Pottying in Pakistan – RESOLVED!

Before we get back to chronicling the wedding for which we recently traveled to (and have since returned from) Pakistan to attend, I thought some of you must be hanging on the edges of your seats wondering what happened with the potty issue!

Remember? I was worried about our three year old. He was then-newly-potty-trained and I was worried that he’d have difficulty adjusting to the open “Squat Toilet” that can be prevalent in Pakistan. I wrote about it in this old post, and I thought I had found the perfect solution – a folding travel potty that we could use by itself or set it up over the ol’ hole in the ground, especially at the outdoor and often primitive wedding venues we’d be spending so much time at. Well, it turns out that wasn’t a solution at all. Why? Well, because like I am prone to do, I had apparently worked myself up in a frenzy over something that was a complete non-issue. And it was resolved before we even arrived in Pakistan.

While we were transiting through the Exploded Peacock, my Mian took the baby to the bathroom. There was a long line and all the stalls had floor-to-ceiling doors, so he didn’t know until they’d had to wait for a long time that half the stalls had western style toilets and the other half had squat toilets. Their luck had run out and they’d gotten a squat toilet – but the baby couldn’t have waited in the line any longer. He had to make due with the hand he’d been dealt, so to speak. Luckily, M is much better at not freaking about about unknown situations (and imparting that stress onto the baby making the situation worse), so he just positioned the boy over the hole in the ground and the deed was done without a second thought.

The rest of the trip, the baby had no problems at all using the “Airport Potty” as he called it. M even had him use the Airport Potty at his parent’s house where they have both options next to each other. It kept the skills fresh, I guess. We did encounter a lot of squat toilets out and about in Karachi also, and it was literally a weight off my shoulders not to have to worry about, nor carry around our own folding potty (and then still have to carry around a used folding potty afterward also – yuck!)

When we got back home, we were still within the Babies R Us 30-day return policy, and since the item was completely untouched and unopened, I returned it. Someone who recently bought a lime green “Potette Plus” from my local store has no idea that their potty just recently returned from an excursion halfway around the world. Traveling Potty indeed!

Fringe Benefits

A lot of people express a lot of different things when they hear that my brother-in-law has moved into our house and will be living here for the duration of his Ph.D studies. Extended family living in a single household is just not that common among my peers. Mostly, people are surprised and they ask if I’m unhappy with the situation. I always respond the same way: for us, the benefits outweigh any costs. And while there are many benefits, hoo boy – I can only think of one at the moment!

I’ve had an almost 100% reduction in shoveling work – I only have to go out there when I want to. Also, we only have two shovels, so I can sit back and relax and not even feel guilty about it. We’re in the midst of record-breaking snow, and I’ve been replaced on the Snow Shoveling Crew!!! But while I sit inside the house, poor Mian still has the same amount of shoveling work! I also took some pictures of them shoveling from inside my warm, warm house – but you could see the window frame and it just seemed so evil that I went outside to take pictures a little closer to the scene. I’m telling you – benefits!

Settling In

Oh HAI there! Did you miss me? I missed you all so much!

Things have been a crazy whirlwind since we got back from Pakistani WEEKS ago! Can you believe it’s been that long already? First there was unpacking, then there was trying to prepare the house for my brother-in-law to move in ten days later, and then I also have another professional hurdle I’ve been toiling day and night to try and finish (or re-finish, as it were.)

Anyway, so the adjustment with the brother-in-law (we’re calling him Chachoo, remember ?) is going well. REALLY well, better than I could have imagined. He is such a nice, sweet and fun guy that it’s actually been really fun and enjoyable having him around! Plus, he spends a considerable amount of time downstairs – where his room is – studying and/or talking to his new wife on the phone/computer. That means that M, the baby, and I still get some time to spend together as a little nuclear family on the main level where all our general living space is – just like we used to. (Contrast that to when my mother-in-law is visiting: she sleeps in a guest room on the same level as us so there is less separation and more adjustments to be made.) Also, Chachoo is here for his Ph.D. studies, so he’s got a lot on his own plate that keeps him busy. He has classes to go to and he’s working for his professor and he still has to pursue his own research as well. He’s got his own life going, and sometimes I barely see him all day.

