People are just People

Before posting this I also submitted it to Huffington Post’s new section on citizen reporting in Pakistan…so hopefully it will appear there too.

Increasing petrol prices, better schools for their children, poor community health facilities, rising unemployment–just a few of the everyday concerns of the people of Pakistan.  Are they so different?  Are they so drastically different to the concerns that “we the people” face everyday? My answer, no.  Because people are just people.  When we can take a moment to realize the humanity that lives within the borders of Pakistan then maybe we could stop living instead in the media induced, sensationalized, spoon-fed, tunnel vision world, and start living in one that actually reflects reality.

I have been living and researching in Pakistan for a month now.  An American girl, with roots in Texas, with a degree from the same congressional district of the George Bush ranch, I’ve been welcomed with open arms.  Welcomed into homes for tea, welcomed into people’s lives, welcomed into discussions about the state of Pakistan and US relations spoken in hopeful tones.

It is by talking to the people that you realize that they are plagued by similar problems and frustrations.  However, while Americans are thousands of miles away, sitting in air-conditioned offices reading report after report of terror and violence, the people of Pakistan live their daily lives, interspersed with power failure and the same reports [except when they read them, it could include family and friends].  Yet, this is not their whole lives; the terror and violence is just a portion of the situation.  Just as if you were understand the US from sensational news stories, you would think we exist as a nation of swine flu, Michael Jackson, and the economic crisis.  Yet people are more than that.  This reality is continually lost in translation: the translation of reality to media, the translation of people to politics, the translation of individuals to communities/nations.

What is needed is recognition of Pakistan a place filled with people, not so different from you, not so different than me.  Recognition that Pakistan is a fledgling democracy of 2 years [historically speaking Pakistan has been oscillating between military control and democracy for 53 years], and we are expecting it to act with the same power and institutional control as 233-year-old framework.  It is unrealistic.  Pakistan needs support, understanding and partners willing to communicate.  We needs to stop representing only the negative and sensationalized aspects of Pakistan, stop distilling a country down to a series of events, carried out by a extreme segment of the population that does not represent the country as a whole.

Discover the humanity of Pakistan, and that people are just people.