that old pango problem

[john q public <public pitchblende org>]

Trust me folks Ive tried googling and archive searching till I can't 
take any more.
I even checked a bug tracker that claimed it was "RESOLVED" thats fine 
but there
was no patch and no suggestions, not very helpful in the end so could 
someone please
either find me a cheap copy of XP on E-bay or help with this familiar thing:

lots of configure stuff

--SNIP--
checking X11/extensions/XShm.h... yes
checking Pango flags... -I/usr/local/include/pango-1.0 
-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/X11R6/include/freetype2 -I/usr/X11R6/include 
-I/usr/local/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/local/lib/glib-2.0/include   
-L/usr/local/lib -lpangoxft-1.0 -lpangox-1.0 -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 
-lgmodule-2.0 -ldl -lglib-2.0 
configure: error:
*** Can't link to Pango. Pango is required to build
*** GTK+. For more information see http://www.pango.org
-----END---

this is after:

./configure --prefix=/usr --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include 
--x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib --enable-slow-dependency-tracking 
--with-gnu-ld -with-x --with-cairo

which gets:
configuration:
       backends: FreeType X Xft

make
make install

all seems fine but.....
firstly if I go to /usr/pango
Im greeted with ../1.4.0 this is after doing my best to install 1.8.1

Ive managed to "trick" a very old version of GTK2 to compile by setting 
the test
for pango to TRUE but that doesn't seem quite proper and besides 
programs will
then promply complain about my use of a backdated version of GTK2.

I'm sure youv'e seen this before so try to be kind trust me Ive been 
very careful to avoid becoming flamebait but Im at my wits end with 
this. (I realize that might not be saying much but there you have it)

extra stuff:
lfs system (version 3.3)
kernel 2.4.29
gcc 2.95.3

Any help would be greatly appreciated