Aug 29

Walking past the local lumber yard and small downtown area, Ashiq and Mushtaq guided me to the town's bicycle shop. together wed assembled my mountain bike ...id had it shipped from LA, so 'madam' didn't have to walk to work. too much effort for a 52 year old trekker after all. the local cycle wala pumped back the deflated tires. The villagers watched on, surprised that this madam was planning on biking this very fancy contraption, meant only for hard core men from foreign lands or for visitors at the shigar fort, but 'madam' garden designer??? hmmm????

3 pm......... later we visited Wazir Fida Ali,

the head of the Shigar town management committee. Another pleasant intelligent man. We discussed modalities, got some straight forward information, regarding the ground rules of what is possible and what is not. i told him what i was here to do, and how i would go about it. There were no surprises except he said, that a portion of the donated garden area was sort of off bounds for a garden.

The donor wanted the actual school building to be built on that portion, a play ground or simply garden was not what he had donated land for...what education do you get from playing out doors, and what sadaqa jariyah does God bestow on creating school yards??? I didn't go into the philosophy of such tunnel vision ideas with the chief, but reassured him id keep that in mind as i designed.. so that our trees don't get pulled out years from now, for a structure to be built, or that the children don't waste time playing basket ball or badminton right where they should really be cramming science and math and English and Urdu lessons....no , not that. ill surely keep Gods continuous blessings coming through. Some day said donor and i will discuss 'sadaqa jariyah at length..that would have to wait till all the trees and all the shrubs and all the grass and every inch of play yard is safely in place.