Changes in Chitral …
—–
I would rather teach than run after goats
By Christopher Nadeem
Sat, 25 Nov 2006, 08:33:00
http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_32433.shtml
Perched along the Chitral riverbank in the famed Hindu Kush mountain
range lies the tiny hamlet of Mogh. Hidden by thick groves of walnut
and mulberry, its seventy odd mud-and-stone houses accommodate a
population of about 750.
But this is no picture of a remote and isolated mountain community,
living on the edges of the ‘modern world’. Mogh may be ‘hidden’ from
much of the world outside but, along with other communities in the
rest of Pakistan’s Chitral district, its population is undergoing
massive social, economic and cultural changes, triggered by new road
and telecommunications infrastructures, other development projects and
education.
These changes are also helping sow the seeds of conflict between
traditional practices, peculiar to a mountain community, and modern
currents – a tension that is perhaps most visible in the lives of women.
The contrast between tradition and modernity is obvious to visitors to
Mogh. Phugyur, in her early 80s, is a Mogh senior citizen. She sits
idly on a floor cushion in the veranda of her house as her 45-year-old
daughter-in-law Saeeda Anisa spins wool on the family’s old spinning
wheel. Like other elderly people in the village, Phugyur says that
many aspects of her life have changed radically – perhaps irrevocably.
“In my childhood and youth I used to spend lot of time grazing cattle
and working in the fields. I used to go to the forest with other women
to collect fuel-wood.” And she recalls weaving Shu, a traditional
woollen cloth, for family members.
Source: Panos Features
Ismailimail 