Children Riding Buses Alone

ImageI leave my car at home and travel on a bus at least a couple of times a week so that I can stay in touch with the real world around me and observe the actual people that make up our country. Their discussions (and cursing) on current affairs is probably more informative than your average 30 minute daily news reports.

Yesterday, six little kids wearing school uniforms and carrying school bags got on the bus and rode for a few kilometers before getting off. They were unsupervised, but were totally at ease, joking and playing with each other. None of them looked older than 8 or 9 years old, with the youngest one probably 5 or 6. They were so confident that I wished I had my camera with me.

Watching the kids, I was reminded of the “news” that I read a few days ago – which was covered by a LOT of blogs and websites. The news was about about the “amazing” incident of a mother letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone. Hundreds of children, 5 or 6 years old, travel many kilometers in public transports private buses to go to school – all alone. Perhaps the NY Sun can come and cover these cute kids as well.

The mother commented:

Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

I wonder if she realizes that before “the war”, the Iraqi children from downtown Baghdad were probably also traveling alone – supervised – in public transport – just like our Lahori children… instead of being groped and raped.

The article linked above realizes that

The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself.

A Nation of Wimps” is an apt title for the book mentioned in the article above, but a powerful nation of wimps can do a lot of damage – you can’t really blame the american parents as they are probably just following the footsteps of their leaders.

End of a somewhat disconnected thought-stream.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Was Launched in Pakistan Last Month

olpc-launch-africaThe OLPC Pilot Project hit Pakistan last month without much fanfare. Infact, I don’t know of any tech blog that covered the event, and was told about the launch only by my brother. This came as a surprise considering that the whole world was uber-excited when the project was announced.

The OLPC guys have a wiki running here, but their page about Pakistan seems to be outdated as the last entries are two weeks old. Though Negroponte says criticizing OLPC is criticizing the church (?!) but I will risk being labeled a fundamentalist and criticize it nonetheless.

I don’t really see the criteria they used to distribute all 27 of the laptops (worth 5000$ or so – a huge fortune) among 150 children in the school – it is more like 0.18 laptop per child instead of one laptop per child. Also, if the laptops are to stay in the school (who in their right mind would let those starving kids take the laptops home, right?), then the kids can’t really have much fun with them, but If 27 selected children are allowed to take the laptops home, then I feel sorry for the remaining 123 (yea I know some of those are too young but still…). How do they use them, do they take turns? An hour every week per child?

I have been searching for news regarding the project every month to check on the progress of the OLPC project ever since it was announced, and I must say I am pretty disappointed. First, I found this post from Dr. Habib Khan “(PhD Harvard)” asking for people interested to help localize the English based OS, and then I found this page from CRULP which shows that they got together with OLPC to localize the PC, but the OLPC wiki mentions that the OS is still running English, which makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Did they have a deadline to meet, or did they simply not care? Or did they package each laptop with a universal translator right our of Startrek?

Some more questions that are bothering me:

  • What good will 27 odd laptops that don’t work and need Linux expertise to be of any use – do?
  • Did any ISP come forward and offer to provide internet connectivity to the school? What good is the laptop’s mesh technology without internet?
  • Has somebody Pakistani volunteered to teach those kids?
  • What became of the committee that was to be formed by our beloved MOIT to “study the feasibility” of the project?

The OLPC wiki says:

We distributed 39 XO localized in Dari and Pashto, official languages of Afghanistan.

Huh? I thought it was supposed to be a launch for Pakistani children – I do feel sorry for the homeless Afghan refugees, but don’t we have under-privileged children of our own, and didn’t Afghanistan get its own OLPC launch? The OLPC guys even imported two Afghan volunteers to help out with the launch as the kids can’t speak anything but Pushto/Dari. What about that CRULP project? Something is not right here. They call this a Pakistani launch, but it seems to me that the only thing Pakistani about the launch is the location.

Also, we have rich (lots of them) and generous (a few) people right here in Pakistan. Did anyone offer the Pakistani community the same “buy-one-laptop-and-a-third-world-child-gets-one-free” deal? I would have bought one for my child if someone had guaranteed that the other laptop would be used as advertised. Hell, I would even have volunteered for the project, and I’m sure there are more than 27 people like me out there in Pakistan. A simple campaign with a dozen Pakistani “stars” would surely have brought out the spirit of charity from the hearts a few of the rich.

