Standing with me is the awesome human being Shehla Baji. I call her Baji as she is older than me and in Urdu we use this word as a sign of respect for elder sisters. I met her briefly in my first two years of med school during some awareness camps at PHC but we became friends during my third year clinical rotation in Family Medicine at the PHC three years ago. Then in my fourth year when I was president of the school welfare society she was my partner for all the community work, house visits and identifying patients in need. Since then we have always worked together for the community. When we were awarded the 2nd place MacJannet prize Dr Jawed Usman identified her as our main helper as she was from the community itself and no one matched her passion or amazing work ethic.
I have never met anyone who works for their community with such enthusiasm as Shehla Baji. This blog is about her life and all the amazing things she does.
Initially from Kohat, a beautiful small village in Northern Pakistan, Shehla Baji moved to Karachi with her family about 17 years ago. She has two sisters and two brothers. In Kohat she finished tenth grade but her father ended up in a debt of Rs. 500,000 and could not pay it off with his employment in the village so he set out for Karachi to earn more money. She tells me it had gotten so bad for them in Kohat that her mother would make tea without milk and give them dry bread along with it as they did not have any money for real food. They could only afford a decent meal once a week and they lived off it for the rest of the days. Their aunt loaned them the money to travel to Karachi. When they reached Karachi they stayed for three months at another aunt's house in Sikanderabad. Since she was educated, she immediately posted ads to tutor children of her lane. At night she and her mother would wash and iron clothes of truck drivers for more money. By the end of three months the family had enough money to rent a house. Within a few months she got married to her husband at the age of 16. The cultural practice there is that once girls get older, family members find suitable husbands for them and they get married off. After she got married she registered to give Intermediate level examination privately and she did all this while she was pregnant. Within a year of her marriage she had her first son Shariq who unfortunately has Cerebral Palsy. Shariq used to be sick quiet often since birth and Shehla Baji was always there at PHC to consult the pediatricians for one thing or another. During one of her visits she was asked if she knew someone from the community who would like to work for PHC and she excitedly told them that she would. She wanted to be trained to learn more for her son and wanted to help her community members.
This was back in 2003. Since then she has worked diligently, and harder than anyone else there. She is always keen to learn new things so that she can educate her community members regarding that. Now she is working full time to ensure that the MacJannet prize money is being spent in the most efficient way at Sikanderabad and maximum people get benefit from it. From Monday to Friday she is visiting schools daily to ensure that everything is being run smoothly. Everyday she visits two schools in the morning and interacts with the students and solves any problems being faced by the teachers. In the afternoon she is at PHC ensuring that the three sessions: the school, sewing class and the computer class is being run smoothly.
Apart from all the assigned work she has been doing voluntary work for years for the community. She has herself identified 60 very needy children for whom she arranges school fee each month. At the beginning of every year she takes them to the uniform shop herself to get their uniforms. She knows 7 destitute families and she arranges monthly grocery for them. Just recently she collected funds to set up small businesses for two women so that they can earn from home. One of them now sells stationery and the other one sells chips and biscuits. Whoever she thinks is needy or can earn more, she collects funds to get sewing machines for them so that they can begin earning by stitching clothes. She also collected money to set up 2 French fries selling stations so that two teenage boys could start working and earn for their families. Whenever any house is in danger to get their power, gas or water cut off because of the many outstanding bills, she gets on it to ensure that they have enough money collected to pay off their bills. There is poverty everywhere in Sikanderabad but Shehla Baji is working hard to prevent anyone from becoming its victim. In the last blog I mentioned how some women died while giving birth because of the unsafe cultural practices and she is the one who notified other pregnant women to not undergo that practice and registered them with Edhi foundation for a safe and free of cost birth of their children. As her own son has Cerebral Palsy, she is very eager to help other CP children too. She took on the responsibility to arrange for wheel chairs, wheel cycles, diapers, Iron and Calcium supplements and food for 24 other CP children. Sadly, only 17 of them are alive now.
Today I sat down with her and asked why she was doing all this and she said she was always into helping other people but she became more motivated after her son was diagnosed with CP. She said hopefully someone will benefit from some of this and say a prayer for him and his condition will improve a bit. She said she also felt that it was her responsibility to spread awareness among other people as she was more educated than the rest and she wanted to guide them towards the right thing. Shehla Baji absolutely hates it when people beg and having seen some harsh financial crisis, she wanted people to get out of it and work towards financial independence. This woman is a firm believer of community strengthening and she always tells me that these are her people, if she would not work for them then who will.
On talking about the MacJannet prize Shehla Baji happily told me that she always wanted to do more for her people but never had enough resources and now this gift is actually beyond her wildest expectations. She told me that she has never been more grateful in her life than right now because she is seeing older women who had never held a pencil in their hands are showing up to schools daily and are so interested to learn more. She is confident that this will create a ripple effect and all these women would be more keen towards the education of their own children and others around them.
I asked her if she wanted to give any message and she laughed and said she hopes that there are more people out there like those of the MacJannet Foundation. Getting serious she said that I do not understand a person who eats three full meals a day and fails to notice that their neighbor is hungry since the morning. She continued and said that she just hopes that people stop living in their bubbles and take a moment to look around them as there would be someone who would be shy to ask for help but it would mean the world to them if you went ahead and helped them. She is 32 years old and one of the most jolliest people I know but when she says all this profound stuff she leaves me speechless.
Shehla Baji restores my faith in humanity every single day and I hope that she continues to do this forever. She is a real treasure for Sikanderabad and I am so fortunate to know her as my friend.
By Zainab Faiza
