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11 June 2001 by Erja-Outi in Gorno-Badakhshan One hot pie a day has made an enormous difference for schoolchildren in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan, eastern Tajikistan. The Tajikistan Red Crescent is carrying out a school-feeding programme in the poorest districts of this mountainous region. It is a pilot project which can only be described as a success. Children who were often too weak from hunger to attend school now look forward to coming in every day. It is exam time and the pupils can actually concentrate on their studies - thanks to the minimum nutrition the snack gives them. Since the beginning of April, the pupils in Vugh village have made a special effort to go to school every single day. The only thing that will keep them at home these days is if they are too ill to leave the house. Although the school year is about to end, the attendance is still nearly 100 per cent. The headmaster for school number 42, Chamanoro Pulodbekova, explains the reasons for this extraordinary attendance. The World Food Programme has chosen Vugh village as one of the sites in Gorno-Badakhshan region for their school-feeding project - carried out by the local Red Crescent branch. Thanks to the programme, more than 24,000 school children and teachers have been getting a hot meal six times a week this school term. "When the villagers heard about the project, they were really eager to contribute in every way they could. Our conditions are severe here in the Pamir mountains. When the children previously were absent from school, I sometimes made house calls," Pulodbekova explains. "The parents told me that the children hadn't had anything to eat for days and were too weak to attend the school. The situation of the teachers is not that much better. One of our teachers had to stay at home in the winter as he did not have proper shoes," she adds. Winter in Gorno-Badakhshan is hard. Yet Pulodbekova claims that the spring months tend to be the most difficult ones for the population. The previous harvest is nothing but a memory and there is quite some way to go before the next crop. Pulodbekova moved to Vugh four years ago. Prior to that, she worked in the neighbouring Roshtkala district. Was the situation any easier there? Pulodbekova smiles." There is no comparison, as that was during the Soviet era," she says. Due to its extensive frontiers with Afghanistan and China, Gorno-Badakhshan had strategic importance for the Soviet Union and received abundant subsidies from Moscow. Since the independence of Tajikistan, the population of Gorno-Badakhshan has been virtually left to fend for itself. The region is the poorest part of the poorest central Asian republic. Unemployment there reaches 70 per cent and the predominantly mountainous region doesn't have enough arable land to feed its 206,000 inhabitants. Clean water from the mountains is usually the only plentiful resource. Last winter, however, there wasn't that much snow on the mountains, which means less water for irrigation in the summer. People are afraid that the harvest will be even smaller than in normal years - which could mean that the region will have to rely more heavily on international food aid. The World Food Programme provides the wheat flour and oil needed to prepare the meals provided in the schools. Three times a week, the pupils get "piroshki", pies cooked or fried in oil. Every second day the school workers or community volunteers make "kulcha" a small round bread baked in the oven. The community then sells the empty oil canisters and flour sacks to acquire the necessary salt and yeast. Gulbibi, a Red Crescent volunteer, hands out one hot and oily pie to each child in the Shitam village school. But the 6th class students sit upright - the formality is due to the Red Crescent monitors' presence in the classroom. Only after the visitors leave the children relax, open their tea bottles and enjoy the food. Students in the sixth grade are 12-13 years old but appear several years younger. In the region many children are stunted because of chronic poor nutrition. The shortage of food is such that one pie a day really makes a difference for most people. "This project resolves half of the food problems in my family. I have three children in school and as a teacher, I also get either a pie or a piece of bread daily," a teacherat Shitam school explains. In some districts the local authorities have given firewood or money for the programme. In mountainous areas, wood is a scarce resource. "I am glad that the villagers are willing to participate. They have really adopted the project", says Warka Okhonoyozov, the deputy chairman of the Red Crescent branch. In Shitam, Anjir Dormantshaeva kneads the dough and hands the piroshkis to fellow cook Oinagul Arabshueva who fries them in the oil. The kitchen at the schoolyard is unquestionably scenic: blue skies and snow-topped mountains on the backdrop. Luckily it doesn't rain just then. |
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Salim
and Shovasir, students of the sixth class in the centre of Shitam
village enjoy their pie.
