Buffalo Dung

As open-minded as I think I am, I really don't think I'd be able to touch poo with my bare hands. I mean, I pick up dog crap all the time, but I least have a layer of plastic protecting me! It's really nice though, to see that not every culture is being swept up in the tide of becoming more modernized.

But I guess I'm grateful I don't have to play with dung everyday.

As the only female on this shoot (and one that stuck out like a sore thumb during the entire trip to Pakistan), I was singled out on our visit to this small community. A group of women were trying to get me to come into their small hut, but in the midst of the frenzy that was my two male colleagues making dung patties, I opted to stay outside with Adam and Mitch. Now, looking back, I wish I hadn't turned down the invitation, because it was one of the few opportunities I'd gotten to interact with young women in such a male-dominated country.

This piece seems to strike Western viewers because they're seeing something unusual for them. But the people in the farm compound that we visited in the Punjab also seemed to get a laugh out of our visit--they weren't used to seeing anyone so incompetent as to actually be unable to make a dung patty. It's on my list of things that I'd one day like to be able to master, but I'm not practicing at home... And as Adam pointed out above, if you only get your news from the news, which tends to be drawn to calamity, you're in danger of thinking of the world and its people as more hostile than they actually are...

This is a little something we happened upon during our big Pakistan trip. We were returning from a visit to a seminary, where an imam argued the faults of prosecuting a war on terror. Back on the road, Mitch pointed out the window when he saw these cows/buffalo/buffalo cows (I'm still not sure) and we got out to see what was going on. This was a nice reprieve from sitting in a cramped car, chugging along on bumpy roads.

After some fun with dung, one takeaway: a piece of evidence showing that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone here is consumed with religious fervor and dreaming of destroying the US.