November 13, 2013 -- “I feel as if I could die tomorrow, but the days keep coming,” says Abdul Sattar Edhi, a humanitarian in Karachi, Pakistan. Edhi and his wife, Bilquis Bano Edhi, run a foundation that provides many charity services, including a shelter for runaway children and an ambulance service.

This short documentary is like a day in the life of some stray Karachi children and Asad Ghori, an ambulance driver who not only makes trips to hospitals but picks up children at the police station and drops them off at the shelter, and back at home, too. According to the film, Asad makes money from ambulance runs, but he makes no money from taking children to and from the shelter.

The camera follows the boys around in the shelter where they play, fight, and insult each other. Some kids are bullies, some try to bluff their way through life by acting tougher than they are and others seem very fragile. It is a rough and tumble life in the shelter, but it may be a lot tougher on the street, or at home.

Asad takes a child home, but he doesn't really want to go. He says he gets beat up at home. Asad says if his family beats him, he can go back to the shelter. When Asad delivers the boy to his home a relative of the boy tells Asad, “I'd have been happier if you'd brought his corpse.” Asad is appalled, but drops the boy off anyway.

Asad drops another boy off in a desolate, dangerous neighborhood. The family seems indifferent about having their son return home. They tell Asad they have left their children at the shelter for months on end. They claim the kids like it there, but the family is dirt poor, and likely it is a matter of being better able to feed the rest of the children if some of their kids are being fed at the shelter.

Asad drives his ambulance through crowded, narrow streets, through grinding poverty. Back at the ambulance office, the men joke about having a “candlelight dinner.” The electricity is out again, bad infrastructure.

This is a life of desperation for these children and families. This is third world grinding poverty up close and personal. It is a sobering experience. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2013 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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