When I DO see him, he’s just the kindest, most considerate guy. When I told people that he would be moving in with us, I got a lot of people saying that things were probably not going to be good. I think that someone even commented on this blog that I would likely be expected to do all of the brother-in-law’s cooking and cleaning and laundry. I knew, even back then, that wouldn’t be the case because I don’t even do all the cooking, cleaning or laundry when my mother-in-law is staying with us! But I was still surprised when, after only being in our house for 16 hours, Chachoo came upstairs the morning after his arrival and said to me “Bhabhi, do you want some tea?” What a sweet, sweet boy. My mother-in-law really did a good job raising those sons of hers.

The last weeks have been very busy though, and Chachoo and I have spent a lot of time running all sorts of various errands. It’s rough work coming to America and there were way too many forms to fill out, lines to stand in, and peons we had to schmooze. M says its much more complicated than when he came here for the exact same reason 10 years ago. First to get him a driver’s license, then to jump through a million hoops with his school registration (some of which they STILL aren’t satisfied with) and then we even had to go to the county health department for a chest x-ray because he comes from a tuberculos-eriffic country. That was a splendid afternoon. And all the while – on all of these outings – I’m barraging him with tidbits and info and anecdotes about American culture and history. Dragging him to the mall and the grocery stores and desi stores and international markets where we buy the weird vegetables. I sometimes wonder if he’d wish I’d just shut the heck up sometimes.

We’ve also been traipsing around the country visiting various relatives – two full weekends spent sleeping on the floor in various extended Pakistani family member’s homes. Even those trips were more fun with Chachoo around. M can get a bit curmudgeonly and old-man-like and complain-y about these kinds of trips (the driving! the family politics!), but he was much more fun to be around now that his little brother is here with us on these trips. Plus, we brought a ludo game back with us and it’s like we’ve been conducting our own traveling, interstate ludo championships. M has been the clear frontrunner by far. I am dead last, even though it seems almost identical to a game I played a lot growing up called “Sorry!”

Don’t worry though, I do plan to pick back up with the stories from our Pakistan trip. We’re not even halfway through the wedding part and there’s a lot more I want to tell you about. Things are going to be pretty busy around here for the next two weeks, but I’ll try to be consistent about sneaking back here to continue with our travel diary. Thanks for sticking around!

Now to go figure out where we left off…

Come on, Show Yourselves!

Hooray! It’s National Delurking Day!

What’s that, you ask? It’s for all you lurkers out there – those of you come ’round these parts but don’t speak up – to say hello, if only once a year. And you hafta – it’s the rules! I’m mostly a lurker myself, but I know I’ll be up late tonight, finally responding to comments on every post since the beginning of our trip! I’m so behind. There are almost 2000 things to be read in my reader, too, so if you see me come by on a month-old post, you’ll know why.

Happy Delurking Day, everyone! (That’s Delurking Day Mubarak, I guess?)

Crying Uncle

As an English speaker, I say Uncle. It never occurred to me that there could be anything more than one kind of Uncle. But if you think about it, there are actually FOUR different types of Uncles. In Pakistan, people differentiate between these types of uncles, and there’s a different word for each of them. The four different types (and their Urdu equivalent) of uncles are:

Your father’s brother (Chacha)
Your mother’s brother (Mama)
Your mother’s sister’s husband (Khaloo)
Your father’s sister’s husband (Poopha)

I remember when I was telling one of M’s friends about my Uncle and he asked me “Which uncle? On your mother’s side or your father’s side?” I answered him – it was on my mother’s side – but I also secretly  wondered why the heck he needed that information. What does it matter? An uncle’s an uncle.

Why is this topic in my mind today, you ask? Well, we have a new character to introduce to you fine readers here at The Gori Wife Life. M’s brother, who you might recall was recently accepted into a Ph.D program at an University very close to our school, is called Chachoo by my son – it is his father’s brother after all. And I decided that could be a good pseudonym for him on this website!

