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by Mary Cashman
Westside School
River Falls
I recently returned from a month long journey into the mountain villages of Northern Pakistan. While there, I had the opportunity to live and teach in some of the most remote and rugged areas in the world. In seven different villages I taught the children, and at times the elders, basic American words and greetings. In these same villages, the people taught me about community, and what it is to be committed to educating, and ultimately sustaining, one's own people and way of life.
I came to teach, yet the villagers of Korphe were about to show me a more powerful lesson. In the midst of these treacherous conditions is where I saw, and felt, what community truly means, and the personal sacrifices, at times, that it demands. |
The Northern villages of Pakistan offer up a harsh and unforgiving way of life. In the Braldu Valley, high atop a Himalayan ridge in the village of Korphe, I sat with a mother whose infant child was slowly dying in her arms. Under the age of one, the infant mortality rate is 40%. If your child is lucky enough to survive the first year, there is still a 20% chance of death until this child reaches the age of 5. It is not something any parent, wherever they live, gets used to, ever. Medical care, by our western standards, is almost nonexistent. Deafness is extremely common due to untreated childhood ear infections. Broken bones go untended, burns are left untreated and diseases due to malnourishment are all common parts of village life.
I will never forget the young child who walked into a villager's home I was visiting, chewing on a discarded cigarette butt. There was something odd about this child, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. I guessed the child to be the size of a 6 month old baby, yet this same child was walking and talking. I stared at his deep set eyes, his cheeks engraved with mud and dirt, head shaved to be rid of lice, his belly swollen from hunger. I asked how old this child was and the answer still stuns me. This was a 4 year old - a typical 4 year old.
Yet amidst this severity and desolation, there was an incredible brilliance surrounding these mountain people. It was as if they were being nourished from some deep, inner source of peace and quiet acceptance. They had learned somehow to be at home within themselves. They seemed to not only accept their destiny, but embrace it; the harshness alongside the beauty. This was a community of people comfortable with their place in the world.
Their hospitality to me, a complete stranger, was overwhelming and sometimes, even uncomfortable. While most villagers had very little in the way of material things, I was consistently offered the best of what they had. At mealtimes, I was always made to eat first, so that I would get as much food as I wanted. The family would then eat whatever was left. I was given the best room in their small, two room homes. The family, which usually consisted of 12-16 members including extended family, would sleep outside or on the rooftop. Strangers continually welcomed me into their homes, offering not only black tea and biscuits, but offering to share themselves, their families and their lives.
The people of the mountain also taught me about community, and what it is to be a member of one. There are no nursing homes or day care centers. Everyone takes care of each other. Everyone has a job to do, a purpose that is important to the smooth functioning of the village. Older people do many of the household chores so the younger ones can do the more physical work of gathering firewood and working the wheat fields. Older children are responsible for younger ones. Young men of the villages work alongside the older ones, passing on not only the necessary skills of a trade, but the wisdom the elders have learned in their lifetime.
One of the most powerful events I was lucky enough to witness was the building of the village school in Korphe. It was a living demonstration of the power and strength of community; of what individuals can build when they join together in a common purpose. |
Mentorship and role modeling is an everyday part of life. The person who maintains and guards the water channel brings along several village children who learn this work through watching him do his job. Listening to his stories while he redirects the mountain stream with his crude shovel, the children also learn valuable pieces of their heritage. Everyone is respected for their role in the community, whether they are young, old or somewhere in the middle.
In one village, the members built a home for a retarded couple and their three children. The home is at the center of the village, where they are an integral part of the community, respected for the gifts they can bring to the whole.
One of the most powerful events I was lucky enough to witness was the building of the village school in Korphe. It was a living demonstration of the power and strength of community; of what individuals can build when they join together in a common purpose.
The land for the school, a beautiful mountaintop plateau at the entrance to the village, was donated by the school teacher. The value of this land was worth approximately 15 years of his salary. It also happened to be the very best land in the village, a prime piece of real estate. Its location announces to the villagers and any visitors the value that these villagers place on their children and education.
While most of the materials needed for the school were funded from an outside source, most of the labor necessary to build the school came from within the village, all voluntarily. Community members of all ages spent weeks hauling stone from the mountainside to the site. Once there, under the intense rays of the Karakoram mountain sun, men, together with their sons, hammered and chiseled the stone into usable pieces for the school foundation. At recess time, the school children raced to the building site where they begged to help in some way. The jobs they were given were received like a precious new toy. With joyful enthusiasm and a deep sense of pride, they seriously accepted their assigned task. They had been allowed to contribute, most directly, to the building of their own future. There were no bulldozers nor jackhammers; only simple tools and dedicated hearts and hands.
At recess time, the school children raced to the building site where they begged to help in some way. The jobs they were given were received like a precious new toy. With joyful enthusiasm and a deep sense of pride, they seriously accepted their assigned task. |
Roaming around the building site were old men, each carrying a babe in arms while several young ones toddled behind. The men were talking and laughing with each other as they cared for these young ones. This was a necessary job as the women and young girls in the village now had to do their own work as well as the usual work of the men who were now building the school. The women joined together to distribute these new tasks most efficiently; a few women, accompanied by several young girls, would go off to do the field work for 3-4 families. Another group might volunteer to gather the firewood for those same families. Older women who weren't as able to do the field work were gathering and preparing food for those that were working far away. No job seemed to be more valued than another; each person had an important role to play if the larger goal of the village was to be achieved.
These people know adversity. They live and breathe uncertainty, and at the same time, hopefulness. They have to when they live in the world's newest mountains which are still rising every year; where the annual rainfall is less than 120 mm./year, many years receiving less than 20 mm., in total. As it happened so often while I was there, in the continuing battle between mountains and sky, the sky was flexing its muscles.
