Tasneem next focused on experimenting with the model in a different place, this time using private land because free public land had become almost completely unavailable by 2003. His starting point: a large plot of land about a 40-minute drive outside Lahore, in the Punjab region of Pakistan. If Karachi is like New York City, Lahore is more like Boston, an intellectual center, just a bit slower, and lovely to behold, where community ties are stronger than in the more urban, individualistic city of Karachi.
Acumen Fund agreed to lend $300,000 to Saiban to purchase land and register it for development. Tasneem was lucky to find Jawad Aslam, a young 30-something Pakistani American businessman with an entrepreneurial streak who had grown up in Baltimore and worked in commercial real estate development until the events of 9/11 convinced him to move to Pakistan and contribute as best he could. Of medium build, Jawad typically dressed in traditional clothing, wore a neatly trimmed beard, comported himself with humility, and worked hard at making things happen for very little money. In his first year at Saiban, this successful US-born businessman earned about $450 a month.
"I want purpose in my work," he told me. "I wouldn't trade it despite the headaches and sacrifices."
Acumen Fund's country director, Aun Rahman, and I flew to Lahore to meet with Jawad about a year after he arrived. Aun was also in his early thirties, more than 6 feet 2 inches tall, with light eyes and a shock of black hair. He grew up in Karachi and attended private school there. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he worked for several years at a prestigious consulting firm. Still, he understood the challenges of low-income markets. He'd spent a year as our first Acumen fellow working with Saiban in the slums outside Karachi. The experience opened his eyes to the realities of the poor and reinforced his commitment to doing things differently, which made him the right person to lead our efforts in Pakistan.
We were eager to visit the site, though Jawad did his best to lower our expectations. "I know you won't believe that a year has passed and we're still not registered. Just please don't think I've not worked hard enough, for work is all I do. And since the land isn't yet registered since we refused to pay speed money, you realize we will be visiting an open field, yes?"
"What are the registrars like?" I asked, imagining brutes intimidating buyers to pay bribes for the right to own title on something for which they'd paid.
Jawad laughed out loud. "Think instead of a one-armed 31-year-old, as skinny as a broomstick, who used every excuse in the book to avoid me. I can't tell you how many times he canceled meetings because `it was raining.' And there was nothing I could do about it if I were to play by the rules-which I was determined to do. For a year, despite all my running around and begging, I made little headway."
In most countries, there is big corruption at the highest levels, and then there is the often more destabilizing petty corruption that becomes so common that people experience it simply as the way things work. Petty corruption-paying someone to get your child into school or to avoid a speeding ticket-is ultimately deeply corrosive.
"I've learned that a lost year or two is sometimes inevitable with new initiatives, especially," I assured Jawad. "Sometimes the lost year is due to unanticipated bureaucracy and corruption; at other times, it comes from the need to convince people to try something new or from delays in getting materials or finding the right staff."
Jawad nodded gracefully, knowing that it is only when some people refuse to play that the game has any chance of changing.
Finally we arrived near the land for the new development. We parked the car, walked under an archway, climbed across railroad tracks, and found ourselves moving through the dusty, narrow alleyways of an enchanting village. Children carried soaps and other sundries on their heads. Women sat in doorways peering from beneath brightly colored shawls. Little girls held hands and swung their pleated skirts as they skipped along the brick road. As we neared the edge of the village, we could see emerald green fields of rice against a perfectly blue sky. Everything felt beautiful.
The taste in the air was fresh and healthy, something missing from Karachi. For as far as I could see were fields of rice, young boys driving donkey-drawn carts filled with grass to sell at the market, and, mostly, empty space. This was country living-and only a 40-minute drive from the slum. I imagined it would feel like heaven to move here from a lowincome urban neighborhood.
About a quarter mile or so across the field stood another small village, though it wasn't clear how much interaction occurred between the two. Jawad pointed to a newly dug fishpond and to rice fields that would flourish in the wet season. Aun and I nearly danced around, just standing on the place where we could dream together of a community for low-income people.
"It won't be long now!" I said gleefully.
"Not now that there is a fishpond!" Aun added.
Jawad teased us for our optimism, but we wouldn't stop dreaming.
Another 6 or 7 months passed before Jawad's efforts were finally rewarded and the land was officially registered. His next challenges loomed larger: finding the right people and materials to construct houses and battling the monsoons. When I visited Lahore again, Jawad invited us to go out and see the development. This time Aun and I were accompanied by our colleague Misbah, who left a 10-year career at Citigroup Pakistan to work with Acumen Fund.
After meeting for a quick coffee in a hotel in downtown Lahore, the four of us piled into a hired car and headed outside the city. As I stared out the window, I was mesmerized by the soft hue the afternoon light was casting across the world, kissing the romantic silhouettes of minarets and the swollen rooftops of mosques. Before reaching the crowded part of the city, I soaked in the more pastoral parts of Lahore, the treelined roads along the wide river bend, the enchanting gardens outside private schools for boys complete with enormous green fields for cricket matches and polo games. Women walked hand in hand alongside the road, some in modern Pakistani dress, some completely covered in the traditional black hijab. Like Karachi, Lahore is a city of contrasts.