And the reason why THAT is in my mind today is because tonight, M, the baby, and I stood in the international arrivals area of our local airport for three hours until Chachoo walked through those doors and into our life. We then brought him back to our house which is now his house too, and showed him to his new room. (Well, “his” room until my parents or grandparents come to visit, then he gets kicked out to sleep on an air mattress in the laundry room.)

He starts school in a week and tomorrow I’m driving him all around town to get his last minute affairs in order. Then, later in the week we’ll start the tour of close-by family members’ homes/cities. I’m assuming there will be interesting stories as a result of this new development. Which means we better finish up those posts about traveling in Pakistan so we can move on to this juicy topic!

What I’m Wearing in Pakistan – Wedding Edition

I really wanted to be dressed fashionably for the various wedding functions. I’m usually very unfashionable, both in America and in Pakistan, unfortunately. In Pakistan, I like things that are typically seen as cheap or low-class. I wear mostly cotton outfits and I usually forget to accessorize or wear jewelry; I almost never wear makeup. My style is so cheap that M calls it “Lalukhaity style” named after one of the lower class markets that I like to shop at.

But for this wedding, since it’s the wedding of the youngest and the last chance I’d ever get to dress up this fancy until possibly my own kids start marrying, I really wanted to look fashionable. Up-to-date fashionable, too, not the 1 year later cutting edge that we get in America. Buying Pakistani clothes in American shops means that there’s a lag in how recent the fashions are. I wanted to go straight to the source.

I have one great resource for this. One of M’s younger cousins, we’ll call her Oonie, is so fashionable. I love every single outfit that she wears. She’s so kind to me and she speaks fluent English, so whenever I am in Pakistan, she helps me buy outfits. I’ve dragged her around to stores for hours at a time and she’s always ready and willing to help me. Everyone suggested that I just have her make outfits for me and they’d be ready and waiting when I arrived just a few days before the wedding. (Since we were arriving with so little time, my wedding clothes had to be ready before I even showed up.) But I couldn’t ask Oonie to make my wedding clothes for M’s youngest brother’s wedding. I couldn’t because a few years ago, there had been some talk that the youngest brother and Oonie should get married, and I was concerned that asking her to make clothes for the wedding – for his wedding to another girl – was too cruel. Everyone said I was wrong, there was no problem, even Oonie’s elder sister, but I just felt too bad about it.

Ammi had another plan. She asked the bride to do it. The bride! Who already had so much work of her own wedding planning to do! But she’s so nice that she agreed, and she’s very fashionable too, so I knew anything she would make would be very lovely. And they were, of course.

There were four outfits for each of the different functions. The first was a green & orange 3-piece shalwar kameez. That’s baggy pants and a long shirt with a big scarf called a dupatta that can be drapped around in different styles. It was embroided all over with sunbursts in different colors, and it had rows of little circlular mirrors sewn into the border of the dupatta, sleeves, and cuffs of the pants.

The neckline these big brooches sewn into it, and they had bells on them. I just love anything with bells on it. Five years ago, when shopping in Pakistan, I bought a pair of flip-flops that had bells all over the straps and I loved them so much. That was the first time I ever found out that my sense of style is considered low-class, because M eventually told me that the flip-flops were not nice. Those flip-flops are why he coined the Lalukhaity term. But now, it seems bells are in fashion! I think perhaps I’m just five years ahead of the fashion curve.

Unfortunately, one of the brooches broke, I think from being stuffed into our luggage and thrown around various airplanes. I saw this little piece of broken jewelry and I saved it because I couldn’t figure out what it was from until I started taking these pictures of my clothes and realized it had broken off of this shirt.

You can see that my mehndi has entered that stage where it just looks like my hands are dirty.

The best part of this outfit is the dupatta, which is orange and covered in hand-embroidered sunbursts of all different colors, with mirrorwork as well. It’s so beautiful and I don’t know what kind of fabric it is, but it’s the kind that easy to wear and drapes nicely to make a nice silhouette (as opposed to fabric that’s too silky and is always slipping, or fabric that is too stiff and sticks out to make the wearer look larger.)

