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Wakhan Corridor. Even today, with all the international aid that has poured into Afghanistan since 2001, the Wakhan remains underdeveloped by any measure.
But that isolation and deprivation have also protected the Wakhan. Locals hear about the extremists, gunfire, roadside bombs, and attacks on girls’ schools that are tearing their country apart. But the war is far away.
A sparsely populated finger of land between Tajikistan and Pakistan, the Wakhan stretches 106 miles from Ishkashim to Sarhad( see map below). The mountains soar to more than 21,000 feet, and are considered relatively“ young,” not yet rounded off by erosion, and still shedding rubble and boulders via rushing streams, spring runoff, and frequent landslides.
Once part of the Silk Road linking China and Europe, the Wakhan was traversed by Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, and Genghis Khan. These days, all travel is along a single, rugged dirt road that winds through the lowlands alongside the rivers that eventually join downstream to form the fabled Oxus River. Vehicles are still few and far between; most traffic is by foot or donkey.
The poverty here runs deep. People live in mud-brick homes and primarily feed their families through subsistence farming and herding. Malnutrition is common. Health care is scarce. There are no school buses or streetlights, computers or televisions, indoor plumbing or refrigeration. And it is still largely a cashless society, although that is changing.
Life is hard. Yet there’ s magic in the natural beauty, silence, stars and clean air.
Gul Bahar’ s parents, Darwaish and Khushnuma, have lived in Rurung, populaul Bahar wakes up every day at 4:30 a. m. in the big room where her family sleeps, pushes off the heavy blankets and rises to begin her daily chores. Like many other 14-year-olds, morning is not her favorite time of day. But she is not a complainer.
The Wakhan Corridor
Besides, she doesn’ t have a lot of time. Every day, Gul Bahar and her twin sister Jamal trade off between house chores and shepherding. On this cool spring morning, Jamal herds the sheep and goats up the mountain slopes above their house to feed on good grass. Gul Bahar stays home to bake bread and make tea for breakfast, wash dishes, and sweep the dirt floor of her family’ s mud-brick home
Gul Bahar has to be quick about it. She only has an hour before she, her 12-year-old brother, and the other children from the village set off on the 90-minute walk to school. Jamal doesn’ t join them because she has already finished school.
“ Jamal started school before Gul Bahar and went to class nine,” the girls’ father, Darwaish, explained.“ But there are no higher classes at their CAI-supported DeGhulaman School, and we don’ t have any relatives in Khandud or Sarhad where there are high schools. So she quit after class nine.” He expects Gul Bahar, now in class eight, to do the same.
Much of the family’ s early morning work is done in the dark, or illuminated only by the fire in the central hearth. Electricity is nonexistent in Rurung( pronounced“ Roo-wrung”), located three-fourths of the way up the
30 | Journey of Hope C E N T R A L A S I A I N S T I T U T E