Ambassador of Hope

Public figures are constantly battling between their actually personality and their projected public image. Add the terms ex-American army and mixed martial arts (MMA), add your fair share of Hollywood imagery and you have your stereotypical image of Bashir Ahmad.

However, rest assured that the godfather of MMA in Pakistan is anything but the type caste martial arts athlete. His fighting career has been well documented but here we get to see the other side of his personality.

Bashir was raised in the United States of America in an expat Pakistani family and the culture was an integral part of his upbringing. There has always been an emotional connection and his frequent trips also helped further cement the bond. His earliest memory of the country is of his first trip at the age of six when he stayed with his extended family for a month or two and when his mother informed him that it was time to go back home, he ran under his nani’s bed and cried his eyes out.

“When I am here I don’t really miss the United States, I do think about my family and home for but not the country as such. However, when I am in the U.S or anywhere else I do miss Pakistan.” 

Copy rights WWF-Pakistan

From an early stage he knew that he would be doing something for the country, even though it was not clear how it was going to happen. Deep down he believed that destiny was going to bring him here, someway of the other. In the end MMA because the source of his journey, but becoming a professional athlete was never on his cards, it just happened.

During his elementary school days, one day the kids were asked to come dressed up as what they wanted to become when they grow up and Bashir went geared up as a zoologist, with his tranquilizer gun!

So when he recently, signed up as a Goodwill Ambassador for WWF-Pakistan, for many this might have come as a surprise, but for Bashir this was not a decision that he needed to think about. His interest in environment and wildlife has been quite intrinsic as far as his earliest childhood memories go. He has been reading up on global wildlife and issues faced by planet earth, be it our deteriorating natural resources or the impacts of over population. His passion for environment and wildlife conservation is not something that he got from his parents or anyone else, it has always been a part of who he is.

So how did a zoologist aspirant ended up becoming a professional MMA fighter?

Protectors of our Environment

If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a generation. This famous quote aptly explains the potential of positive impact women are capable of contributing to society. Women are known to be better multitaskers and long term planners. When they are economically stable, they spend more resources on improving their family’s hygiene, health, education and on the betterment of their communities. 

By nature, women play the role of protectors of the environment. According to a survey conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme on public attitudes towards environment, women are more likely to choose a lower standard of living with fewer health risks than opt for a higher living standard with greater health risks as compared to men.  

Environmental degradation has and continues to have devastating effects on people’s health and quality of life and women are at the forefront of this battle, especially in the developing world. When women are affected so are their children - a given co-relation. 

Previously, it was considered that women were only passive recipients of aid and had nothing to offer in terms of active participation in the development process. This perspective has undergone a u-turn with the realization that there will be no sustainable development without their inclusion. In fact, some experts have a staunch belief that one of the key reasons for stunted progress so far has been women’s exclusion. 

Traditionally, women have often shown their leadership skills when it comes to keeping a check and even reducing the wastage of resources, recycling them and promoting environmental ethics. As home makers, mothers are in many cases economic providers at the same time for their families, they are more sensitive to the need for conservation. 

Around the globe, irrespective of whether a country is developed, developing or under-developed, if the topic of environment conservation is being discussed or action taken on it, we will get to see many local female voices. There is growing evidence that women are taking up key roles in the implementation of environment friendly practices at the grassroots level and are getting involved in policy making too, an indication that we are headed in the right direction.

Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and conservationist, is credited for advancing the global environmental movement. One of her books, Silent Spring, was a table turner in instigating discussions on the use of synthetic pesticides, which resulted in a nationwide ban in the USA on DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and other pesticides. The associated grassroots environmental movement also led to the birth of the US Environmental Protection Agency. It is important to note that this happened between 1955 and 1962, a time when not many were talking about the subject. 

South Asia too is witnessing an increase in the number of women conservationist, especially at the grassroots level. These women are home makers, farmers and professionals working in various industries in the day but taking out time to contribute towards environment conservation as well. 

In the name of the concrete jungle

Lahore which is known as the cultural hub of the country is being shamelessly turned into a concrete jungle in the name of development, Paris and whatever the political diatribe can come up with. Recently one of the representatives of the ruling party in response to the high court’s decision on the Orange Line said that they will be contesting the decision and that there is no stopping the Orange Line because this is a gift to the people of the city from the provincial government.

That marketer in me couldn’t help drawing parallels between this statement and the marketing and product development ideology that states that the consumers don’t know what they want and it is our job to show it to them. After all this is exactly how we got our cars and smartphones and what not. My train of thought came to a halt when a portion of my grey matter started yelling that there has to be a difference in the mentality of an elected government and a private business!

The talk show ended, I flipped the channel and life moved on until the very next day, I encountered this mental exercise in a more practical form.

My mother, (a doctor who just recently retired from her government service as an anatomist at her alma mater, Fatima Jinnah Medical University) was diagnosed with renal failure due to auto-immune disease three years ago and is on dialysis. The said day which happened to be a Saturday she came back from her dialysis as usual and around evening started complaining of a splitting head ache, which after on call consultation with her doctors and prescribed medication settled only to resurface late night with vengeance. When repeating the medication didn’t help, we rushed her to Jinnah Hospital’s emergency.

Stepping in the emergency section and the place was a complete contrast from the quite night time outside. By this point my mother’s head ache throbbing pain in her optic nerve and just to be sure that there was no underline problem she explained her issue at the main desk and was told that the eye department is on the second floor. Heading to the second floor, the elevator was out of order! My father and I helped her to the second floor through stairs. The on duty doctor examined her told her it was a case of cluster headache, and it would be treated in the Medicine section on the ground floor.  

Fast forward to the Medicine section. Utter chaos is the only decent term I can think of to describe what was happening there. The place is running way below capacity, is under staffed and under equipped. There were two patients to a bed and a many more stationed outside the door. At the doctors’ station my mother with borderline slurring explained her condition and whatever treatment she had taken so far. She didn’t mention that she too was a doctor, she had other pressing issues on her mind plus she thought that her technical lingo would be que enough. It was not. Once she was done, the doctor asked us to go sit on a bed and vacate the chair my mother had occupied. My father and I looked around for a bed and on finding non vacant stated the obvious and were told to go share one because that is how it is. Take it or leave it. This was the end of my father’s already borderline patience and matching the doctor’s rude tone he reinforced that my mother is an auto-immune patient (and a doctor), how in their right mind did they expect her to share a bed with another patient?

Given the overall lack of hygiene, sadly it was not her condition but my mother’s title and my father’s tone that got the other side’s attention. A senior doctor materialized, examined her; the sole nurse was called around to give her the prescribed inject and oxygen (one mask for all which was cleaned when asked for). With all the wheelchairs occupied, we dragged my near drowsy mother and brought her back home.

It is not just Jinnah Hospital, enter any government run hospital, the sights and stories are the same. Private hospitals have their own set of issues. These past three years, the reason my mother has survived protected against all the usual issues that patients with her disease contract is due to the combination of all the prayers behind her and my father who is watching over her like a hawk, forcing the hospital staff wherever she goes for treatment to actually practice the hygiene principles that are written all over but like most other things conveniently ignored.        

Is it too much to ask that instead of running the cultural hub of the country, the gift to the people should be in the form of standardized basic facilities that are the actually responsibility of the State, health, education and human rights? But then may be it is indeed too much to ask those ingrained with a business mindset to prioritize actual governance over their personal profit. 

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