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Home ยป Homes ยป Inside an apartment in Shouson Hill

Inside an apartment in Shouson Hill

24 February, 2020 by Tara Jenkins: photography by Helen Jenkins 6 Min Read

https://expatliving.hk/showcase-snoop-around-this-art-filled-apartment-in-shouson-hill-hong-kong/

SAMAR SHAHERYAR shows us around her gorgeous apartment in Shouson Hill and tells us more about her Baby Hero business.

A lucky escape

Thirteen-week pregnant Samar Shaheryar was sitting in a Tokyo restaurant when the earthquake that would devastate Japan in 2011 roared into being. โ€œThere were big chandeliers in the restaurant and they were swinging so violently, they were almost touching the ceiling,โ€ Samar remembers. โ€œItโ€™s the first time Iโ€™ve seen the Japanese get up and leave a venue. Luckily I was on the ground floor and also luckily, I got a taxi right away โ€“ most people were walkingโ€.

Shouson Hill apartment - bedroom
True blue bedroom walls make a bold backdrop for crisp white linen
Shouson Hill apartment - living room
We love the quirky Tequila Kola coffee table!
Shouson hill apartment - living
Traditional, richly patterned Pakistani carpets line the floor
Shouson Hill apartment - paintings
The walls are adorned with an eclectic variety of paintings and prints
Samar has displayed a number of vintage photographs under a glass top
Samar has a particular knack for mixing old and new
Shouson Hill apartment - nursery
Fabulous wall stickers liven up the children’s bedrooms
Muted purple walls are a fun touch in this corner
More fab’ wall stickers!
Allie Wieser and Samar Shaheryar
Samar and Allie’s range of baby basics includes infant onesies and toddler T-shirts
Baby Hero products are certified 100-percent organic cotton and fair trade

Luck is a word that peppers the conversation of this articulate ex-banker, now safely settled into an apartment in Shouson Hill with her two-year-old toddler and 16-week-old baby. In fact, her own good fortune has been the driving force behind everything sheโ€™s done in the past few years. โ€œI was born in Pakistan, although I was raised abroad. For almost everyone who comes from a developing country, it stays with you that youโ€™re very, very lucky to be in the position youโ€™re in,โ€ Samar explains. โ€œYou could so easily be one of the people who isnโ€™t able to leave, who cannot access education, healthcare, jobs or opportunities. I love my country but it has a lot of problems, and I think itโ€™s incumbent on people like me to help.โ€

The birth of an idea

So what could a high-yield bond trader, then working in New York, possibly do to help her countrymen half way across the world? Simple. Samar set about founding and running a charity focusing on improving girlsโ€™ education in Pakistan. And when she subsequently moved to Tokyo with her husband, she gave up her career in finance and devoted herself entirely to charity work around disaster relief. Fast-forward to a move to Hong Kong, and a chance play-date with Allie Wieser, an old friend and fellow fundraiser from Tokyo, resulted in the birth of an idea that has mushroomed into the girlsโ€™ primary focus today.

Allie Wieser and Samar Shaheryar

โ€œWeโ€™d both just had our first child, and were talking about what we wanted to do next,โ€ says Allie. โ€œSamar has a strong pull towards maternal infant health and coming from Pakistan was very aware of how much is needed in that region. I wanted to create a baby product that incorporated giving back, and we melded those two ideas togetherโ€.

Giving back

Enter Baby Hero, designed to support maternal and infant health in developing regions. Since launching in 2013, Samar and Allie have designed a range of baby basics โ€“ infant onesies and toddler tees โ€“ which are 100-percent organic cotton certified and fair trade. For every item purchased, Baby Hero funds 50 percent of a clean birth kit for a mother in rural Pakistan. (Including a sterile mat, a cord clamp, a sterile blade to cut the cord and a bar of soap.) โ€œBasically, these women are giving birth at home on dirt floors,โ€ explains Samar. โ€œWeโ€™re also funding medical supplies such as chlorhexidine โ€“ which prevents infection of the babyโ€™s umbilical stump. And sunflower emollient, which traps heat in the babyโ€™s skin and also creates a barrier so infection canโ€™t get in.โ€

Distribution of the kits is being administered by a pioneering Canadian paediatrician, Dr Sean Morris, who is intent on advancing development in maternal infant health in the area. Completely by chance, Samar and Allie stumbled across a video on Facebook posted by a Southside mom on behalf of Morris โ€“ her husbandโ€™s best friend โ€“ while he was looking for funding. โ€œIt was the hugest coincidence and we were so excited that within a few weeks of starting the business we found him,โ€ smiles Samar. โ€œIt was total providence!โ€

Providence

Morris has mobilised a network of 100,000 local community health workers in Pakistan to distribute and explain use of the kits to expectant mothers. Through this project, Samar and Allie hope to help Morris realise his aim of reducing infant mortality in rural Pakistan by 30 to 40 percent.

