Page 289 - James Caan - The Real Deal

29 · Getting to Know Pakistan

Seema was very impressive: I’d guess she had a law degree from
Cambridge or Oxford, and it was easy to see why she had been so
successful. She told me the story of how she had got involved with
education. The village where one of her factories was situated had
flooded, and several of the buildings were washed away. When she
visited a couple of weeks after the flood she saw all these children
running around and realised that if a school wasn’t built quickly
they would never get an education, and ultimately that would
reduce the capabilities of her workforce in the years to come. She
knew the government would take years, if not decades, to get
round to rebuilding the school so she decided to build one herself.
The school originally catered for 1000 children, but now has an
intake of 3000. It put what I was trying to do into perspective.
After a couple of years, someone from a neighbouring village
had asked if she could build them a school, too, and within a few
years she had built several more. The results in her schools were
so good that she was then asked to take over the running of state
schools; by the time I met her, she was responsible for the
management of 180 schools via a charity she had set up called
CARE. I knew I had come to the right person for help.
‘Would you like to see one of the schools with me? I’m going
out on a visit tomorrow.’
‘I’d love to, but my flight’s tomorrow.’ Then I thought again.
‘Screw it; I’d love to see your school. I’ll cancel my flight.’
‘You know what? I’ll clear my day, too, and I’ll take you to
several schools.’
I liked Seema a lot. We had very similar outlooks and I felt I
could learn a lot from her. In the morning she drove me round to
several of her schools, and there were two things that really
surprised me. Firstly, I was absolutely staggered that she knew the
name of every teacher we met. She employs 1500 teachers directly
and another 1500 for the government, and she genuinely knew the
name of each of them. No wonder they worked so well when they

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