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Three women in the mountains of Tajikistan

21.10.2016

Women are among the most affected by energy poverty. In the high mountain village of Roshorv in Pamir, Tajikistan, women give birth to children in the dark, cook in smoky kitchens and endanger themselves by collecting firewood in the mountains. Lack of access to modern energy services and clean technologies deprives women of possibilities for better education, a social life and individual development. Read three personal stories of women from Roshorv.

Oshurbika Malabekova, 54 years old (pictured above)

“I am 54 years old and I live in Roshorv village in Bartang Valley. My family consists of six people. In our house we always face problems with the lighting and heating. Cooking meals and boiling water requires fuel, but firewood here is a big deficit. It is expensive to buy. In winter time, it costs 400 Tajik Somoni to bring a vehicle with firewood from the forest, plus 500 Tajik Somoni for petroleum and 300 Somoni more for the driver’s service. But we also need to buy meat and forage for the livestock. And we spend a little to buy cloth.

There is not any forest left already. Everything has been cut down. Even the grasses and teresken (local bush) have almost disappeared. Livestock have nothing to eat, and when strong winds are blowing, we can’t leave home. Sometimes it even takes the clothes away. If we had a forest, we would have less dust storms. We have to collect firewood from another bank of the river. And it is very difficult to carry them from one bank to another. The water is rough and cold. That's why I got sick. Now I can’t see, and my legs feel pain. We walk far away and carry over heavy bundles when we come back. We pass the river by wading. Because of the cold water, we get ill and also the firewood gets wet. When we burn it, there is a smoke everywhere, and the children breathe it.

Sometimes we use gas. By the summer it finishes. Usually for 130 Tajik Somoni a driver takes gasbags for re-fueling. Refilled gasbags are brought back from Rushan (district center town) or Khorog (regional center town). When we wait for gasbags, we are forced to use diesel oil. We use around 1 litre of it per day. We want to get rid of these sufferings. In order to change the situation, we need to have access to electricity. We also need to use solar water heaters and solar cookers to make our houses well insulated.”

Abrigul Nuridinova, 45 years old

“I am 45 years old. We are six people. Our family has no incomes, only one of my sons helps me sometimes. He left home to work in Russia, and he has been there for more than four years. Other children help around the house. We have no other jobs and have no income. The children could not get a good education since we had no funds.

When the children were small, every day with my husband we gathered the firewood. Once in the winter while searching for firewood, we strayed too far away. My husband’s legs were frostbitten, and they almost had to be amputated. Now he is disabled, and he cannot carry heavy things. Now he is only looking over our plot of land. He doesn’t get a disability pension. Our family has no money to buy gas or kerosene and therefore, we use only firewood. When my husband felt we were in real trouble, we sent one of our sons away for a work in another country, but he came back since something went wrong there.

All year round, we gather firewood or bush. In winter, mainly our sons collect them. This is daily and difficult work. We have no money to change our old oven to a new and good one. We have no technologies that use renewable power sources. Now there is not even enough forage for our livestock pasturing because all the greenery around has been cut down. We need to have electricity in the village permanently, as well as to have all possible devices using alternative energy.”

Asliniso Sabzikova, 40 years old

“I live in Roshorv. My family consists of eight people, out of which three are school-aged children, two students and three adults - me, my husband and father-in-law. The elder children study in Khorog. My son will be a physicist and my daughter a philologist. There were not any solar or other technologies in our house before. Our Income in the family is the pension of my father-in-law. My husband and I farm and deal with livestock. When there is no power supply, we spend money on diesel oil for lighting and other needs. We consume up to 1 litre of diesel oil per day. Here it costs around 10 Tajik Somoni. Sometimes we use a kerosene oven to cook a meal. Now we also buy gas. It gets refueled approximately once every month and a half.

The pension release is delayed still. We have no money to buy gas and diesel. We have to go for firewood every day. Often we do it together with neighbours. We get up at 5.00 in the morning and go at 6.00. Sometimes we go far away from home at a distance over 10-15 kilometres (km). Sometimes we spend the night in the mountains and then in the morning come back with firewood. Two years ago we bought a metal oven in Basid village for 500 Tajik Somoni when the old one broke. We still use this oven.

To deliver firewood we need to pay for a car, and we have no money for this. It is very difficult to go for firewood in the wintertime, and thus we cannot find enough of it. Our house is not winterized. There is almost always cold in winter, even inside. The window in the house is old. We close it in winter in order to protect against cold winds, and then inside it immediately becomes dark.

Once, when the children were small, we went with them for firewood. We gathered it for a very long time and passed over 30 km. Then the children felt completely bad from hunger and tiredness. During winter usually the men pick the firewood. This is difficult – the snow is around and often there is strong wind. The situation is difficult in our village now and nothing has changed yet.”

This material was developed by Little Earth within the project “Clean energy and women on the roof of the world”, supported by the US Forest Service.

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