What are you doing here?

(this is not me...don't have dreads, don't worry ;-P )

In my experince, answers to the above mentioned question (I study here for one semester) can arouse two kinds of reactions.

Either a “wow. How did you get to that idea?“ (which is mainly intensified when the person I talk to encounters that my family is not with me in Pakistan and that I am on my own. Then my parents are praised to be brave to let me go...).

Or a “...and what is your research topic?“

The first question is easy to answer. The second one is a bit more tricky and I just found out why and what makes it so difficult for some people to understand what the hell I'm doing here.

In Europe it is a common practice to go for a semester abroad while studying a bachelor- or a master-degree. It is seen as a treat of

being open towards new experiences and some people expect it in your cv. Mostly these half year or year-experiences are organized ventures and you have to apply for them (like the European Erasmus-Programmes or the programmes of DAAD in Germany).

In Pakistan something like this doesn't exist. Not only, that there aren't students normally coming from other countries to study here (an exception might be the International Islamic University in Islamabad), but also that it pakistani students don't go for a semester abroad. If they should go abroad, then it is because they'll study all of their university career in another country (most likely in the UK).

International students might come to Pakistan mainly for research and fieldwork and not for a semester (as it is not a Barcelona-erasmusparty semester that you will study here). The reaction of my fellow students when encountering me, was mainly, to ask me, if I was a new professor at their institute.

The second kind of reaction (what my research topis is) is

likely to be accompanied by the thought, that I must be specialised in something. „Pakistan is so diverse, how can you come here and just learn about „Pakistan“? You must be specialised in the Baluchi way of marriage or in the women in the Skardu region or in a special language? You just want to learn Urdu? Why not a smaller language or Pashto or Punjabi?“.

In these moments I have to explain my background and to tell them that I'm first of all here to get aquainted with all of these differences and that to an average european citizen, Pakistan in general is already a quite unusual specialisation.

So, what am I doing here? Every day life anthropology. Learning by living.