KB…AN EYE OPENER

Like most of us I was shaken by the last year's earthquake and decided to spend a part of my summer holidays this year in affected areas to share the grief of people. My experience of Kodar Bala and NVM is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The 15 days of my life that I spent at Kodar Bala in my summer were truly eye opening; they have left an indelible mark on me, shaken me to the very core and altered my perspectives about a lot of things. Kodar Bala is a quake hit village in Siren Valley, Mansehra District, accessible by a jeep able road.  There were 52 of us initially, 49 boys and only 2 girls, from different parts of the country.  However, after 5 days around 30 volunteers left after being scared of lightning, living in tents, quake aftershocks, rains, poor living conditions and food. I have been to many top tourist attractions but I have yet to see a place as lovely and quiet as Kodar Bala with its pristine mountains, untouched waterfalls, clear rivers and streams. But after living there for a couple of days and observing things around, a very dark and horrifying side of it started revealing.
          Besides being awash in scenic beauty, Kodar Bala guards many dark secrets. It is one of the most backward areas of Pakistan: a place where literacy rate is extremely low, a place where the nearest health worker never mind a doctor is at a 2.5 hours drive where the secondary school (6-8) is on a 45 minutes hike, where the high school (9-10) is at a 2.5 hours drive, where the people don't own land they have been living on and cultivating for innumerable generations, an area under feudal control, where there is no electricity or mobile coverage, where female literacy is close to zero, where average number of children for a woman are 8, where the average marriageable age is 13 for a girl. These I believe are the core issues of such areas apart from reconstruction and rehabilitation. People in Kodar Bala and areas similar to it have started to go on with their lives but their lives are no better than it was before the earthquake. Kodar Bala is an area that is accessible by jeep able road and is only 4 hours away from Abbotabad. There are villages in NWFP that are remote and inaccessible, and require some hours of mountain climbing to reach them. If this is the abysmal quality of living in a village that is connected by road, imagine the state of those areas that are inaccessible.
         On the first day while planting trees I came to know about the root cause of the problems in the area. There were local boys around us while we were busy planting young pine saplings and when I asked them to help us in our work since whatever we were doing was for the betterment of the area, they declined. Their answer was that since khan owns the land why should they plant trees on it or develop it. It is his land, and whatever they do will only benefit him. Those children did not have that love for their land. Their sense of belonging had been snatched away from them. This was my first ever experience of a feudal set up and I was stunned!
         Our main contribution to that area was the motivation, career counseling and teaching that we did of the young children there. All our students were primary boys and two 6 graders. We asked them what they wanted to be and motivated them to pursue their dreams. Three children wanted to be doctors and we told them that there has not been a single person from their area who had become a doctor, not anyone in history; therefore they should be determined to go for it. I asked 2 and 3 graders about the name of their country. The answer I got was "Kodar". I then tried to explain it to them that since we all speak Urdu, we all are Pakistanis and that Kodar is in Mansehra which is in NWFP which is a part of Pakistan. I told them Kodar is too small and Pakistan too big. It was also then that I realized how important Urdu is in binding all Pakistanis. Urdu is the only other link besides Islam in giving us our identity. Their world is very limited. They are living in that close shell of theirs oblivious to the entire world they are a part of. I saw airplane only once in 15 days! And I remember how excited we were when our supervisor came from Mansehra city and gave us the news of the outside world about the Mumbai bombings and PIA crash. At that time I realized how stupid I was chasing and crazy about breaking news when all I could do was absolutely nothing. It's good to be aware but why don't we do things that we can change and accept things we cannot. Had I been in Lahore during Mumbai bombings I would have been glued to TV getting all the latest updates and would have thought of myself doing the most important and worthwhile thing at that moment. But how wrong I was?! It is by doing little things like teaching someone 2+2 or ABC that we can make our little contributions, inspire, influence and change a life. These are the things we can impact and influence rather than international events.
         We mostly taught English and math because children there found these 2 subjects the hardest. The quality of teachers in those areas was pathetic. I regret not meeting anyone personally. But children told me that their teachers beat them and as a result many children leave school. Children mostly study till grade 5 then leave school and even by then they have not achieved the required competency of that level. More importantly, children rote learn their entire lessons and if you ask them to put their finger on C or F, they are unable to do it. It is because they learn their entire lessons, even Urdu prose and poetry, and are unable to identify words and letters. This was a very serious issue with all our students. KG, one, two, three and four graders had problems with ABC. So we started teaching children individually, making them identify letters then teaching them to pronounce a word through sounds of the alphabet rather than learning it. It was then that I realized that somebody did put in a lot of effort in making me learn ABC and making me read words, and I'm thankful to that person because now I realize that it's not an easy job! Children had problems in subtractions, additions, multiplication and division and we tried to do what we could in that limited time to help them and develop their skills.
         After our teaching sessions we used to visit children's homes and talk to local women. Visiting homes and connecting to the inner environment of the local households were something that only both us females could do at Kodar. We visited one of our student's home and asked the ladies and girls to come to us for at least learning to read Quran. When they said no because of local customs and strict purdah, we gave them the option of choosing a place in their own home where their girls and all other girls could come and study. They said we were most welcome to teach their girls but other girls would not come to their home and their girls would not go to even their relative's home for this purpose because girls and women don't leave their homes. Women don't even go to bazaar. And there was not any bazaar in that area. The nearest bazaar was 3 hours away. I then asked if they would send their daughters to school. They said yes, but only if the school is all girls and has a female teacher. I tried explaining it to them that a female teacher from Lahore or Karachi can't come to teach their daughters and that first they would have to educate their daughters so that they could teach others. I didn't know whether my advice was falling on deaf ears but I tried to tell them the reality.
         Feudal system being the root cause of the problems has to be abolished. Land should be bought from the khan by the government and distributed amongst the people who have been living on it for generations. This great change requires that people have the awareness about their rights and means to get their issues solved. This will only come through education. Us students should register ourselves as volunteers for National Voluntary Movement and spend a part of our summer vacations in these seemingly remote areas. Most of the teachers in such areas have passed grade 8 th from the local school, imagine what we, students of good schools can do in such areas!  A woman in KODAR BALA told me that they only visit doctor when a person could not bear it anymore and is near death. There is absolutely no rural healthcare unit there, no health worker, zero healthcare facility. Young doctors should visit such areas voluntarily for a month or even 15 days. It should be made a necessary requirement for medical students that they have to spend 2 months in rural areas if they are to get their degrees. The condition of rural areas of Punjab is no different. We all need to get our act together.
        
