Picture Tareen Mukaram; complete with dark shades, impressive moustache and a backpack, as he cruises on a motorcycle past lush green paddy fields in Vietnam, through the scorching concrete jungle of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and past the shimmering ocean at Galle, here in Sri Lanka. Tareen, a Pakistani national record holder for the most distance covered on a motorcycle, has travelled 49297 km around the Eastern world and paid his first visit to Sri Lanka earlier this month.
 |
| Riding for them: Tareen at Children’s SOS Village in Piliyandala |
Apart from pushing the bar of his own record; making it harder for the younger generation to oust him; Tareen travels widely because he’s a passionate activist. An activist of multiple causes, he has helped in raising awareness about cancer, HIV AIDS, thalassemia, the difficulties faced by the blind and more. Any cause that he feels strongly about, he’s ready to pack a few belongings, get on a motorcycle and set out into the unknown, leaving his family and all that’s familiar to him behind.
“When you leave your home you face many, many challenges. First, you face different languages, different people, different climate and different food. After 23 days, today I’ve eaten Pakistani-like food. The right spice. When I get closer to my country, the taste of my country’s food comes near,” says Tareen thrilled to be returning home in two days, after a lengthy tour of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and finally Sri Lanka.
But more than missing Pakistan; his home, Tareen misses his family. “It took some time for my family to get used to it,” shares Tareen, “but now they understand why I do it and they support me.” He goes on to say that the most difficult challenge of his activism is to leave his children behind. “I have three kids. Two daughters and one son. I call them every day when I’m on tour.”
Tareen’s recent tour was to raise awareness about orphan children in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. In fact, most of Tareen’s tours since he became a motorbike tourist/activist, have been for SOS Children’s Villages. Having ridden his first tour for SOS Children’s Village in 2005, Tareen discovered for himself how the organisation works and how they run the villages.
Highly impressed by their efforts, Tareen has chosen to promote the organisation when he raises awareness about orphan children across the world.
There are over 450 SOS Children’s Villages located in 133 countries. Unlike most orphanages a single SOS Children’s Village spreads across vast acres of land and accommodate several modestly built houses, each of which are homes to a group of 7 children and their foster mother.
According to SOS Children Village officials, they don’t consider their children ‘orphans’. “The groups of children are sisters and brothers, and they have a mother, so they are not orphans,” says Earline Barthelot, Project Director- Sponsorship, IT and Communication.
Tareen has visited many SOS Children Villages worldwide over the past 6 years and says the care and attention given to the children under their guardianship is impeccable. The children are brought up in loving homes, provided with an education at school within the area and are moulded into capable adults.
“My message is for people to visit SOS children,” says Tareen who strongly believes that simply sparing a bit of your time to visit orphans, the old and the sick, is important.
“If you visit them one day a week, when it’s time for your next visit they will eagerly wait for you. You must visit an SOS village. It’s not only funds but a visit. You can even check their work, check their tasks, see what they are doing, and then if you feel you want to you may donate something as well. This is my message to people who don’t know what to do.”
Tareen spreads his message by speaking to the people he meets along his routes and by pushing his national record. Not all his tours are solo though. He belongs to a group of motorcycle tourists who come together from different parts of Pakistan for their shared passion of motorcycling adventures and promoting worthy causes.
Tareen and his motorcycling friends, sponsor their own tours, “It’s a big group so everyone collects funds by pursuing their hobbies or work, and we bear our own expenses,” he elaborates.
Explaining how he got hooked on motorcycle tours, he says he actually started out on a bicycle and has a golden medal in cycling.
Later, in 1993 he shifted to motorcycles and hasn’t turned back since. “I just started as a hobby to explore the hidden places in Pakistan. I love ancient and historical archaeological sites. My love for it increased; I had to do more and then I explored the whole of Pakistan and even other countries. But now I plan to go on tours only for charity. I’m in my forties, so I want to do something good in my life.
“My obsession and dream, is a world tour for orphan children. In Sri Lanka, I’ve discussed with the director and I have plans to tour Sri Lanka again. I’ve planned a 12 to 15 day visit with the group, during which I’ll visit all the SOS children villages here and explore Sri Lanka a bit more. I’m hoping to distribute a booklet, for awareness of the public—about 50,000 booklets.”
Back in Pakistan, Tareen is planning his next tour around the Middle East.
He says his plan is to cover 100,000 km on motorcycle, while on a world tour to raise awareness about orphans. Explaining why he feels strongly about orphans he says, “Orphans are a part of our society. We should attend to them and we should give them our time. They are not any other species- this is the message I want to share with the world.”
Tareen encourages anyone who wants to raise awareness about an issue in Sri Lanka to look him up, he’s ready to mount a motorbike and ride for social change.
|
E-mail
