Dangerous Roads No Obstacle for CRS Driver

By Joe Lapp

Early every morning, as the sunlight creeps down the mountains toward the floor of the Indus River canyon in Besham in northern Pakistan, CRS driver Fayyaz Iqbal cleans and inspects his white, double-cab pickup truck in preparation for the day's travel. Today, driving Catholic Relief Services staff to their work sites, Fayyaz will help bring education, and a way out of poverty, to boys and girls in remote mountain villages in the Kohistan district of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

The scene Fayyaz navigates with his pickup truck every day is a stunning one. It is landscape on a grand scale. Sheer mountainsides, scarred by landslides, drop down thousands of feet to the Indus River.

People live, improbably, on the steep sides and tumbling tops of these mountains. They tend fields terraced centuries ago out of the sharp slopes, building huts of mud and stone perched high above the canyon floor.

Roads also cut across the hillsides, death-defying passages of dirt and rock with no guardrails. Where the paths cross landslide areas, walls of hand-placed stones hold up single lanes barely big enough for one truck to navigate.

In this mountainous district of Kohistan, which CRS serves out of its Besham office, the female literacy rate is as low as 3 percent. The earthquake of October 2005, centered in these northern mountains, destroyed lives and buildings in already-vulnerable villages. Over 4,500 primary schools collapsed or were significantly damaged. Now, CRS is working with communities to rebuild schools in remote mountain villages, giving girls and boys access to a quality primary education in safe and durable structures.

'I Am Committed to CRS'

As a driver, Fayyaz gets CRS staff up and down to these villages safely. In a typical day, he turns off the paved Karakoram Highway onto a dirt road, winding the truck up and up jarring mountainsides. Where the road ends, Fayyaz's passengers walk as long as an hour to reach the villages where CRS works.

Fayyaz drives dangerous roads every day for CRS without complaint. "I have no problems with these roads," he says simply, his mild-mannered face creasing into a grin. "I am committed to CRS and its work."

The secret of his driving ease may be in his former career. Before he came to work for CRS, Fayyaz drove the large, decorated trucks that haul everything from 10-ton loads of sand to small herds of goats all over Pakistan. Wrenching the comparatively small pickups up and down the hills is light work for him.

Though most would consider working in Besham a hardship—the land is rough, communication is difficult, and his family lives in the distant city of Peshawar—Fayyaz is upbeat about his work. "The mountains are very beautiful, and there is good staff here," he says.

"Education is a very important project, especially for Kohistan district, because the people are so poor and live in very remote areas. Their communities are much worse off compared to many other communities in Pakistan. So it is important that education is available here for these people."

CRS staff, and the people of Kohistan, are lucky to have a dedicated man like Fayyaz looking out for them.

Joe Lapp is a photojournalist working with CRS Pakistan. He recently visited education programs in the country.