75left Girls leave DeGhulaman
School in Afghanistan’s
Wakhan Corridor at the end
of the school day. Many of
these students walk miles
every day just to get to and
from schoola dream in many places where CAI
works. One generation of illiterate
people succeeded another.
CAI began its work in the
Karakoram mountains of northern
Pakistan in the mid-1990s. According
to Taha, village chief of Korphe, at the
far end of Braldu Valley, in those days,
thousands of climbers and trekkers
came through the region, en route
to K2 and the other famous nearby
peaks. The area was renowned for
its Marco Polo sheep, ibex and snow
leopards. “But we had no school,
books or pencils,” he says.
Communities had already begun to
sense that something had to change.
Populations were growing, putting
pressure on limited resources, says
Saidullah Baig, CAI’s programme
manager in the Hunza region of
inherited land to be divided among so
many family members and generations
as to make parcels nearly worthless.
“Eventually, they have no land there;
it’s finished. That’s why we need
men and women to work together for
education and a better future.”
Wakhi poet and teacher Nazir
Bulbul concurs. “The community
believes the first priority is education.
Because our land pieces are
shrinking and there are no more job
opportunities in those mountain
areas, the only thing we could grow is
our brain, so we want to do that.”
CAI’s work started in Pakistan’s
northern areas and then expanded
into Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Over the past two decades, CAI has
helped establish or support nearly
300 schools, mostly in places thatroads along mountain ridges and
cliffs, through glacial streams, and
over treacherous talus slopes. The
destination is invariably well off the
beaten path, where medical care is
basic or non-existent, clean drinking
water is rare, and sewer drainawge
is primitive.
Although literacy rates are slowly
increasing as students complete
school, the adult literacy rates in many
of these areas are still just climbing
out of the single digits, especially
among women.onassignment“Grow Our Brain”
For centuries,education wasn’t en
di l hCAI
GG it-Baltistan, in northern Pakistan.
cites the trendin remote areas for
i h it dl dt b di id ddefine the word“remote”. Toget there
requires traversing vertigo-inducing
d l t i id dHUNZA REGION OF GILGIT-BALTISTAN
(NORTHERN PAKISTAN)TAJIKISTANAFGHANISTANPAKISTANMONGOLIAINDIAKAZAKHSTANHINDU
KUSH
MOUNTAINSWAKHAN CORRIDOR
KARAKORAM MOUNTAINS}
Mountainous Mentions
Gilgit-Baltistan is home to some of the world's
highest mountain ranges, the main ones being the
Karakoram and the western Himalayas. To the north
are the Pamir mountains and to the west lies the
Hindu Kush.The Gilgit District is bounded by the
Wakhan Corridor, which boasts some of the world's
most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain, in the north.