But then again, perhaps the OLPC is just a tool to make a few thousand Westerners feel good about themselves – maybe all 27 of them can sleep peacefully after the knowledge that they have donated 100$ worth of stuff to the Afghan kids – the same kids whom they bombed out of Afghanistan not a very long time ago. Actually, giving laptops to Pakistani children would not have them the same bang for the buck as giving laptops to the poor Afghans, so yea, it all makes sense now. We need to get bombed back into the stone-ages before our children earn their OLPC.

So the hype around the OLPC project did get me excited when it was announced, but looking back, it seems wrong, almost evil. An ad featuring the OLPC will fit right into the Cordaid campaign (click on the image to see more), and this concludes my rant of the day.

cordaid-campaign

Rumor of a Bomb Found at National University / FAST Lahore

I was just told that a bomb (or something that looked like a bomb) was found at the reception of National University (aka FAST) Lahore a couple of hours ago, and they will keep the university closed for four days. I haven't verified the news from another source yet, but if this is true, then at this rate, this generation of kids will either graduate a few years late, or will have a degree that does not actually cover the required years of study. On the other hand, the distant learning market looks like an attractive business option.

UPDATE: I just got the verification from two more people – there were phonecalls about two bombs, and apparently the institute has been receiving threat calls the whole week.Surprisingly, there is no news yet about the incident online (its been three or four hours now). The calling party demanded to close the college for a week – I do hope it is an early April's fool joke.

Arthur C. Clarke, Pakistan, Terror and Science Fiction

I started reading Arthur C. Clarke's novel Time's Eye the day before he died. The novel is set in the NWFP, and it is a world where Lahore has been blown up by a nuclear bomb (ouch!). Here's a page from the novel's beginning that reminded me of the recent US missile strikes inside Pakistan:

He had been just four when he had first encountered the helicopters of the west. They had come at night, a pack of them. They flew very low over your head, black on black, like angry black crows. Their noise hammered at your ears while their wind plucked at you and tore at your clothing. Market stalls were blown over, cattle and goats were terrified, and tin roofs were torn right off the houses. Moallim heard, though he did not see it for himself, that one woman’s infant was torn right out of her arms and sent whirling up into the air, never to come down again.

And then the shooting had started.

Later, more choppers had come, dropping leaflets that explained the “purpose” of the raid: there had been an increase in arms smuggling in the area, there was some suspicion of uranium shipments passing through the village, and so on. The “necessary” strike had been “surgical,” applying “minimum force.” The leaflets had been torn up and used to wipe asses. Everybody hated the helicopters, for their remoteness and arrogance. At four, Moallim did not have a word to describe how he felt.

And still the choppers came. The latest UN helicopters were supposed to be here to enforce peace, but everybody knew that this was somebody else’s peace, and these “surveillance” ships carried plenty of weaponry.

These problems had a single solution, so Moallim had been taught.

The elders had trained Moallim to handle the rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was always hard to hit a moving target. So the detonators had been replaced with timing devices, so that they would explode in midair. As long as you fired close enough, you didn’t even need a hit to bring down an aircraft-especially a chopper, and especially if you aimed for the tail rotor, which was its most vulnerable element.

Time's Eye – Clarke & Baxter

Science fiction is not always fiction.

School Closed Due To Bomb Threats

My son will not go to school today, or tomorrow. When we discussed this in front of him today, he immediately said, "Coz there is a bomb".

The school administration have received specific bomb threats and have decided to keep the school closed for the next two days. Of course, the topic must have been discussed in front of him at school, which is how he knows 'there is a bomb'.

I don't see how closing the school for two days will help, they might as well close the school for two months, or better yet, two years. There have been threats before the elections, and I am sure there will be lots of threats in the future as well. 

I don't blame the school for being paranoid, as it is one of the better schools of Lahore, and so, a lot of my son's classfellows are sons and grandsons of active politicians and police officers. All I (or the other parents) can do is to blame our government, which, in turn, blames the usual suspects , who blame the USA and so on… I'm sure that if my son could, he would blame me for making him live in a country where kids become 'collateral damage', and have to sacrifice their lives and education for some one else's war.

Congratulations my terrorist 'brothers', you have succeeded.