Where we were, what we saw

The greatest feature on the iOS platform is iPhoto.  What I love about it the most is the geo-location capability.  I have become a "red-pin" collector.  Here is the image from our trip.  The pins represent where we were and what we took pictures of.  We covered a fair representation of the Pakistani part of the district.  We will have to go back some day and map the rest!

Leaving Lahore

We got up and spent another hour or so packing before breakfast.  Today was going to be a traditional Pakistani breakfast, Once packing was done and breakfast was over we sat in the living room and went over pictures and discussed much of what we have seen and then meandered off to the airport to meet up with everyone else for fond farewells.  Once through Immigration and Customs, we had some time to take in the terminal and the shops.  Everyone found something they really liked... and that starts the journey back west and the next chapter of this blog. 

What I want to do now is reflect back on some of the pictures and experiences we have had and make some more generalized comments and relate some detailed thoughts….so, stay tuned!

Out of the Blindspot

After breakfast this morning, we went off to the Law College to do our Rotaract Workshop.  Bhaktiar and Faisel accompanied Tom, Julie and I for the morning (10-2 actually) with a group of about 40 rotaracters from around the city.  We led them on an abbreviated U journey with the intent that they would come out of the day with a series of initiatives that they had energy about enough to keep going.  The session went quite well, we generated a number of ideas as to what the problems were and then when we gathered around those ideas, they changed and morphed and matured into projects that seemed to be actually undertakable and be successful.  It was interesting how there was some good overlap and synergy between both other initiatives in the group and other initiatives currently being undertaken by rotary in the community.

Following the workshop we went back to Bhaktiar’s house, rested for a couple hours. We then dressed for dinner and had tea with the family, before going to the center for a trip retrospective with hosts and organizers, followed by the gala finish to our trip.  We got home after midnight, packed a little and flopped into bed.

The journey to Bali-wood

I don't care what anyone says, the only weather in Lahore is beautiful with traces of dust.  We had another wonderfully leisurely wonderful breakfast staring fresh orange juice and eggs and a most splendid firm ricotta, still warm from the pot.  This was a semi soft cheese and allowed us to slice it.  The milk, unpasturized, came from the bufalos down the lane at the local farm. After that, I don't remember anything else we had to eat - that was it...the culinary highlight for the trip.  Honestly, everything else was splendid, the curries and the naan and the other stuff, but the warm bufalo ricotta slices on toast was worth the trip. Moooooooo.

After breakfast we trundled over to shezhad's and I don't care what anyone says, the only weather in formed a posse to go out to Kujer and see Bali's village.  The program for the day was simple – go visit Bali’s village, see the library and some bufalos. Now to start with, my initial concept of Bali’s Village was perhaps some thing on the order of the little enclaves we saw out in the fields on the way to Islamabad – small, tight, little communities. First, the village was no where near at simple as this.  Second, neither was the agenda.
We started the itinerary with the drive out to Kujer, through Farooqabad, just to the north of Lahore.  The drive was about an hour and though became more rural, there was never a stretch that was not quite heavily populated. We passed a rice processing plant and huge overloaded wagons that must have been rice being towed by little tractors.  Then we went through an industrial area with oil tank farms and power plants puffing yellow smoke and polyester spinners, and all kinds of other places as well.  Outside the tank farms were huge concentrations of tanker trucks, all seemingly waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
And, through all of this, they were replacing the main road…by hand.  The road seemed to be dug up, a dusty dirt strip upon which tractors were dumping piles of large stone that people were smoothing by had and then other wagons were dumping sand and cement (dry – this is what it looked like) that was then raked smooth and then steamrolled and then, ast some future point, I assumed, tarmac would be laid.  So, all through this dusty undertaking, oil trucks were parked on both sides and traffic was trying to move between and around.  There was no semblance of trying to stay in lanes or even respecting sides on the road – it was like this big free for all with everyone moving where they wanted to.
We finally made it to our first destination, which was a boys school in Farooq.  We walked through the gates and into a gauntlet of rose petals! We were then accorded to a little ceremony where we awarded several of the boys who were able to answer some polio fact questions with books, caps, pencils, and other rotary stuff.  Julie gave a little speech and we had lots of pictures taken (by Bali, but not with!).
We were then swirled away and taken back the way we came, through a bunch of alleys, to a vocational training center where the rotary had set up a place to teach girls how to sew and had donated a number of hand crank machines that would be able to handle their needs.  We met the girls and saw the operation and took pictures and all, and then sprinted off for a visit to the village.

