How An 8-Year-Old Girl Saved Up To Buy A Donkey Cart To Provide For Her Family

It’s 2022, can we please retire the idea that poverty somehow automatically equals to uncouthness? We assume that just because someone is poor, or that they lack education or privilege, it must mean that they are jahil, or that they aren’t wise, or kind. There are people who actually think that the poor shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they lack ‘sense’. Or that every single poor person lacks grace and ethics. That vices like rape, theft and animal abuse are only perpetrated by people of a certain socio-economic background. But this problematic thinking has to go.

One recent example that contradicts the perception people tend to have about the poor, the less privileged or the uneducated is of an 8-year-old girl who recently approached a donkey-camp organized by animal welfare organization and shelter the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF).

At one of their donkey-camps, ACF saw an 8-year old girl walk in with her donkey. The girl’s name was Nughma, and at the tender age of 8, she was the sole breadwinner in her family. Her father had deserted her and her family when she was only 6 years old, and since then she had been saving money to buy a donkey, which she managed to do at age 7. With her donkey, she transports wood from one part of Karachi to another, and had managed to salvage a broken cart from the garbage which she uses in her endeavors.

While the people at ACF offered to put Nughma and her younger brother in school, she remained adamant that the donkey-cart only be used for work. Even when the ACF management offered to give her a monthly ration if she went to school, she declined and said she didn’t believe them, and chose to work instead. This entire interaction is so heartwarming and gives rise to many questions, most importantly, what kind of society and state are we building where children are forced to provide for their families in the most taxing of ways? How badly has the state failed that an 8-year-old girl had to have the prudence to save up to buy a donkey? That an 8-year-old chooses wages over school?

Furthermore, Nughma’s donkey showed no signs of neglect, and was kept in such perfect pristine condition that it really makes you think why we’re so quick to associate poverty with a lack of ethics. And if anything, recent events have shown that your socio-economic status has no bearing on your morality.