โ€œNinety-nine percent of mothers who die in the first month after birth,โ€ says Samar. โ€œAnd 98% of infants who die, are in the developing world. Mortality is completely an issue of where you are born, and it isnโ€™t so difficult to level the playing field. You need access to clean, sanitary conditions, medication and a skilled person helping you deliver the baby, and in rural areas most of these are not available. This is where the kits come in. Theyโ€™re portable and chea. Aand because weโ€™re using community health workers, the idea is that it eventually becomes sustainable.โ€

Embracing family

The burgeoning Baby Hero business isnโ€™t leaving much time for anything else at the moment, but somehow Samar is managing to devote time to mothering her two little girls, and creating a strong family unit with Irish husband Shane. โ€œFamily is very important in both the Irish and Pakistani. Iโ€™m the only child and heโ€™s the eldest, so we both feel a heightened sense of responsibility!โ€ she says. Family is much in evidence around the apartment, from the framed portraits in the hall to the painting of a Japanese kanji meaning โ€œembrace of familyโ€ in the master bedroom, to the quirky Tequila Kola coffee table in the living room, where Samar has displayed a number of vintage photographs under a glass top.

The old photos of her grandparentsโ€™ traditional Indian wedding, her parentsโ€™ honeymoon, her mother as a baby and her father at college, sit happily alongside Samarโ€™s own framed wedding photos on the bookshelves and chests โ€“ a traditional Indian affair held in upstate New York.

Old and new

Samar has a particular knack for mixing old and new, curating from several different cultures. So traditional Chinese cabinets rub shoulders with Moroccan objects dโ€™art, and elaborate Pakistani silver sits alongside paintings from Prague, creating an ethnic mix that gives the apartment a special originality. And while traditional, richly patterned Pakistani carpets line the floor, the dining table is from Tree and the chairs from Danish retailer BoConcept.

The couple loves art, and the walls are adorned with an eclectic variety of paintings and prints, many with interesting stories attached. A standout piece is by Pakistani artist Muhammad Atif Khan โ€“ a silhouetted portrait of a famous Mughal emperor which on closer inspection, turns out to be rendered by closely packed ants, painted onto several layers of glass.

Shouson HIll apartment - living room
We love the quirky Tequila Kola coffee table!

 

On the opposite wall, there is an arresting painting by artist Ali Azmet, of a hijra. โ€œItโ€™s a very progressive thing that exists in Pakistan and Bangladesh; a designated third sex,โ€ explains Samar. โ€œItโ€™s a way of a conservative community dealing with people who are different. Hijras are basically transvestites but could also be gay; they dress as women and you see them everywhere in Pakistan, usually begging for money. Thereโ€™s a lot of superstition around them. The painting is a little jarring as itโ€™s clearly an effeminate man, but I just love it, itโ€™s my favouriteโ€.

Most of Samarโ€™s art comes from one art gallery in Pakistan, a regular stop when she is home. โ€œSince the kids have come we go home less, but we try and go at least once a year.โ€

Future plans

Family visits aside, will she and Allie visit rural Pakistan in the near future, to see for themselves the impact Baby Hero is having on the community? โ€œOnce things are underway and the security situation is better, I hope next year we can go,โ€ says Samar. But before that thereโ€™s another collection of clothes to design, plans afoot to design a range of essential baby products, developing the nascent Baby Hero Foundation, and a suggestion they might expand their clean birth kits project into another needy country. Itโ€™s all going exactly to plan โ€“ with a healthy dose of luck, of course. โ€œWeโ€™ve been very lucky; a lot of wonderful things have fallen into our laps,โ€ smiles Samar. Long may it continue.

 

Samar and Allieโ€™s Recommendations

Dining

Sushi Shin Japanese Restaurant G/F, Shop 1-2, Wing Hing Court, 110 Tung Lo Wan Road, Causeway Bay | 2398 8000 | sushishin.com

Sushi Sase Japanese Restaurant UG/F,ย  Hilltop Plaza, 49 Hollywood Road, Central | 2815 0455, 2815 0477

Posto Pubblico G/F, 28 Elgin Street, Central | 2577 7160 | postopubblico.com

Spices @ The Repulse Bay 109 Repulse Bay Road, Repulse Bay | 2292 2821 | therepulsebay.com

Coco Thai (Beachfront Restaurant) Upper G/F, Beach Building, Island Road, Deep Water Bay | 2812 1826

Food Shopping

JustGreen 52 Graham Street, Central | 2801 5611 | justgreen.com.hk

Ali Baba Provision Store 14 Wood Road, Wanchai| 2574 9059

South Stream Seafoods 2/F, Units 202-204, Lai Sun Yuen Long Centre | 27 Wang Yi Street East, Yuen Long, New Terrorities | 2555 6200 | south-stream-seafoods.com

Shopping

BoConcept 73 Wyndham Street, Central | 2668 0027 | boconcept.com

Oriental Home 20/F Horizon Plaza, Ap Lei Chau

Tiny Footprints 10/F, 1 Duddell Street, Central | 2522 2466 | tinyfootprints.com

Tequila Kola 1/F, Horizon Plaza, Ap Lei Chau | 2877 3295 | tequilakola.com

Tree 28/F, Horizon Plaza, Ap Lei Chau | 2870 1582/83 | tree.com.hk

Online Retailers

notonthehighstreet.com

fashioncompassion.co.uk

ย To buy a Baby Hero product, or simply to donate to the Baby Hero Foundation, go to www.babyhe.ro.

Like this? See more in our Homes section

7 Must-have Asian classic pieces
Inside a Clearwater Bay village house

 

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PERSIMMON-VANILLA-CHAI-PORRIDGE.jpg
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