It had been raining continually for 2 weeks. Add to this an unusually larger than normal snowfall, and this region was more than wet. The ground had become like a sponge that was left in a water bucket too long. When the mountainside could absorb no more, the walls of rock and snow just let go, thundering down to the villages below, smothering everything in its way. On the road to Korphe, after our jeep could go no further due to washed out roads, I walked 20 miles through mud slides, torrential mountain streams and continuous avalanches. I came to teach, yet the villagers of Korphe were about to show me a more powerful lesson. In the midst of these treacherous conditions is where I saw, and felt, what community truly means, and the personal sacrifices, at times, that it demands.
My lesson began on my way to the mountaintop village of Korphe to teach English and witness firsthand the building of their new, village school. What was to be an 8 hour jeep ride on a roughed out, mountain road turned into an incredible 2 day slog, traveling twelve hours each day on foot. The continuous rainfall had swept the crudely built road down the mountainside. To reach the village I would have to face some tremendous physical challenges: tumultuous, raging water to be crossed; mud that seemed more like quicksand to be waded through and falling rock which needed to be dodged.
Early morning as I trudged through the village of Apoligan, I stopped to check on the wooden beams, planks and frames being stored there for the village school. They were all there, just waiting at the bottom of the mountain to carried by jeep to the village. I paused to look at my reflection in a mountain stream. I was as filthy as the dirt path I walked on. My legs were on fire, my feet blistered and my skin leathery and tight from exposure.
As I reached the village I saw the last rock of the school foundation being hand chiseled and laid into place. The people were excitingly awaiting the arrival of the materials that would support the rooftop and frame the doors and windows. The problem, however, was the rain, and the damages it had caused. There literally was no more road for the jeep to haul the planks. The hard built road had dissolved under the constant attack of water and rock pummeling down the mountain.
Because of the damage this weather had caused, it would have been understandable had the villagers just sighed and quit. After all, it was a 20 mile journey, one way, up a mountain that had been torn apart. But that was not to be. The villagers were undaunted. With quiet determination they devised a plan to get the wood up the mountain.
Twelve men, led by the village holy man, left the village at 4:00 a.m. the next day. They traveled through the mud and fallen rock to the bottom of the mountain at Apoligan, where the planks lay stacked in a wooden hut. They strapped the wood on their backs, some of the loads weighing up to 60 pounds and started back up the mountain. It would be a journey of 40 miles, and they would have to do it three times in order to get all the material up the mountain. As they reached the bridge that would take them across the Braldu river upwards to their village, the children ran down to greet them, and cheer them on. Onward they walked, some stopping to pick a wild rose and place it in their hat, or behind their ear. The children danced around them as they slowly, step by step, made their way up the mountain, a bit closer to completing the village dream.
What I did see in their eyes and felt in their presence as I shook each hand was a quiet pride and self reliance. They didn't see themselves as heroes, but as community members, each doing their share for the larger goal. This wasn't just a school for the children. It was a school for the future of the entire village. |
The village holy man was the first up the mountain. There was no sign on his face or that of his fellow villagers of their arduous journey.
No one would have believed they had just finished climbing 40 miles in waist deep mud, following paths barely a footprint wide across steep mountain slopes. Their smiles didn't let on of the falling rock and boulders they needed to sidestep, or the plummeting rapids of ice cold glacial water they had to cross. Their faces showed not a trace of the 100 degree heat or the many footsteps they took that were just one step away from an ugly, painful death.
What I did see in their eyes and felt in their presence as I shook each hand was a quiet pride and self reliance. They didn't see themselves as heroes, but as community members, each doing their share for the larger goal. This wasn't just a school for the children. It was a school for the future of the entire village.
I stared in awe as these brave, honorable men untied the ropes from their backs and gently let down their loads. Their easy laughter with each other was a soul music I'd never heard before. These mountains continually display their power and force, but on this day, I was surrounded by no less a powerful force in this tiny village of Korphe, the rooftop to the world.
The road will be rebuilt, and probably washed away again. The mountainside will continue to ravage at will anything in its path - destruction and rebuilding. Change is inevitable, but the one constant I observed was people in community, in harmony with each other.
As the sun slowly crept behind Bakhor Das Peak, I sat in the shade of an apricot tree, thinking of my town, my village back home. There is an upcoming referendum for a new middle school. Not many people even bother to show up at the school board meetings to vote despite the fact I can't seem to go the grocery store without someone expressing an opinion on the subject.
I feel as if we have forgotten that this is our education, for our future. We have too easily relinquished our responsibility while demanding more from an increasingly abstract and obscure system. It has gotten too easy to pay our taxes and feel we have done enough. We feel we deserve the right to place blame, to whine and complain: on the governor, the school board, the teachers, the system. We have only to gaze into the looking glass that has been given us to see where the responsibility lies. And also, to see where commitment, involvement and community begin.
The only way we should demand more from our educational system is if we demand more -from ourselves. Whether it be a new middle school or a new program, who in the community will tie the ropes to their back and carry the planks? Who will hammer and chisel the rock until it fits into place? And just as importantly, who will support those who carry the load and have tools in hand?
This is not an easy task. Nothing worthwhile ever is. I think back to the villagers as they trudged upward with their loads roped to their backs and shoulders, looking peaceful, content and proud. Our children, with all the dreams of our future upon their shoulders, deserve no less than for us to carry the foundation for their future on our shoulders.
Pennies from River Falls help build school in Pakistan
Posted June 4, 1997