A visit to the Maihaugen Museum can lead to many things. For Pakistani Yawar Hussain Bokhari it was the start of a flourishing business and a big school in Pakistan.

Bokhari was born in the city of Faisalabad in 1937. At 25 he left Pakistan to study economics in London. There he met Brit from Lillehammer and the family moved here in 1980.

The start of life in Norway was difficult for Yawar Bokhari. He tried importing and selling oriental rugs without the results that he hoped for. Then seeing a rug made of rags at Maihaugen turned everything around. It struck him that the traditional Norwegian style of rug making could be produced cheaply in Pakistan with materials left over from the textile industry there. In 1989 he went back to his homeland with a sample rug under his arm. He rented a location, found four weavers and began to experiment.

A couple of months later Yawar returned to Norway with his own rugs in his luggage. They sold so well that he could begin his own factory in Sultanabad. Briefly put, the rug project became a big success. Today the factory employs over 400 workers. Annually 30 shipping containers (each with 19,842 pounds or almost 10 tons) of rugs are sent to Norway.

With Yawar Bokhari the wish grew to bring more to the local community where the rugs were produced. His own children Laila and Amar were in the process of getting higher educations. In Pakistan his workers couldn’t afford to send their young children to school. The Bokhari family agreed to build a school in Pakistan.

In October 1996 a school building next to the factory stood ready. On November 1st the Laila and Amar Model School opened with a principal, two teachers and 142 students who had free tuition. “That day I felt like the richest man in the world,” said Yawar Bokhari. Since then, the school has developed and grown. Today it provides access to education for 650 students and jobs for 25 teachers.