          On our last day children was silent and avoiding eye contact but their sad faces revealed all the pain. When inquired about this unusual behavior they told us that it was the first time ever that somebody had given them so much love and affection and more importantly, coached them in areas they were weak in. Previous volunteers would play with them, have activities with them but they never tried to remove their academic weaknesses. Our children did not want us to leave. And neither did we. They did not even say us goodbye! I did not even hug them because I was afraid I would not be able to hold back my tears. I did not want to cry in front of my class. I wrote a long letter for the new volunteers and left it at Kodar so that they can know about our students and what they had to do in order to fill the vacuum created by our leaving that place of untold beauty.
         Many people say that 15 days are nothing, that we could not have achieved anything significant in such a short span of time. I always say that what we did was a drop in the ocean; we all have to play our little part. We all love to criticize and lament the abysmal standard of living and quality of education, but how many of us have actually stood up and tried to teach somebody an alphabet or the name of his own country? It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Even if a child learnt to differentiate between A and G, to add and subtract, it is an achievement; and it is far better than mere ceaseless criticism on the poor standard of education!
         We could not have prevented the earthquake and neither can we prevent any other one. Such natural disasters are simply beyond our control. But what we can control and prevent are the man-made disasters from occurring in such areas. The disasters of illiteracy and ignorance are created by us. This earthquake, I think, was an opportunity for us to visit such areas and know about the real issues first hand. Sometimes I think we all are living in our own small shells oblivious beyond our immediate world, just like the people of Kodar Bala. We might know what is happening across international borders, but we do not know what is happening in our own backyard; we do not know what is happening in our own country.

         They say home is where the heart is, and I have left mine at Kodar Bala…by Ms. Zainab Khan,Lahore. (zainabkhann@gmail.com)