Withinseconds, a herd of huge,
burly yaks stampeded past the school,
thundering toward the river. The
yaks’ hoof beats shook the ground
and momentarily drowned out the
voices in the classroom. As the yaks
thinned out, the students turned their
attention back to the teacher and did
not notice the young boy in threadbare
clothes and Chinese rubber boots
rounding up the stray yaks.
The boy should be in school. But
like millions of children in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, he has to work
instead. When children reach school
age in these impoverished societies,
parents must weigh their two options:
work or school.“Everyone has a fierce desire for
education, but where there is such
abject poverty and survival depends
on manual labour, many children
are deprived of school,” says Greg
Mortenson, co-founder of Central
Asia Institute (CAI), a non-profit
organisation that built DeGhulaman’s
first school.
In DeGhulaman, most adults are
illiterate and there are no paying
jobs. Families herd sheep, goats and
yaks, and grow small plots of grain
and vegetables in the arid, high-
altitude landscape.
The village children rise before
sun-up, fetch water and collect dry yak
dung and brush to fuel the fire. Theymilk the goats, sheep and camels,
and later take the animals high into
the mountains to graze. Everything is
done by hand: ploughing, building,
sewing. There are no shortcuts. In the
face of such adversity, parents too
often have no choice but to keep their
children home from school to help
support the family.
The UN Declaration of Human
Rights unequivocally states that
every child has a right to education.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan,
governments, community leaders
and humanitarian groups like CAI are
working with communities to make
that right a reality. But the work is
slow, labour-intensive and expensive.The boy should be in school. But like millions of
children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he has to work
instead. When children reach school age in these
impoverished societies, parents must weigh their
two options: work or school.