After driving across the fields we drove into the village with our 4 car entourage and parked in a little compound on the edge of town.  Most of the “streets” were dirt alleyways too narrow for a vehicle. We were festooned with rose necklaces and Bali made turbans for the men (these were a sign of respect for the wisdom the wearers were supposed to poses…but they did gave one to me, so perhaps their reasoning was a little suspect).  We then went off to the girls school and again were warmly welcomed.  We again made a little speech (Shazhad did)  and we handed out composition books to all of the kids.  Then we took pictures and walked around to the boys school.  It shared a wall with the girls, however, to get there we had to walk around through a lot that was growing fodder, past some cows (and a dead dog), and then back into the boys school.  They were doing exams in some of the classes, so we had a smaller presentation and gave out more composition books and took more pictures.
From here, we went through the village and over to the community center.  This was Bali’s ancestral home, but they had turned it into a center with a lending library and a computer laband a reading room.  It was quite spectacular, given where it was.  They also kept the records of the Bufalo Project here.  We saw the library, and the records of check in and outs (mostly Urdu books and frankly not all that many for a village of 6000, but remembering what the literacy rate was here, it was pretty phenomenal.  They explained that there were several folks in the village who had go on to achieve masters and a bunch who had don bachelors and many who had at least 10^th grade.  Over all, it was quite heart warming (btw, the last English book that was checked out was a Daniel Steele).  The computer lab was nice, not state of the art, but certainly better than the one at Teach a Child (I found this interesting).  The machines were off as the power was off (they had longer outages out here than in the city), but they had USB/Cellular internet connections (when they ran). 
All this was followed by a wonderful lunch (way too much food), of fruit and rice and curries and dal and and and and it was great.  And a wonderful rice pudding for desert.  After the meal, it was almost 2 and so we made to leave.  We walked down the alley ways past our new friends.  School let out at 12:30 and so the kids were all around now and many of them lined the alleys as we went by.  As we turned the last corner on the way back to the cars, from what seemed to be nowhere, a marking band formed.  It was spectacular.They marched us back to the cars, gathering more and more kids as we went, until we got back to the compound and it was so full of people no one could do anything…so Bali started to dance. 

After a bit, Shezhad and Bali had to quiet the band and the only way they could chase the kids away was to send the marching band out.  The walked way some what dejectedly and we got into our cars and began to drive out of the village.  It was not too long before we could see the band walking along up ahead.  They turned a corner to the right and we almost caught up to where they turned when they all came bolting back out around the building back towards us and across the street down another alley.  Half a moment later half a dozen bufalos came running behind them, back up the road and passed us at a full trot. 
2 lessons: You never know when a marching band is going to form around you, and bufalos trump bands. 









We drove out of the village, back the way we came and over through Lahore to the fort, We then spent a couple hours walking around both the Fort/Palace, and the Mosque.  We were there during prayers, so we got to listen to the call from the pavilion.  It has incredible acoustics!
From the mosque, we went and had a light tea and then went over to the Gymkhana Club for Anthony’s birthday party and got to meet the leaders in the Christian community (including the Bishop of Lahore).  Then it was time to return to our hosts (11pm at least) and the day was done.

Day #9 – back to FAST

Dawn broke to a very pleasant surprise.  There was power.  The nominal time for the DHA to have no power is 6-7 in the morning.  This morning, hey! When you pressed the lightswitch, you got light!  Nice way to start.

We started the day with a traditional Pakistani breakfast of eggs and French toast.  The toast was pre-sweetened – the egg batter having some sugar in it – so no syrup was used.  There were two kinds of toast though – regular and spicy.  The spicy was pretty neat – but sweet and heat in the same bite!  After a cup or two of tea, we packed up and Bakhtiar took us over to Shezhad’s and we split up.  Julie to go do hospital visits with the rest of the team and Tom and I to return to the National University for another agile day.  Shezhad accompanied us for the day and so it was quite nice.