For the second Mehndi, I had asked for something that would be the traditional Mehndi colors of yellow and green. My new fashionable sister-in-law also found some blue and silver, but it ended up being one of my favorite outfits ever. It’s a green silk kameez with yellow jamavarr border at the sleeves, hem and neckline and silvery and blue ribbon accents. I noticed that ribbon is everywhere there days, it’s the in fashionable way to design outfits, I guess. This outfit has a straight blue trouser style pant as opposed to the baggy shalwar style, and the dupatta was very sheer yellow silk with the same green, blue and silver border.

This was the first outfit Pakistani I’d ever owned that came with a tag in it. I don’t know who this designer is, but I definitely like the outfit!

For the nikah, I had the fanciest outfit yet. It was a gold, red and black outfit. The kameez had a slit from the bottom up the middle, which is also in fashion these days, as well as some beadwork all around the neckline and down to my waist. This waist-deep beading or embroidery is one of the current fashion trends that I think is fantastic- all that stuff is so pretty, why not have more and more, I say!

The bottom of the trouser also had some red handiwork on it, but one of my favorite parts of the outfit was the neckline which was cut really high in the back and stuck up a little bit almost like a shirt collar. It was a really nice look, I thought.

The dupatta was also really nice, I don’t know the kind of fabric though. It was lighter weight than jamavaar, but with that same kind of embroidery. My SIL had the sides beaded with two different kinds of beading.

For the Walima, I’d asked her to pick out a saree for me.  A saree combination of a tight blouse and a long (like 9 yards long) piece of fabric that you wrap around like a skirt, making a few pleats at the waist, and then keep wrapping into different styles of drapes. It’s difficult to wear, and it’s a very traditional women’s wear. I love wearing it because it’s so elegant and it really helps a gori wife look like she has mastered wearing these kinds of clothes.

The saree my SIL bought for me is a new kind of “catalog saree” that I also saw being sold in the market. I guess some designers have succeeded in marketing their own line of sarees and sell them in these kinds of packaging. This particular one was made up of several different panels of differently colored fabric so that the pleated section is all multicolored. I really liked it.

And Then There Were Tents

The last bit of preparations (there were a lot of preperations) before the big Mehndi parties was getting a tent. We needed some tents. There were two parties planned. First, the groom’s family would go to the bride’s house on the first night and there would be the bride’s Mehndi party. Then second night would see the reverse - the bride’s family would come to our house for the Groom’s Mehndi party. Oh, except the bride! Because they weren’t supposed to see each other before the wedding, neither the bride or groom could attend the other side’s party. Their families got to party in their honor, just without them.

The bride’s family lives in a really nice new development of “flats” – I guess that’s the American equivalent of apartments. The rooftop of their apartment building is apparently a common space and people throw parties there, so that’s where they had their tent setup. M’s family lives in a different kind of area though, with no posh common space for parties. Instead, they just take over the entire alleyway. This happens often, and generally neighbors don’t even ask each other before doing it. M objected to me writing that last sentence, saying that he’d “informed” his neighbors beforehand - but I say that “informing” isn’t asking, now is it? His point, though, was that “sometimes they block your front door without even telling you beforehand, and then you can’t get out of your house and a fight starts.”

Just one day before the party, the groom went to a place up the street that arranges for these kinds of tentings and set everything up. The morning of the mehndi, about 6-7 guys showed up with a small truck full of bamboo rods and fabric rolls. They spent most of the day setting up the tent, tying perilously tall bamboo rods together to make a huge frame and then unfurling roll after roll of yellow fabric (and the occasional green one) over the frame. Then they set up tables, chairs, catering and buffet tables. They also catered the whole thing and then stayed well into the next morning to take it all down. The whole thing – a full day’s work for 6 men and food for 150 – cost 18,000 rupees. That’s about $212.

We woke up in the morning and through the front door you could see the tent being set up.

One of the tent guys was the defacto electrician and wired up the whole tent with twinkling lights. He did this by hooking up to the live wire in the alleyway.

The electrician.

Setting up the tables and chairs, you can see the rolls of fabric lying on the ground.

Getting closer.

Setting up a frame to make a pretty entrance.

One of the guys takes a mid-day nap in the place that will soon hold the center stage groom.

All set up, wired, and ready to go.

The entrance to the tent.

Now they switch to caterers out back.

