Pakistan

Real lives

Going to school on a mountain slope

Nazia Bibi gave up her salary and teaching position to reopen a school for girls at the remote village of Bakote, Pakistan.

BAKOTE, Pakistan, 12 October 2004 – Nazia Bibi, 22, teaches at a girls' primary school in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. The school is perched high atop a rugged mountain slope, where cultivated fields are as wide as a man is tall.

Life is hard in Nazia's home village of Bakote. It is 6.5 kilometres along a narrow track to the nearest road. During the winter months, access to the outside world vanishes under 2 metres of snow. The village school was closed for three years, because no teacher wanted to work in such a remote place.

Nazia teaches a class.

Nazia was teaching at a private school in the district capital, but gave up her salary and position to reopen the school at Bakote at the beginning of this year.

At first, she was teaching five classes a day in two rooms without pay. Ten children showed up the first day. Then, with UNICEF assistance, community leaders went door-to-door encouraging girls to enrol. Now, 145 students attend, seated on cushions made of sacking stuffed with rags that cover the dirt floor.

Nazia’s students outside their classroom.

The government provides free textbooks, but Nazia spent $50 of her own money to travel to the nearest town to collect them. "I'm ambitious about education because it can bring changes in the community. Once they have knowledge, girls can understand about their rights," she says.

UNICEF now helps Bakote's primary school for girls by paying the salary of Nazia and a second teacher. Both receive teacher training courtesy of UNICEF. The organization also supplies the school with much-needed educational material, while also providing for better sanitary conditions by installing two new latrines and a hand pump for clean water.

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