In the serene North, there are still villages where getting a bucket of water is a full day’s job. But things can be changed as has been done in Tonik

SMACK in the heart of the high Hindu Kush Mountains, under the shadow of the 7690 metre (25,225 feet) snow-draped Trich Mir, Chitral is the getaway for ordinary people seeking a break from the humdrum life of the plains. The elongated district stretching along the Afghan frontier from Broghal Pass in the extreme north to the better known Lowari in the south is the largest alpine district of the Northwest Frontier Province. Here are high river valleys where industrious people coax out of the vertical earth a meagre living. Here are peaks and high passes and lush mountains that flaunt chilghoza besides other kinds of pine, fir and broad-leaf forests.

With its scores of perennial rushing torrents in addition to the major river, the Yarkhun, it is hard for most people to imagine there could be difficulty in procurement of potable water in such a paradise. But water, the essence of life, flowing past the villages in plentiful and silty supply is sometimes difficult to reach in its pristine and potable condition. It is a fortunate village that can boast of a fresh water spring in its close vicinity; for the inhabitants of other villages the fetching of water is a long and repetitive chore that takes up most of the day.

Fifty kilometres to the northwest of Chitral town and over two hours away by jeep is a tiny village called Tonik. Though it lies close by the well-known town of Garm Chashma, famous for its hot springs, Tonik itself is unknown outside its immediate area. Unknown, because it is like any other alpine village in our region that does not lie on a famous mountaineering or trekking trail and is therefore missed by all and sundry. Like all such villages here too the people live out their lives in marginalized seclusion with little or no intervention from the government.

Perched high up at about 2500 metres in a narrow valley, the village comprises of fifty-seven households with a total population of four hundred and sixteen souls. It can be loosely divided into two separate mohallahs. With little flat ground to cultivate, all their agriculture comes from painstakingly maintained terraces stacked up the mountainside in narrow shelves. Being in a single cropping zone, the produce of these small farms is just enough for the people to subsist on. They augment their farming with goat rearing for which some members of each family spend weeks on end in the higher pastures during the summer. Not unusual then that they continue to be among the poorest communities in the area: in Chitral district where corrugated iron roofing is a measure of affluence, Tonik can only boast of flat, mud and timber roofs.

For as long as these people have lived in Tonik, they have known the women of their families making the daily trek for water to the river at the bottom of their valley. Long years ago, before modern communication means made all sorts of kitchen utensils available, they used dried gourds and cured goatskins to carry the water home. Today they use all manner of aluminium pots. Filled up, most of these weigh anywhere up to fifteen kilograms.

Now, the mohallah on the west side got its water from the Khalbizan stream while that in the east from Manur Gol. The trip was roughly two hours out and back in both cases. Since the women went out unladen and downhill to the water point, the trip out was shorter. But as they toiled back uphill, encumbered by as much as thirty kilograms (women sometimes carrying two containers), it took them fifty per cent more time on the return journey.

The chore was easier during summertime and fine weather. But come rain and it became dicey with chances aplenty of slipping and getting hurt. Winters, however, were pure murder. With the path frosted to steely hardness by the arctic cold, it became treacherously slippery and falls were very common. There are few women in Tonik that can claim their entire life of fetching water had less than a dozen falls. The less fortunate tell tales of broken hip bones and arms. Brutal cuts and bruises were thought nothing of.

Thirty years ago, when medical aid was not as readily available as today, the village had women to show with poorly healed fractures. The luckiest were those who after years of bearing the pots on their heads could only complain of a dull, dragging ache in the top of the head as well as down the sides of the neck. A study revealed that every year as many as four accidents took place — serious enough to necessitate medical attention, they confined effected women for up to six weeks. That was one aspect. The other, as the study showed, was that summer thaws bringing down more silt rendered the water unpalatable. But with no other source, the villagers were obliged to make do. The result was an average of two serious cases of diarrhoea per household every summer.

The need of a normal household called for at least two trips daily to the water point — sometimes as many as four. That meant the average time spent on fetching water to keep body and soul together was a minimum of four hours daily. This was shared by all available women in the family which adversely affected school-going girls. With little time to spare for homework, girl students fared very badly in class. In case of accident in the line of this dreary duty girls were sometimes pulled out of school to help out at home.

Back in 1986 when Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) started working in Tonik the community’s foremost demand was some sort of delivery of potable water near their doors. At that time, however, AKRSP had no fund for such water delivery projects. Instead they helped the community in the development of the road linking the village to Garm Chashma at the bottom of the valley. The arrival of the first jeep in their village was a major step forward for those who had spent their lives toiling up and down the narrow path to the road head.

Even as they plodded through the snow with their water pots in December 2000, the women of Tonik did not know that a liaison taking in distant Islamabad was soon to change their lives. This was the coming together of AKRSP and Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF). This partnership brought home to AKRSP the much needed funds for long-deferred community physical infrastructure schemes. One such scheme was the water delivery project for Tonik.

Thirteen thousand three hundred feet (just over four km) of pipe was laid from a clear fresh water spring on a mountainside west of the village. While PPAF provided seventy five per cent of the cost or Rs 772,326, the community raised the remaining Rs25,848/-. This latter came both in terms of cash as well as contribution with skilled and unskilled labour. Work began in the end of January 2001 and was completed exactly a year later.

From a concrete holding tank at the spring, the water flowed down to the village by galvanized iron pipe buried just over a metre below ground to prevent bursting during the arctic winters. This line fed a total of thirty two water points spread out across the village. That meant there was no household that needed to walk more than a few metres out of the door to fetch water.

For the women of Tonik this was like release from an oppressive imprisonment. Suddenly there was time to socialize, time to attend to other household chores and more time than they could imagine to weave patti — the famous tweed of Chitral. As for the schoolgirls, their performance in school has improved markedly since the commissioning of the scheme. Indeed, parents say that girls excel over boys in school. Moreover, with the dreary chore no longer to attend to, school enrolment of girls has gone up to eighty as compared to about thirty two years ago.

The clack of handlooms that had remained largely idle, as the women of Tonik struggled back and forth with their water pots, can now be heard again in nearly every household in the village. Two years ago a woman who averaged twenty metres of patti over a year, produced over sixty metres in the first year since water supply began. And she had a small child to look after as well. Those not hampered by children boasted having produced over a hundred metres during that same period of time. At a hundred twenty rupees per metre, this is setting the women of Tonik on the road to economic emancipation.

In its twenty-five year estimated life, the project, according to an AKRSP Cost-Benefit Analysis, will have paid two and three quarter times the cost of installation. In human terms, the enhanced income from patti, elimination of cases of diarrhoea and injury while fetching water as well as the increasing number of girls in school is too great to be added up. Though they dreamed of some such miracle, the people of Tonik had never imagined they would see it taking place in their lifetimes. They may not have, had the PPAF-AKRSP liaison not taken place.