The groom on his throne, with all the sweets that he’ll soon be eating.

Searching For A Drum

We bought a dhol . It means drum, and at the Mehndi, there’s a lot of singing and a lot of drums. At all the Mehndis I have been to, the ladies & girls of each side sit in big circles adjacent to each other and take turns signing songs in a friendly competition. At the center of each circle is one woman who bangs on the drum. (Here’s a link to a Youtube video I found of some people doing the same thing if you want a glimpse into what I’m talking about.)

In 2007 when we visited Pakistan for BIL #1′s wedding, M went out and rented a dhol for about fifty cents a day. But this time I wanted to BUY one!

I wanted to buy one because our 3-year old son (who needs a name soon, I think) really LOVES music. I want to have musical instruments around the house to feed that interest, and I want to have specfically Pakistani instruments as well since they can feed both interest in music and interest in the heritage of his father. Two birds with one drum. Also, should our son want to include some Pakistaniness into his own wedding one day, he could use the same dhol that was used at his Uncle’s wedding and other family weddings afterwards.

We asked around about where we could find a dhol to buy, and Abbu (M’s father) said there was a music shop in Saddar – the center-of-the-city shopping area of Karachi. He gave M rudimentary directions and we set off one day to find it. We’d left too early, since the shops weren’t open until after 11:30. The directions weren’t exact, either, so we ended up wandering around for a while and asking around as the shopkeepers began to trickle in. As we started to get closer, M asked at one of the shops that sell decoration for Mehndis. It turns out that they also sell drums at those shops, so M bought one there for 1200 rupees – about $14.

After we bought it though, M kept asking around for the music shop. He thought perhaps Abbu had been talking about a different shop. After a while we did find it, and it was a real music shop. It was closed (of course, it was only 11:45 in the afternoon!) but there was a guy in what looked like a junk shop next door re-stringing a guitar who noticed us looking through the shop’s windows and asked us what we wanted. Then he came over, unlocked the door, and let us in because he was the store owner!

It was a really nice store, too. Beautiful instruments that we obviously really well-made and high quality. Unfortunately, M had already bought his drum and didn’t want to pay three times the price for another one. But they weren’t just basic drums. The one we’d bought has a metal frame and the skins are fastened with nut & bolt, while the ones in the music shop were more traditional, hand tightened with strings. One day, maybe we’ll go back and buy the real thing. Until then, my little drummer boy will have to make do!

The stringed construction of a traditional dhol.

Packing Things Up

So after we shopped for supplies, this is what we did with them:

 

All the trays of mehendi, waiting for us to take them.

We had to pack things up prettily and have them ready to take with us to the bride’s house when we were invited to their Mehendi party. We bought some henna powder and mixed it up and put it in decortated trays. Each woman in our family carried a tray with her as she entered the bride’s house. We also had gifts of clothing, shoes, jewelry and other accessories for the bride that we packed up in plastic wrapping and bows and we brought those with us too.

 

Gifts for the bride.

Some of the things we had to pack up and bring are more traditional, like a big arrangement of mixed fruit, a big basket of assorted nuts, and some Pakistani sweets.

 

A big basket of fruit, and a drum next to it – we’ll talk about the drum next time.

There was a bit of a family argument about what kind of sweets we should take with us. My mother-in-law was adamant that we should bring 15 pounds of just one kind of sweet, while everyone else wanted to bring an assortment – who would want to eat 15 pounds of one variety of dessert, anyway? But my mother-in-law won, saying that this was the way things were traditionally done – just one kind. Then when it was the bride’s turn, they brought a variety basket of mithai (sweets) and we were all happy not to have to eat just one kind for weeks on end.

Hazard

One of the hazards of living in a household with extended family is that all the laundry gets put into one pile for the maid to do when she comes in the mornings – assuming there’s water, which is not always the case, but we’ll get to that later. This may not seem like a hazard, I mean come on, at home I’d have to do my own laundry! But then, after the laundry is done, it gets hung out to dry. In the part of the house that is the entry, the foyer, the path to the bathroom, and at the edge of the dining room – basically in the area where everyone must constantly be walking through. What’s the hazard in that you ask?