Roshan the camel brings books to Pakistani home school children Educational News

The camel has no price to pay: books for children who are unable to go to school due to coronary artery disease.

The Roshan camel, which is roaming the desert in the far southwest of Pakistan, carries an invaluable burden: books for children who can no longer go to school due to coronary artery disease.

School children living in remote villages that are too crowded for vehicles on the streets wear the best clothes and set out to get to know Roshan. They crowd around the animal shouting, “Here’s the camel!”

Schools in Pakistan were closed in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and have only opened since then, with approximately 50 million school-age children and university students told to continue their education from home.

It has been especially difficult in places like Balochistan, where in many towns there is almost no Internet access.

High school principal Raheema Jalal, who co-founded the Gamel Library project with her sister, the federal minister, said she set up the library last August because she wanted children in her remote hometown to continue learning despite schools being closed.

The project is collaborating with the Women’s Education Trust and the Alif Laila Book Bus Society, two NGOs that run 36-year-old children’s library projects in the country.

Roshan takes the book to four different towns in the Kech district, visits each town three times a week, and spends about two hours at a time. The children borrow the books and return them the next time they visit Roshan.

“I like picture books because when I look at pictures and photos I understand the story better,” he told nine-year-old Ambranen Imran Reuters.

The children are next to the Roshan camel who brought the books to Mand [Fuzul Bashir/via Reuters]

Jalal hopes to continue with the project and cover more towns, but he needs funding: about $ 118 a month is needed for Roshan.

Murad Ali, Roshan’s owner, said he was surprised when he first came into contact with the project, but he believed the camels were the most sensible means of transportation.

She enjoys traveling and seeing happy children – and still earns as much as she used to when she transported wood.

Baluchistan is almost half of Pakistan in terms of area, but a sparsely populated province is also the poorest country.