How to survive in a hungry nation: collecting grains that fall out of food aid sacks
This story first appeared in Zan Times
By Sana Atef
Sharifa, 8, sits in front of the World Food Programme’s office in Kandahar every day, waiting for the UN agency to distribute food. When it begins, she moves forward, but not to place an official handout in her white sack. Sharifa is there to collect the grains of wheat, rice, peas, and beans that fall out the sacks of other people. I approach her and start a conversation, asking her what she is doing there alone.
“People in here get flour, rice, peas, and other food items as aid every day,” she says in a slow gentle voice. “Sometimes the sacks have holes in them and grains fall off them. I collect these grains and take them home for my mother to make food for us.”
Besides collecting grain from the WFP office line-up, Sharifa also begs for money to buy bread for her family. Some days she can only get 30 afghanis, enough to buy three loaves of bread (each around 450 grams).
Sharifa, her three sisters, and their mother live in a one-room house with no kitchen or bathroom. It looks more like a ruin. Her mother, Amina, says their misery began two years ago when her husband, an army soldier, was killed. She recalls, “When my husband was alive, I lived like a queen. My husband had a good salary. We lived in a rental house, but that house had all the facilities.”
Amina says she didn’t have anywhere to go after her husband died. A friend of her husband’s had temporarily loaned her this house. Looking at Sharifa sorrowfully, Amina says, “My child leaves the house at 7:00 in the morning and comes back at 5:00 in the afternoon. In between, she begs for food to feed us. I am really worried about her security. The fact that she cannot go to school really bothers me.”
Amina does laundry to earn money for the family. “I get 20 to 30 afghani for washing people’s clothes. I visit different houses every day. It makes me very tired. My back and legs ache. No matter how much I work, I can never make ends meet,” says Amina.
She says she has visited the WFP office in Kandahar several times, asking for assistance. “The managers of this organization keep telling me that I am not on their list, therefore, I cannot receive aid. I asked them to put my name on the list, but they responded that the lists had been prepared beforehand,” says Amina. When Amina realized she wouldn’t receive anything from the WFP, she noticed the grains of wheat, rice, and beans that had fallen on the ground. “That day, I told my daughter to go and collect those grains so I can cook them for the family.”
Zan Times has reached out to WFP for comment, but they did not respond.
Amina and Sharifa aren’t alone. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, the country’s social and economic situation has worsened to the point that poverty and hunger are threats to 95 percent of Afghanistan’s population, the United Nations reported in March. The widowed and single-parent women suffer the most, because not only do poverty and hunger always hit them hard, but the Taliban’s restrictive policies, such as limitation on the movement of women without a male chaperone, makes it even more intolerable.
Lema is struggling to keep her family together. The mother of three has to work and provide for her family because her husband is paralyzed and needs treatment. Fully covered in a burqa, Lema sells vegetables in the market in Kandahar city. She says she has borrowed the money from one of her relatives in order to start that business. “I go to work at dawn and come back at dark, but I cannot earn more than 50 afghanis,” she tells Zan Times. “I am always worried about how to feed my children.”
Recently, her financial situation has gotten desperate. “I have to pay 2,500 afghani per month for house rent. I also have to pay for treatment of my husband, but the money that I earn barely suffices for buying food,” she explains to Zan Times. She hasn’t paid rent for the last four months nor has her husband received medical treatments. “The landlord has warned me several times to either pay the rent or vacate the house. Now, whenever the landlord comes, we do not open the door so that he thinks we are not home. In a situation like this, where can I go and what can I do?” says Lema. To help, her seven-year-old son collects burnable garbage from the streets so that they can use it as fuel when cooking.
Lema says no humanitarian organization has helped her or her family. “We are in desperate need of food, but we haven’t received any aid. Why isn’t there anyone to hear us and take our hand?” says Lema.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.