I'll try and write a longer entry now, although this keyboard sucks.

Karachi is a lot less developed than tashkent, but it has more foreign investment and more things to buy. I think it is the city tashkent would have been without the soviets. I don't know if it's better or worse off this way. (Tashkent, i mean) Worse, i suspect.

Things are a littel tense here, but okay. Our relatives are on extra-special guard looking after Mom, which is kind of funny. One tall blonde lady and a phalanx of little pakistani women clad in black surrounding her.

I am dying of suspense not knowing what Gulnara's parents said to Mike. He should have gotten his answer today.

Karachi is visibly tense. A lot of anti-American graffiti (my current favorite says "Bush dog") and the city just feels edgy. Not that this is a city known for calm.

So what is Karachi like? These kind of descriptions are my weak point. Dirty, and smelly, and colorful. Very, very poor. A government presence that seems to consist only of police. A lot of ads for education. Private schools for children, all kinds of colleges and institutes for adults. A kiosk economy - everything based on very small business. Every speaks a little English, which is a great relief after Tashkent. All the women wear shalwar-kamees. The men are about 50-50 western clothes and shalwar-kamees with the poorer men more likely in shalwar.

Mom and I were staying with my Uncle Younus and his family. They're some of the poorest family members, but also my mother's favorites. Also now mine. They're a happy family, who laugh a lot and tease each other. Mom and I were put in the only bedroom. Everyone goes to great lengths to take care of us. They buy bottled water, dry all our dishes with tissues to remove every last drop, and cook Mom special food with no chiles. I'll write more about them, but it's kind of hard to think right now.

Uncle Younis's sons are funny. They all look like madrasa students in thier little hats and big beards, but they're happy guys who love to tease their sister and are entirely comfortable around Mom and I. Not fanatical at all. That is much of what is so lovable about the family. Devout but not fanatical. Much like Mike. It's too bad Mike couldn't have married my cousin Yasmin. Well, no. I love Gulnara too. It's too bad there aren't lots of Mikes.

Their apartment is three rooms and a kitchen, one room (the bedroom) which has been given entirely to Mom and I. No hot water, eastern toilet.

Today we are moving to someone else's apartment, which does not make me happy. It's a much nicer place, cool, large, Western toilet and possibly even hot water, but I don't like the family so much. They seem to laugh at my Uncle Younus and his family, and it makes me mad. Also, they don't seem to realize how easily I could get sick. Mom, yes, but I'm brown and that confuses them. I'm still a foreigner, though, and vulnerable.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.