Alex Kealy Goes to Jawzareen

By Alex Kealy

March 18, 2009

There is such beauty in the landscapes of Afghanistan that one can actually look forward to an 11 hour drive on bone-rattling unpaved roads. The PARSA team drove down to Bamyan in late February to restart programmes in the Jawzareen valley as the harsh winter begins to draw to a close. There were four of us, and Yasin’s two young sons, 3 and 5. If you had put a couple of English children in the car I can imagine we probably would have left them on a mountainside somewhere having listened to them scream and fight for hours. But little Faisal and Siar were quiet as mice, sitting happily in the boot of the car playing games with the 3 kilograms of oranges we had bought to keep us going during the journey.

We stayed at the PARSA offices in Bamyan, where Tahir and his wife Zohra live with their four daughters. Between them they run the Bamyan projects. We were extremely grateful for the food they had made for our arrival, after all those oranges. Zohra speaks a small amount of English, and she loves to talk. Between that and my limited Dari we muddled through conversations about her children, the Bamyan Buddhas, and that subject close to every woman’s heart – clothes. The house is decorated in colourful PARSA style. Toshaks, rugs and blankets made by PARSA widows filled all the floor space and the tables were brightly painted. The sitting room was the warmest place in the house, with a coal burning stove and oven, with water constantly boiling in huge kettles on top of it. We were glad of that warm water when it came to washing before bedtime. The cold water was icy – literally.

The morning after we arrived, we got up early to head for Jawzareen. It took about an hour to get there from Bamyan city because there was so much snow that we kept getting stuck. Eventually we abandoned the car to walk the rest of the way. We realized too late that we had forgotten to bring any water with us, and for the rest of the day I was clutching handfuls of snow and sucking on them. Within about 10 minutes of beginning what would become over 7 hours of hiking up and down steep hills, I realized a few things. I was horribly unfit. We were at a very high altitude, making it quite hard to breathe. The people living up these mountains have to do this every day, just to survive. The view was stunning, but also bleak. There was just snow as far as the eye could see, broken up by clusters of mud houses, and the occasional flash of beautiful bright colours as the women came out of their houses and went about their days. What struck me as we walked through villages were the groups of young teenage boys bunched together on corners. They could have been the boys you see in any western city, plotting their next escapade, full of mischief. The people we came across were welcoming and curious about us. The women peered out of their doorways and waved to us shyly.

The first house we stopped at was the house of Bibijan, the widow who had inspired PARSA’s work in the valley. She offered us some much needed green tea. She has supported her four young daughters since her husband was killed by Taliban about 10 years ago. Their main source of income is selling bushes and wood that they gather on the hillside. She is clearly a tough and proud woman, but she was not too proud to admit that life is a constant struggle, and she took us inside to show us. The family live in one room, and there is one other small room for storage. The mud room was bare save for a worn rug on the floor, a lantern and a kettle. There was a hole in the floor for a fire, which had been made into a tandoor for bread, and for heating the kettle. She wanted us to take photographs of the house, and of her beautiful daughters.

We were lucky to be able to take so many pictures of women. But these women were more concerned with having their stories told than in cultural taboos. I think they wanted these photos to be a testament to the way they are living, and they understood that an image has a powerful voice that transcends differences.

Bibijan’s house had recently flooded, and there were two young men from the village helping her fix things. She told us that it is difficult to manage without a man in the family, and although she can get help when she has an emergency it is rare that the men come to her aid. They are all needed by their own families. She and her daughters must struggle with the tasks that would be made so much easier with the strength of a man, like bringing water up the hill. When we left we promised to send some concrete to reinforce her house so it didn’t flood again. She asked if we could try to get her something to sleep on, as the family is sleeping on the bare floor.

We continued up the mountain. At this point we lost Reese, who was being sick from the altitude. I was surprised (and secretly relieved) that it wasn’t me. We went to visit one of the community schools where women, who have been unable to go to the local school – two kilometres down the hill – are learning to read and write. Lessons are being taught in the teacher’s houses, which are almost as basic as Bibijan's. But dozens of women are attending, they are eager for knowledge, and the strength that they might find with it. When we arrived the classroom was filled with young boys. The teacher’s husband has set up his own class voluntarily in the afternoons following Zahra’s morning class for women. The children are needed to work, to look after the animals, bring water, gather wood. Many of the boys are also unable to attend school. There is simply not enough time in the day for them to make the trip to school as well as support their families. The teacher asks for us to send textbooks, and classroom supplies. PARSA is working on giving him a salary but, until then, he is committed to teaching the boys. Both Zahra and her husband both learned to read and write in Iran while they were refugees. They attended school there for many years. In this area it seems to be a pattern that for most of those who have had the opportunity of education, it has been abroad. It has proved difficult to recruit teachers in these areas, because the vast majority of people are illiterate. The other teachers we meet were also educated while they were living as refugees, both in Iran and Pakistan.

What was clear was that the thousands of people living here are painfully without services. They are all but alone in their survival. On the way back down the mountain we met some older men who stopped to tell us about a disease afflicting the people of their village. The disease attacks the fingers, which begin to rot, before moving further up the body. The men told us that they didn’t know what the disease was but that people were dying from it. They said there were no doctors, no one to help them and that the Local Department of Public Health had done nothing. Yasin promised that he would speak to the Department of Public Health about them taking some action. It is examples like this that demonstrate the isolation of life in rural Afghanistan. The people here are living subsistence lives. They bring water up the mountains, they gather wood to sell, or burn. If they are lucky enough to have animals then they need to look after them. They walk for miles to try to find work to earn a few cents to buy flour for bread. In spite of this hardship, every child you come across has a ready smile and giggle, they seem to be full of joy.

Even when visiting the people here and seeing the way they live with your own eyes, the lives we have back in England or the US, or even here in Kabul, are so different that it is impossible to imagine yourself there. But these women do not have the luxury of trying to imagine how differently we live, they have families to feed. By teaching them to read and write PARSA is giving them confidence and hope, and a sense of self. By bringing together the women in the community, PARSA is creating a network of support, they are not alone. Small steps like these ones are what can empower these communities until other, or official, sources have enough capability to take the responsibility to provide adequate social services, and a more certain future.