PrintNews from Spreadsheet
01-04-2003
To boldly spend six years in Pakistan's North-West Frontier
What makes a 29-year old health authority deputy finance director put aside a promising career to accept the challenge of spending six years in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan?
In the summer of 1984, before starting my degree in money, banking and finance at Birmingham University, I had developed a strong sense that I wanted to use my future financial skills to make a difference somewhere in the 'two-thirds world'.
I had always had a passion for languages and geography. I studied international development finance as part of my degree and was deeply challenged, as a committed Christian, about my life priorities and values.
I graduated in 1987. Almost all my finance student peers joined the big six accountancy firms. Having become interested in the issues of public finance, I joined the NHS as a West Midlands regional financial management trainee.
At the same time, I was involved with an international Christian ministry. A group of us were disturbed by the loneliness that many international students face when they come to study at our universities and colleges in Birmingham.
So in 1988 we decided to start a hospitality and cultural support programme. This eventually gave me the chance to make four fact-finding trips to India and Pakistan.
In 1994, I was asked by my charity to help set up a bee farm to promote the social, health and economic benefits of apiculture in Pakistan. So, in September, I used my annual leave to fly out to Pakistan to help a New Zealand colleague set up this enterprise, known as Lifecare.
The following year, my charity asked me if I would like to go and work for Lifecare full time. So at 29, I had to choose whether to settle down into a financially - and personally - rewarding career as a then NHS deputy finance director or accept the challenge of being the business manager of this beekeeping enterprise (I knew nothing about bees so I had a steep learning curve).
So in 1995 I embarked on what turned out to be six fascinating years in the city of Abbottabad in the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan.
Abbottabad, a thriving city of 100,000 people at an altitude of 4,300 feet, is 120km north of the national capital Islamabad and 200km north east of the provincial capital Peshawar. The city derives its name - abode of Abbott - from a British colonel, James Abbott, who established a garrison settlement there in the 1860s to supply British military expeditions. (It is still home to thousands of soldiers as the base for the Pakistan military academy.)
It is 70km along the Karokorum Highway (the 'Silk Route') which runs 600km from northern Pakistani Punjab through the rolling Hazaran hills and the spectacular Hunza valley (home of Nanga Parbet and K2, two of the ten highest mountains in the world) to the Chinese border.
Our beekeeping work brought us into contact with people from many walks of life, from retired army majors with a hobby interest in bees, and Afghan refugees using beekeeping for economic survival, to local Pakistanis wanting advice on the considerable medicinal value of pure honey.
We also provided technical advice and support to local beekeepers, based on our knowledge of international apiculture and research, advising how best to control or eradicate diseases that can destroy entire bee farms.
Lifecare also did consultancy work for a German non-governmental organisation seeking to promote the development of small-scale beekeeping as micro-businesses for families in less developed parts of the Frontier province where there were few other employment opportunities.
Pakistan, sadly, like many developing countries, has significant 'hidden' unemployment. We believed that helping people to help themselves is always better than just another aid handout, because what happens when the NGO staff leave, as they did after September 11?
While I worked day by day with our local Pakistani Christian and Muslim staff and dined at my local Afghan 'hotel' (Pakistani English for ordinary eating places) and with local Pakistani families in Abbottabad, the more I chatted, and the more my Urdu gradually improved. Bit by bit (ahista ahista) I got below the surface of life, culture and religious faith in Frontier Pakistan.
What I lost in income over those six years I gained in quality of life. The Kaghan and Swat mountain valleys and northern sub-Himalayan districts of Northern Pakistan are home to some of the most spectacular hill and mountain scenery in the whole world.
The hospitality of Pakistani and Afghan people is legendary. Muslim and Christian friends took care of my personal security during sensitive times such as August 1999 when America sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan and particularly after September 11, 2001.
In Pakistan, as with many parts of the non-Western world, it's not what you know but the network of people you know. Life is conducted at a slower pace, which can be a blessing from a health point of view but also frustrating for Westerners who live by their MS Outlook schedulers.
Building bridges of culture and faith take time and a lot of cups of chai (sweet milky tea) and qawa (green tea). Life and food are intertwined, which suits me fine.
Doing business in Pakistan is not easy. It is, by the admission of its own people, one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In our first two years of operating Lifecare we almost became insolvent because the tax commissioner hugely inflated our business tax bill because we refused on principle to pay him a bribe. (We appealed the bill, and won.)
Apart from my involvement in Lifecare, I also had the opportunity to do things which, had I remained in the UK, I would probably never have done. For three years, I used my professional skills to develop internal control and financial systems for what started as a small Pakistani-Christian community health clinic 60km north of Abbottabad. There are no other real health facilities in the whole of the Kaghan valley, which runs for more than 180km.
It has been great to see a small clinic grow into a hospital that now offers in-patient, x-ray, laboratory, general surgery and full obstetric and gynaecology services and to have seen non-finance nursing, medical and administrative staff be trained and gain competence in basic finance skills.
I've also taught students in accountancy and finance as part of a local university MBA programme and as a part-time visiting teacher for A-level accounting and business studies classes at a large high school in Abbottabad.
I also, for fun, ran an informal spoken English school. The demand for English language courses in Pakistan is insatiable and puts us predominantly monolingual English speakers to shame.
For me, though, probably the most significant part of my six years in Pakistan was marrying my Pakistani-Christian wife, Esther, in January 2001 which my family and friends came out to celebrate with us and our 400 other guests.
We returned to the UK after September 2001 because of the security situation once military action started in nearby Afghanistan.
There are more than 1 million Afghans living in the Frontier and it was a privilege to know quite a number of them in Abbottabad. Some of their stories and their losses would make you weep.
This Christmas I returned with my wife to the Frontier for three weeks and was invited to a rural government school in the Kaghan Valley to help a Pakistani English teacher friend promote his subject. Then, as we speculated about the possibility of a conflict in Iraq, I found myself having to answer some hard questions from 270 Muslim schoolboys. I tried to draw a distinction between what governments do and what their citizens believe to be appropriate.
In our work as accounting professionals in the UK we sometimes find ourselves implementing government policies that we personally might question. For me, building bridges of trust and dialogue between East and West, Muslim and Christian is an important life priority.
Since December 2001, I have returned to my work as an NHS finance manager at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust and grappled with the challenges and complexities of health care resource group costing and the new financial flows systems underpinning patient choice and the NHS Plan.
We plan to return to Pakistan in a few more years when I hope to set up an English language centre and provide consultancy, accountancy and audit support and training.
Even if it's only for a short period, I would encourage anyone to search out opportunities through charities, NGOs or the Voluntary Service Overseas (see related article) to share and use their professional skills in another culture.
The need for qualified finance managers has never been greater. And we can learn so much ourselves in the process.
Neil Walker