Our car moved to the city center and then slowed to a crawl through the crowded streets, accompanied by horse-drawn carts and donkeys, three-wheelers, vans and trucks, men carrying baskets on their backs and pedaling bicycles with huge boxes attached to the seats. Families atop the funny-looking humps of decorated camels trotted alongside our car. Big painted trucks, true artisanship in action, roared past, all overflowing with waving boys. Bearded men walked slowly in their white kurtas and businessmen rode in the backseats of shiny Mercedes- Benzes. Mangy dogs-part of the scenery in every developing countryrambled along the roads while random shopkeepers put out their wares.
We passed the Lahore Fort, an impressive citadel built in the 1500s, and the breathtaking Badshahi Mosque, whose towering walls and onion domes glow magnificently at night in a sea of lights. All of us remarked on the many beautiful minarets, the mix of modern and ancient, the beauty of Islamic architecture, and how we might one day integrate more of that beauty into the housing we were building.
As we had the first time, we turned off a dirt road at a blue sign for Saiban, passing fields of wheat, some of it harvested into neat bales. On this quiet afternoon, farmers walked alongside buffalo and sheep as old men cycled past. Again, we walked through the little village and came across the giant field where the housing development was scheduled to go. But this time, there was actually a single house, beautiful and glorious at least to our eyes.
"That's ours," Jawad said excitedly, "but you might not want to walk down the path to get there."
Normally dry, the dirt road slicing through the rice paddy was full of mud from recent flooding. "We can just look at it from here," he added.
But we'd been waiting a long time to see that first house, and we wanted a closer view. Jawad laughed as we gingerly followed him barefoot through the mud after taking off our shoes and rolling up our pants legs.
I loved the sensual feeling of soft earth squishing between my toes and the movement of
water across my legs, though I imagined myself falling splat into the muck in the dress pants and pale blue silk jacket I'd worn to a morning meeting. A dark-skinned boy in a turban cut a dramatic figure in tangerine orange as he sat on his haunches at the edge of the rice paddy. Huge, horse-drawn carts of grass rolled along, slowing near the horizon as cormorants swooped back and forth across the bright green fields.
It took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to reach the house, and we couldn't have been prouder. At 500 square feet, it was large enough for a family, with two rooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, and a courtyard. We must have snapped a dozen pictures in front, which was already painted with the rules, like Saiban's main office outside Karachi.
When I put down my camera, I looked at Ann and Misbah and Jawad with their shoes in their hands and so much pride in their faces. I thought of what these children of Pakistan-so incredibly bright, competent, and committed-could have been doing with their lives instead of being here in a field, working to surmount enormous hurdles to build houses for the poor. I reflected for a moment on how lucky I was to be able to work with them and how much I wanted to support them as leaders. Their generation is the future of Pakistan.
We congratulated the men working at the demonstration house, but refused an offer of tea. The sun was setting, and I wanted the team to return before dark. As we walked across the field, we spoke about the importance of this first house-how crucial it was to come and celebrate because life is short, victories are hard-won, and hope comes not from playing it safe, but from working on good in the world, as my angel had reminded me at the airport.
Suddenly, BOOM. Gunshots rang out from behind and young men flew past us, obviously panicked. I grabbed Misbah's hand and we quickened our pace. With the bullets coming more rapidly, we moved as quickly as we could, planting one foot at a time in the mud, trying desperately not to slip.
In the village ahead, we could see a man in a pale blue shirt shooting high into the air, surrounded by young men. Our choices were limited: We were in the middle of a narrow, muddy road cutting through a field of rice paddies, caught in cross fire. There was no going back. Though it didn't seem that anyone was shooting directly at us, men with guns were running toward us from both directions, and the sounds of bullets flying seemed to be everywhere. We kept moving forward, running as fast as we could.
As we neared the village, we saw a group of men grab a young man in a black shirt with a red stripe down the front. Everyone was yelling, and the man looked terrified. I assumed he was somehow a culprit, but we didn't stop to find out. We raced through the narrow walkways in the village. Misbah, still holding my hand, suddenly told me to stop.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"Pull down the legs of your pants," she said. "You never know who or what is causing the trouble right now. If we look disrespectable, we'll stand out even more than we do now."
Meanwhile, Ann said he could hear people shouting that there were foreigners in the village. We walked rapidly while trying to hold ourselves with some semblance of calm, focusing on the path ahead, though my brain seemed to split apart as if I were watching what was happening to us from above-a coping mechanism.
I focused mostly on getting my young team out. As we moved, I felt a profound feeling of love for them. At the same time, I watched the little girls in dresses running behind the boys with guns rather than seeking cover. To them, these boys were not frightening. They were heroes and guardians of their security.
