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.