Alexandra Harrison

Shazia Parveen

 I just wanted to tell you a story about my latest “trip” to Pakistan because it is so interesting and also demonstrates, I think, the flexibility of the NBO in different cultural contexts. 

Muhammad Zeshan

Muhammad Zeshan and Shazia Parveen and I traveled to Peshawar, a northern province and more traditional than Punjab, our usual site. We were all on Zoom. A colleague of Muhammad’s has a general clinic there even though he is a psychiatrist. It was heavily raining so we only saw 3 families. The middle family was a mother, her 6-yo son, and a 40 day daughter. An older daughter was at home. We asked the mothers if she had any concerns. She said that she was worried about this baby because she was alert all the time and seemed very curious about all the people she saw, tried to engage them. Of course, we were perplexed. Why was she worried about that? Luckily there were two adorable young psychologists who were helping us with the NBO’s and they spoke to the mother. After a lengthy explanation we discovered that the meaning the baby’s outgoing personality had for the mother was that when she got married she might not get along with her mother in law because she might be too assertive and full of herself. We were amazed. I explained to the mother that if her baby was so talented at making relationships with people, she would learn what the people she lived with needed and wanted from her and she would be able to choose how to behave with them. The mother was very happy.  Now, did you ever expect the NBO to demonstrate feminine compliance?

I am attaching the flyer (in English and in Urdu) we made to advertise our project for training caregivers in Pakistan. We hope to make an outreach project to pregnant mothers in the community and train the lady health visitors that are community women holding government jobs and tasked with looking after basic health needs of mothers and infants. Right now we are building alliances.