We did pretty much the same program as last week with a couple of changes – Tom updated the slide deck so there was less swapping and switching between computers, and we tightened up our presentation approach.  Shezhad also tightened up the Rotary pitch based upon the response from the crowd last week. We again had about 150 people, more students than professionals this time, but still some.  Again, the only volunteer to sing the invocation was a young lady, so much for that preconceived notion of inequality.  I still find the female students more reserved than their male counterparts, but that is true in many US universities as well. About 6 slides in the power went off and the switch over period was non-trivial in terms of time.  After a moment or so, I figured I needed to do something, so since the laptops were on battery and were still vivid, I just kept presenting and promised to show them the slides later on.  I did refrain from wandering around the stage, just so I would not end up falling off J (that would be bad form).  After about 5 minutes, the auxiliary lights came on, but the AV guy had inadvertently taken the remote for the projector with him and we had no way to restart that.  So I continued and promised to catch them up on the slides later.  Eventually the remote came back in and we got the visuals back up, but no one missed a blink.  The power outages are so much ingrained in the society at this point that except when there is an occasional glitch in the switch over , no one notices them.

We had a good 3-3 ½ hours and then did lunch (pizza hut).  The chancellor came swirling in towards the end and we sat for another 10 minutes talking about the University, who he was, his team, his background, and all that.  He seemed much more positive and engaged this week (maybe cause his exams were over).  We presented a stack of agile books to the University and met the librarian (who wore a burkah, though not a black one).  There was a moment of concern as to what the americans would say, and so they explained her credentials to us before introducing her.  I find it funny how sensitive they all are here as to what we think of their dress.  I have been lent a Punjab dress outfit and when I wear it here, apparently I pass as a local.  There is a sect of lighter skinned folks form farther north and apparently until I open my mouth I am transparent to them.  There is indeed a certain amount of “the dress makes the man” in all of this, but where does it leave being the identification of success level of the individual and start being socio-economic prejudice?

After presenting the books, we went upstairs and had the advanced seminar.  There was a larger crowd this week, but we had changed this program slightly as well so that we relied less on the slides and more of a free flow of ideas.  Instead of the coffee game, we estimated how long the tea break would be (it was put into the 21min bucket and actually too 30, so probably should have been put in the 34min bucket, but then that would have probably stretched too).  We reduced the amount of discussion before the game and played all three iterations and it was great.  At the conclusion of it all, we spent some time answering questions and making contacts and receiving more wonderful gifts and taking pictures.  Then we went off to Max’s for dinner and discussion.

I never did hear how the hospital visits went, but I heard they got to play with eyeballs (not really).

Monday is school day!

Back in Lahore.

We started the day with breakfast at Bhatiar's house and then we met up with the rest of the team at the Rising Sun academy. On the way we saw a little chicken butcher, so we stopped in...

Rising Sun is a school for the special needs children in and around the campus. They have almost 300 enrolled and they handle just about every need and every level of need. The interesting part of the there work is the very high teacher to student ratio. One can clearly believe it is because labor is cheap over here, but at the same time, one can also believe that it is because it is effective. They have made great strides with their work and the children seem to become quite adept. Those able to excel, but with physical disabilities are challenged to the greatest extent. Those who are not are taught both vocations and basic skills by which they can look after themselves. Again, they do quite a bit with out very much. They have a strong autism program, again very manual, but quite effective. I talked to them about linking with some of the specialist schools from the states and maybe doing exchanges of approach, if not people.

The second school we went to was the Aabroo school (aabroo.org). They have 8 buildings across the city and work with 2500 students. They work with those children who can not afford anything else and who would not be going to school at all. They have been operating for 10 years now and though started in the headmistress' house, is now fully enclaved in purpose built buildings. When we visited, the power was off, but school was still operating as if nothing was different. They have battery backups that run a couple lights (and the tea boiler), and windows to keep things light. This building was running two shifts of school - and was able to thus deal with a great number of students.

