Last year, five Fulbright Foreign Students joined 20 other riders on the MTP journey to gain an in-depth understanding of life in the United States and to strengthen their leadership, social entrepreneurship and communication skills.

Here, the 2014 Fulbright-MTP participants update us with where they are now and their advice for this year’s six participants:

Silvia Tijo, a Fulbright Foreign Student from Colombia studying at Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) joined the Fulbright-MTP journey to experience sustainable building technologies existing along the train route from Portland to New York. Today, Silvia has finished her second year of Ph.D. studies in Building Construction, where her main interest is conducting research in sustainable building design and development.

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Enrichment Foreign Fulbright Fulbright-Millennial Trains Project

“From Pakistan to Whitefish, Montana”

August 14, 2014

In the words of Anser Shaukat, a Fulbright Foreign Student from Pakistan:

Anser draws the images of America he views on the Millennial Train Project journey.

Anser draws the images of America he views on the Millennial Trains Project journey.

Our whitefish adventure began with us packing ourselves and our leather bag-packs in a rental car. Armed with nothing but traditional maps, we started heading towards the rocky blue horizon that seemed to be the permanent backdrop for the city of Whitefish.

The mountains in the distance reminded me of various swatches of blue paper cutouts meticulously selected and arranged along the horizon.

As we got closer, the colors changed from cerulean to red and viridian; a sight that could not be ignored by young smart phone-wielding Millennials. It was no wonder that our journey to the Glacier National Park took the pace of the glacier itself; slowly carving our way, through the lush pine, ridged rocks and silver rivers.

We stopped our cars immediately and frequently to immortalize our memories of the park’s grandeur in our phones whenever a breathtaking ravine would demand it of us and the hoard of visitors behind us would allow. It did not matter how many times we circled around the same rocky facade, the cameras would come out each time, as if the mountain was born anew. Each time we stopped, we would run across the highways avoiding incoming cars, Karachi-style, receiving shouts from the bikers along the way. We didn’t care, we were alive.

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Enrichment Foreign Fulbright Fulbright-Millennial Trains Project

“Only In Boston”

August 6, 2014

As our Fulbright-MTP participants make their way to Portland for tomorrow’s launch of the MTP 2014 journey, they reflect on their Fulbright experience thus far, what they believe are the most pressing issues facing global Millennials today and how their Fulbright-MTP project is a vehicle for enhancing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

In the words of Anser Shaukat, a Fulbright Foreign Student from Pakistan:

It’s been two years since that bright eyed lad stepped out of Logan, on what he would later learn, is considered a particularly bright and beautiful day in New England.

As I sit now preparing for my upcoming journey in the Millennial Trains Project, excited about discovering the varying cultural landscapes of the U.S, I can’t help but think about that boy and my first experience in the landscape of Boston.

Anser Shaukat is a current Fulbright Foreign Student from Pakistan.

My plan was to take the bus-tram hybrid, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) Silver Line to South Station and from there transfer to the bus to New Bedford, my final destination. I thought I had done my research, looked up the times and the routes, but I was in no way prepared to handle the unique challenges offered by a new city. I huffed and puffed my three pieces of brand new luggage on the Silver Line, which right up until that moment were my trophies of readiness; Two years of life in the land of the free, packed in two pieces of checked baggage and one hand carry. A hundred and thirty pounds; barely under the weight limit. The inevitability of the situation makes me laugh at that boy and the pride he had in those bags. He had felt ready then, prepared to take on the new world and his new life.

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