Looking forward to a retreat

By Chiade O'Shea in the Kalash valley, north Pakistan

Kalash men are not allowed into the women's retreat, or Bashali

For Nasira Bibi, a monthly break from her busy job and home life comes as a welcome relief.

She works throughout her valley as a midwife's assistant and also fulfils her role as a wife and a mother to two daughters at home.

Mrs Bibi, like all Kalash women, spends a week each month in the Bashali - a house of retreat - while she menstruates.

It's also the place where mothers give birth to their children and stay during the first three months of their babies' lives.

"If you have good friends in there, then it's fun," she says of the all-female preserve. "The Bashali is nice and quiet after the house."

Pure and impure

This retreat is an important part of the religious culture of Pakistan's minority Kalash population.

We don't really have any pain relief, but as a favour we sometimes give the women our own paracetamol Nasira Bibi, midwife's assistant

The Kalash believe that people, animals and places have an inherent level of purity. This guides many aspects of everyday life, as well as spiritual rituals.

Goats are considered "onjesta" (pure), for example, while chickens are very "pragata" (impure).

Chickens are not allowed in the house in case they "contaminate" the house's purity, while goats are sacrificed in purification ceremonies.

High ground is seen as more pure than village level and, in general, men are regarded as more onjesta than women.

Boys who are still virgins and shamans are the purest.

When menstruating and around the time of childbirth, women are considered to be at their most pragata.

These principles inform many of the rhythms of the communities.

Men take the goats to pasture in the spring. Women go below the level of the village to wash themselves and their clothes.

'Good fun'

Each month, during their period, women leave for the Bashali.

Hazrat Gul, mother of one son, looks forward to her break from the routine of housework.

"We make rice, chapattis, eat lots of food and sing all day," she says. "It's fun because it's all girls and no men."

But Mrs Bibi and Mrs Gul say there is another, more distressing, side to the Bashali.

The conditions in most are dirty; many can only be described as squalid, difficult in particular for women preparing to give birth.

Until recently, family houses had no running water or toilets and dirt floors that could not be washed.

The Bashalis are the same, but as communal buildings with no specific owner many have fallen into near-derelict states.

Kalash aesthetics

As a subsistence farming community with few financial resources, the cost of rebuilding the Bashalis is beyond consideration.

I don't know how to count, but I know I've delivered a lot of babies in 10 years Bibi Jan, midwife

NGO worker Athanasios Lerounis raised funds in his native Greece to construct a new Bashali in Krakal village in Bumborat.

"We didn't need any tools to pull the building down, we just pushed it with our hands," says the volunteer, who now lives in Bumborat.

When Hazrat Gul gave birth to her son a year ago, she travelled to Krakal's Bashali, even though there were several much nearer home.

"It's very nice there, very clean," she says.

Not all Bashalis like this new one in Krakal are clean

The building was constructed to Western standards with the aesthetics of Kalash architecture.

A shower room, plumbed toilets and washable concrete floor are the foreign influences. Hanging from a stone and timber veranda roof is a typical Kalash carved wooden cradle.

The goat fertility symbol has been carved into the wood structure according to the religious tradition. But this level of attention is rare.

For Mrs Bibi, who delivers babies in neighbouring Rumbur valley, the squalid environment of most Bashalis is distressing.

She herself has given birth to two daughters in the buildings.

In winter, a small stove provides inadequate heating to stave off the pneumonia that claims some newborns' lives.

"Thirty-five babies were born in Rumbur over the winter; three died," says Mrs Bibi.

Dark stains on the dirt floor are testament to women giving birth on the bare ground.

Where toilets exist, plumbing is inadequate to carry away the sewage. Cooking and giving birth take place within a few metres of one another.

Complications

The Dai, or traditional midwife, and her assistants have little medical knowledge or equipment and rely on experience.

The goat is pure and symbolises fertility

"I don't know how to count, but I know I've delivered a lot of babies in 10 years," says Bibi Jan, an elderly Dai who never went to school.

The younger generation receive training from nearby nursing staff, but still have limited resources.

"We don't really have any pain relief, but as a favour we sometimes give the women our own paracetamol or ORS (oral rehydration salts)," Nasira Bibi says.

If a woman suffers complications, there is little help.

"They teach us that if there is excessive bleeding the woman should go to hospital immediately," she says.

But the nearest hospital is at least two hours away by jeep in Chitral.

"There is always a danger they will die on the road."