LANDI KOTAL: Lifestyle for most of the Tirah valley dwellers has undergone a drastic change, thanks to their exposure to urban life and modern day facilities during their years of displacement when militants took control of the valley back in 2012.

The most significant change in their lives is the intrusion of television into their homes with access to a number of channels through the dish antennas they have installed atop their houses. Keeping and watching television was a taboo only a decade ago while the local residents would rely only on listening to radio as it was the lone source for both information and entertainment.

Ali Akbar, a resident of Bagh-Maidan, told this correspondent by his phone that a majority of the residents had installed both dish antennas and televisions in their houses with permission to their womenfolk as well to watch television programmes along with male members of the family.

Displacement during militancy introduced them to watching TV, eating hygienic food

“This indeed is a major change in our lifestyle and a drastic shift in out tribal values as we would keep our women aloof from such facilities, but now we encourage them to learn from TV programmes,” he explained.

Mr Akbar said that they mostly got electricity from solar panels, which also helped in operating television sets and charging their mobile phones. He acknowledged that the hardships they had undergone during their over five years of displacement had taught them many lessons.

“We are now more aware of our personal and family hygiene along with exploring new ways for both education and entertainment for our children and women,” he said.

Nauroz Khan, another Tirah resident, told this scribe that they also changed their eating habits in accordance with the change in weather. “We use to eat boiled beans and corn in winters, but are now making a variety of soups in order to keep ourselves warm in the long winter nights,” he said. He added that use of rice, mutton and beef had also increased as these were now easily available at cheap prices because of easy access to cities like Peshawar, Hangu and Kohat.

He said that a number of soup stalls had also opened up in Bagh Markaz (local market) by the local youth which served as a decent source of earning for them. He said that opening of the newly-built 110-kilometre Bara-Bagh Maidan road early this year was helping them in bringing fresh food supplies from Peshawar, Bara and Jamrud, which were not available to them prior to construction of the road.

Nauroz Khan said that earlier only affluent people of the valley would wear neat and ironed clothes. “Now we have gas-run irons in almost every house and every member of the family has the clothes pressed on daily basis,” he remarked.

Said Karim, another resident of the valley, said that people had now changed the designs of their houses to suit the winter season by considerably curtailing the size of their living rooms.

“We would use to have large rooms in our houses which was difficult for us to keep warm in winters and would burn additional wood to get the required warmth during winter nights,” he said and added that the old big rooms were now divided into two or three in order to save additional use of firewood as small rooms could be heated by using little firewood.

Mr Karim said that dependency on local forests would also drop by cutting down the size of living rooms by the people.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2018