We escaped safely, and it was only later that we learned that a group of four or five robbers had driven in a small car to the far village, vandalized some of the houses, and then jumped back into the vehicle for their getaway. The car got stuck in the mud along the path, and the robbers jumped out and fled in every direction. The villagers chased after them, calling men from the distant village for help by shooting in the air-not unlike the whooping I remembered being used as a signal by the guards in Rwanda when trouble occurred.
No one in the village was hurt that night. With no police force on which they could count, the villagers took protection into their own hands. Most households seemed to have a gun. Poverty is about not only income levels, but also the lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity.
After the incident, the villagers decided our group was no fly-by-night shop: We were committed. When Jawad came to work that next morning, he was greeted by many fewer skeptical eyes. Within days, the first person signed up to buy a house. Jawad and Saiban were on their way.
Sales were slow at first. Very-low-income people can't afford to think far into the future and rarely have the savings for a down payment. Because this project was built on private land, a down payment for each plot was three times what it had been in Karachi-nearly $600, a princely sum for most people in the target market. And Lahore's community orientation made it harder for people to leave their homes, however inadequate they were, to take an uncharted course alone.
Potential buyers also feared a 15-year mortgage. One severe sickness befalling the family breadwinner could put the entire family behind. Though the Saiban mortgage payments, about $30 to $35 a month, were less than what people paid to rent in the slums, the concept of a longterm loan was frightening.
But Jawad kept talking to people and, one by one, they began to come.
Fast-forward to late 2007. We drove from Lahore back to the village again, but this time we were able to drive along the dusty access road to see the first 50 dwellings on two blocks, housing nearly 300 pioneering residents. A park stood in the middle of the first block, a perfect square of well-kept grass ringed by pink and white flowers. Benches lined either side, and many of the home owners had planted flowers beneath their windows. I wondered aloud whether we would ever be able to measure the changes in how human beings see themselves in the world.
I met a man I guessed to be about 60 because of his pure white hair and weathered face, but he was closer to 40. He'd lived in the slums for most of his life and came to Saiban to start a new chapter with his family. He also laid claim to being the first person in the development to take a mortgage.
"The people here, they are very patient," he said. "At first, I asked them why would I take a loan for one amount and then have to pay you several times that amount back over the next years? They tried explaining this over and over but never made a good argument."
"And how did they convince you, finally?" I asked.
"I used to pay about $38 a month for my rent in Lahore. And I never owned any property. Now I pay $30, but this time it is helping me buy my own house for my wife and children. I am thinking about the future."
Fifty feet from the houses stood a one-room brick schoolhouse. Tiny shoes were piled outside the door as the schoolchildren sat on the floor with books in hand, reciting English words for their three young teachers. In the midst of turbulent times in Pakistan, a country in a race between extremists and leaders building the framework for a more civil society, the school was a profound symbol of progress and achievement. After 3 years, the project was assuming the shape of a real community.
DR. SONO KHANGHARANI UNDERSTANDS community. He was born one of Pakistan's roughly 2.5 million Hindus. Nearly 80 percent of the Hindus living there are from the Dalit caste, the lowest social group, historically consigned to serve as leatherworkers, carcass handlers, street cleaners, and landless laborers.
While the caste system is no longer as prevalent in Indian urban areas, even today in many rural areas Dalits are excluded from living in some places and attending certain schools. Some rural teahouses even keep special cups and utensils for them to use so that higher-caste people won't be sullied by touching the same items. It was this fear of touching that led to the common name for Dalits, Untouchables.
Dr. Sono's father was a cobbler, and by tradition, the son should have followed in those footsteps. But a twist of fate occurred during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948. Thar, the vast desert region where Dr. Sono was born, is so remote that many Hindus
remained in Muslim Pakistan. Dr. Sono completed university and, though faced with opportunities unimagined by his parents, nonetheless chose to return to his community, where too many people still work as bonded laborers toiling in brick-making and carpet-weaving factories or farming tiny plots on feudal lands.
What brought Acumen Fund to this desert place where the poor live in mud huts, own just a few pots and pans, and eke out hardscrabble lives on and land? The story actually started in India with another social entrepreneur. My colleague Yasmina Zaidman and I met Amitabha Sadangi in 2004, when Acumen Fund was starting to build a portfolio focused on bringing water to the poor. Amitabha, in his forties, had been working for nearly 20 years with poor farmers in India, designing and distributing affordable implements to increase their productivity.
His organization, IDE India, had distributed hundreds of thousands of treadle pumps, rudimentary devices that farmers connect to water sources and activate by standing on them, pumping their legs as if they are on StairMasters. These simple technologies were helping farmers triple and quadruple their income levels, so Amitabha was encouraged to design something for farmers who had access to only minimal levels of water-the poorest of the poor.
Amitabha has one of the world's great smiles, at once conspiratorial and sparkling. He is a solid, sturdy man with a trimmed beard and flashing black eyes. Despite his diamond bracelet and gemstone rings, his laughter and easy way with farmers-and, most important, the way he listens-elicits trust in the most rural areas. Amitabha is always who he is, without ever trying to be someone else.
I was excited by his can-do attitude and pragmatic approach to farming.
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World Page 29
