A merry if slightly surreal Christmas

I showed my blog to two other VSOs over Christmas, and they were rather surprised at how much I write. So clarity and precision are going to be my watchwords, but starting from next week, as rather a lot has happened what with Eid and Christmas and the awful events of the last few days. Plus I can’t really go outside at the moment so what else have I got to do but write?! (well, and clean the house but we all know how exciting that is.)

So, I’ll start with after I left off last time. Exciting / scary occurrence number 1: there was an earthquake. I was woken up in the middle of the night and my bed was shaking, and there was a weird noise. I can’t remember now exactly what the noise was like as I was half asleep. So I’ve now decided to do something about the 3 stiff doors between me and the outside world. But people didn’t mention it in the office the next day. Exciting occurrence number 2: Corry and I went in to the bazaar in Mansehra by ourselves! Actually it wasn’t scary at all – people were very friendly, and I did some haggling in Urdu. I think I was still ripped off, but not completely ripped off as I bought the price down by at least 100R (about 1 pound).

Exciting occurrence number 3: Eid! This is the festival that celebrates Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his son, and it is one of the biggest festivals in the Muslim calendar. Many families sacrifice an animal and distribute the meat to the poor to commemorate this. We were invited to celebrate this with two families. I felt a little bit ill when I woke up in the morning, and when I had a shower I heard an odd noise. I didn’t feel any better when Corry told me that the family below had just killed a cow just behind the house, and she had witnessed the whole thing. Another family were obviously just about to do the same, and Corry very kindly invited me to watch from her balcony, but I firmly refused and made good my escape into my room. I was just texting the Director to make my excuses to say I wouldn’t be able to come to witness their sacrifice when his children came round, so I was persuaded. But I hid in their house with most of his family when the goat was sacrificed, and then spent a fun morning with the kids. For lunch we were invited to another MIED staff member’s house, who didn’t live in the township. We had to drive and then walk past remains of various animals. But I felt very privileged to be able to celebrate this festival with his family – it was a very large and friendly family they had many beautiful children. People are so hospitable – they wanted us to stay the night. But in the evening we were invited round to the director’s for dinner again. He has decided against eating chicken, so we had yak meat instead. Definitely another first. I think they ate the goat for lunch. All in all it was a very interesting day, and I learnt a lot more about Eid. The importance isn’t in the sacrifice of the animals, but in the symbolic willingness to sacrifice things that you want for what is truly important.

The day after Eid we travelled down to Lahore for Christmas. It was about an eight hour bus journey. Thank goodness the motorways are good and I wasn’t sick, but it was still quite painful. I’m not as young as I once was and my poor legs suffered. But it was great getting into Lahore. The first thing I noticed was that many women didn’t have their heads covered. And Lahore has a completely different lifestyle to Mansehra – the city comes alive at night (though actually it is alive during the day as well) and most people don’t go to bed til the small hours. This is in stark contrast to Mansehra where there is very little to do in the evenings. And it was warm!

The first day we were in Lahore most things were closed due to Eid. But a colleague of Mary’s (the volunteer we stayed with in Lahore) drove us round, so we saw the Badshahi mosque from the outside and Kim’s gun. But what was very exciting was that I bought a violin! It was quite a random experience. We drove into what was apparently the red light district of Lahore and in the midst of all the people, animals, mud, cats cradle of electricity wires and traffic there were some shops full of musical instruments - mainly guitars, drums and sitars. But one guy had this violin on which I started playing Christmas carols. After a bit of haggling (not done by me I have to say) I was able to buy it and a fab case for about 60 pounds – bargain! It is not the best violin (!) but it makes quite a nice sound, so I am happy. Corry is less so, I think, but she says that she doesn’t really mind (I hope).

Anyway, the next day I was ill. I have to admit that the thought did cross my mind that I had bird flu, as I had a temperature, but I obviously didn’t. It was a bit of a pain though as I was ill for the next 2 days and missed out on visiting the Badshahi mosque and other things. But I was better on Christmas day, which was definitely an unusual experience. First, I didn’t have chocolate during the whole day (but we did have singing fairy lights, so we were able to sing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ along with the fairy lights). Second, I had a tour of a butter factory. We were invited to lunch with a colleague of Mary’s. The family live above their butter factory, so we had a tour before lunch. Lunch was a bit embarrassing because the mother had obviously gone to a lot of effort to prepare the meal for us, but I couldn’t eat anything more than a bit of rice. They were so friendly, and didn’t want us to leave….. and didn’t want us to leave…. but I was feeling very tired after being ill, and we explained that to them so we thought they were taking us home. But they actually took us to another uncle’s house, who was a doctor – sooo embarrassing!! We tried to make a quick exit explaining that I was just tired, not ill. After a rest we went for a meal to a restaurant just outside the Badshahi mosque. We had dinner on the top floor outside looking at the beautifully lit up mosque. It was amazing, if a bit of a surreal Christmas!

We decided to stay a day longer in Lahore as I hadn’t been well, so we went shopping the next day. I went kinda crazy in the bookshop and supermarket (there were croissants and lindt chocolate!) so the purse returned home a bit lighter.

The next day we said a fond farewell to Mary and Lahore and started the long journey back. The journey back to Abbottabad was fine, but when we got there the taxi driver met us looking really upset, and told us that Bhutto had been in killed in Rawalpindi 15 minutes previously. We went into their office to look at the website, but then I got a text from VSO saying to stay at home till further notice. I have to say I was a little scared at this time given that we were still half an hour from home and had just come through Pindi. But the taxi driver got us home fine, and we were sent round some dinner by the director’s family. I’ve spent the last two days in the house, looking at the news on the internet. It is all too depressing.

Well, my friends, I think that just about concludes my latest epistle about Eid, Christmas, and the current situation. I hope that you all had lovely Christmas’s with loads of chocolate and turkey and Christmas pudding, and the New Year will bring you peace and joy.