PAKISTAN: Widows in quake area battle to survive
© Ramita Navai/IRIN
Before the earthquake struck, widow Mariyam
Nessa's neighbours would help her with her chores, but now
they are battling for their own survival and thousands of
women like Mariyam are finding it hard to cope on their
own |
MACHIARI VALLEY, 22 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - Since Mariyam
Nessa’s husband died of an asthma attack while ploughing his fields
five years ago, her neighbours in the hamlet of Duliard have always
helped out.
But after the earthquake, which killed over
86,000 people and devastated the remote Machiara Valley, where
Duliard lies, her neighbours have no time to help Mariyam as they
must battle for their own survival.
Mariyam lost her husband
before the disaster but thousands of others lost their husbands in
the quake that ravaged the region. Now these widows are struggling
to survive.
The earthquake flattened Mariyam’s home and all
that remains is a deep, black hole where the huge mud roof
collapsed, burying all her possessions. With no one to help her, it
took Mariyam six days to cobble together a crude, makeshift shelter
from bits of wood and ragged shawls. But it does not protect her or
her children against the cold. The icy wind howls in and the shelter
is likely to collapse with the first heavy snowfall.
“It’s
hard without a man as there’s nobody to help me. I must do
everything myself,” she says.
To survive Mariyam must plough
the hard ground with her bare hands and harvest her corn and potato
crops. Her children are either too small or too ill to help. Her
eldest son, who is 18, suffers from the same crippling asthma that
killed her husband and she is afraid that if he pushes himself too
far, he too will have a fatal asthma attack.
Since the
earthquake dried up the mountain springs in the area, Mariyam and
her small children must now walk several hours up a perilous
mountain track to fetch water from a spring in another valley,
balancing heavy metal urns on their heads.
“These women do a
massive amount of work and it’s extremely hard, they’re very
vulnerable and there’s no one taking care of them,” said Maggie
Tookey from the UK-based charity Edinburgh Direct.
The crops
the villagers harvest are not enough to nourish and support them
through the bitter Himalayan winter months when these isolated
communities are cut off from the outside world by up to 3 m of snow.
To survive, the men in Duliard, as in many farming communities
across Pakistani-administered Kashmir, spend four months a year
working as cheap labourers, often earning less than a dollar a day
in cities across Pakistan.
But widows like Mariyam do not
have this extra source of income. Instead, their lives are clouded
by debt, as they must borrow money and buy food on credit from other
villagers and shops in towns.
“I sell potatoes and corn but
this isn’t enough to survive so everything I buy is bought on
credit,” says Mariyam.
The village elders in Machiara Union
Council, which is made up of 10 villages and 1,104 households, say
that there are some 200 widows who are without adequate shelter or
aid.
“The number might even be more,” said Rahmat Ali,
tracking guide working with the International Organization for
Migration (IOM).
“These widows are getting aid last and are
suffering more than families who have men around to help,” he
said.
The women are also suffering from more medical
conditions, according to Dr Zulfkar Ali who works with the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF).
“These women suffer from joint pain due
to carrying bigger loads on their shoulders and doing even more work
than they usually do,” Dr Ali said.
“As well as cutting hay
for animals, harvesting crop, milking, manage livestock, cooking,
cleaning and looking after their children they now have the added
pressure of surviving under these conditions. It is too much for
them,” he said.
Mariyam says two of her small children are
ill and she is frightened for the future. Since the IOM arrived in
Duliard, she now has a blanket and a sheet of tarpaulin, but she
says she needs help to rebuild her house and mend her ruined land, a
task that could take up to four months.
“Before the
earthquake people in the villages would help us and look after us,”
she says. “But now they don’t have time. We’ve been forgotten.”
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