The most fascinating part was that the schools, all within the slums, do outreach to the nomads who set up tents on the empty lots. If the children won't come into the school, which they often won't, the school sends vans with teachers out to the tent communities for half a day or so. They also have started funding the school by collecting "dry" trash from people's houses (in bags) and bringing it to a building near the school to separate for recycling. They are funding 30% of their budget with this.

Not only do they provide education, but uniforms, books, and meals. It is the full spectrum, because their philosophy is that the second 3 pieces are necessary for the first to happen properly.

From Aabroo we went to another school (the Rukhsana Association) that had also been started in someone's house. This one was in the city, rather than the slum, but was still for disadvantaged kids with not enough money to even cover uniforms, and so they were given to the kids as well. We brought notebooks and pencils and got a great welcom from these kids. At Aabroo, they conducted most of the lessons in Urdu. At KB, most were conducted in English. I was astounded to see that when you looked at the kids, all lined up, they could be from any school in the US (OK, maybe not in NH, but at least in norther california). RA is now housed in 3 adjoining houses and treats 300.

After we were done with the RA visit, we went over to Ali's Dream Lounge for lunch and a smoke. The food was great and the company wonderful, but it really was too smokey for me. We lingered at the lounge until 5 and then went over to a healthClub for a tour and a movie. We saw Bol, which was nominated for an oscar (but did not win) last year and was a local product. It talked to but fundamentalism in pakistan and how honor killing is an accepted practice. It was a good movie, long, and controversial, but good. They even gave us popcorn. We had dinner in the restaurant there at the club and tried to sneak out as early as possible so I could prepare for tomorrow's sessions at NU/FAST.

Day #6 - Lahore Bound and the Defense Housing Authority

We had breakfast early at Pervez’s farm house and hit the road by 8:30.  We would have gotten going earlier, but we forgot Tom’s cupcakes (again) and had to send a runner back for them.  They were delivered to us enroute by a motorbike courier.  We wove our way through Sunday traffic in Islamabad, but though is is a work day for some, traffic was very light.  Pervez said this was the way it was in the good old days (10 years ago) during the week, but no more.

There was lots to see on the way out of town and we took many snaps. 

As we entered the salt range, we saw (finally) a major accident – they had brought a crane up to pull a car back up out of the ditch.  It apparently slide/ran off the road on the mountain side and into a drainage channel that was at least 6 feet deep.  Only the trunk was visible from the road.  The second car of folks (Tom and the Brooks) said the car was already on a flat bed trailer when they came by, so the extraction must not have been too onerous.  We went up the range and back down the other side – the rock striations are pretty fantastic. 

We pulled off again at Bhera and hung out at the little rest area off the highway for a bit, waiting for the entourage from Lahore - our own little slice of heaven.  A wedding came through and many busses.  When every bus pulled in and sounded their horn, droves of salespeople swarmed the bus with trays of goods, from oranges to popcorn to french fries to sodas and coconut.  Didn’t seem to be many takers, but then it was tough to follow the commerce.  Finally, Shezhad and his posse pulled in.  Tom, Julie and I were to ride with Ali from I2C (the sponsor of the Agile workshop at the university) so he could ask questions about Story Points and Release Planning and oh so much more.  In return, we got treated with the Pakistani view on the War on Terror.  I think we ended up with the better side of the bargain. 

Once back to town, we were dropped of at our new hosts – Bhatiar and family over in the DHA.  Since it was Sunday and everyone was off, there were cricket games going on everywhere.  It was quite ingenious to see all the different things that folks were using for wickets.  We had a later lunch with our Host family an checked our emails and then a short rest.  We were due to the Spring Carnival in Eden Avenue for the evening and so trundled off to that obligation. 

We spent a little time at the rotary Polio Eradication booth and then had dinner with Satwat’s club at Javel’s house to talk about the potential for an Eden Avenue library and then followed it up with a brief stop at the musical evening at the carnival.  We all got introduced again with many pictures and Julie sang to the community and then danced a traditional Pakistani line dance with about 50 kids.  What a night.