Gulnoro is a primary school teacher in the border town of Murghab, in Tajikistan’s Pamir. Her salary was about US$20. Gulnoro’s salary was barely enough to buy a sack of wheat in the isolated mountain region, where everything was expensive. Gulnoro’s husband just returned back from working in Russia, unemployed. She had to raise three children, one of whom with mental disabilities. “Life here is poor and difficult,” as she often said, “but as long as we have faith, we will survive.”

Murghab, Tajikistan, 2006