The Children Struggling to Survive

By the time we reached the first house, we were surrounded by men and children. By the time we reached the second, a conga line of villagers had formed behind us, tracking our progress along the narrow, spidery paths that linked the ruined houses perched at 6,000ft. It was like being the Pied Piper, with no means to deliver the children to safety.

It had taken me three hours to climb from the valley floor to Kuz Ganrshal, a remote hilltop village in the Shang region of northern Pakistan, traveling with Oxfam and its local Pakistani partner organization, the Shangla Development Society. Accompanied by Aftab Ali, a Shangla aid worker, we scrambled up the treacherous ice-covered path that snaked up the mountainside. We had come to see how the villagers were coping with the winter conditions in the aftermath of last October’s devastating earthquake. Its residents had never seen a westerner before.

When the earthquake struck, many of Kuz Ganrshal’s menfolk were away, working in mines in Baluchistan to earn the money to feed their families. Many have yet to return, and those that have come back do not have the means to rebuild their houses. The result is that up to five families at a time are forced to crowd into a single lodging: 30 to 40 in one house. The sheep and goats are indoors too. Almost 40% of the homes have been totally destroyed. The remains are just visible in the snow, like the site of an archaeological dig. So far, the weather has not been too bad. But at night it drops to -5C (23F), and with temperatures hovering around freezing even during the day no one ventures further afield than is absolutely necessary.

Kuz Ganrshal is so remote that Oxfam is the only aid agency to have visited the village. With the help of the Shangla Development Society it has delivered blankets, plastic sheeting, mats and tents. But before the winter is out the villagers will probably need much more.