“We were alone, when we left Pakistan to come to Afghanistan. We do not have any family here who could have supported us,” says Fazil, 60, father of seven. He is sitting on a brown carpet in front of his house in Kabul, Afghanistan, surrounded by his wife, Sherbano, 35, and his four daughters. “We were living in a camp for the internally displaced in Pakistan,” says Fazil. In 2015, he was one of 1.5 million internally displaced people in Pakistan. “I had hoped, that I could find work in Afghanistan. I was doing some shoe repairs in Pakistan, but I could not find a job here,” continues Fazil.
With a huge working-age population in Pakistan, an increasing number of workers are moving to other countries for employment. After India, Pakistan annually sends abroad the second-largest group of workers in South Asia, mainly to the Gulf region. However, in Afghanistan the unemployment rate is the highest as it ever has been. In 2021, the unemployment rate surged up to 13.3 percent of the population.
Living in a refugee camp in Kabul, Fazil had to provide for his family. “I went through the garbage cans to find food. I often went at night and picked up the rubbish from laborers at construction sites. During the day I went out on the street and begged for food. Anything to feed my family,” Fazil remembers. They didn’t cook back then: they just ate what they could find and, on some days, they did not eat at all. 95% of the population in Afghanistan is facing food insecurity.
Currently there is no food shortage in Afghanistan, the markets are still full of fruits and vegetables, but many people cannot afford to buy food for their families. Increasing global energy and food prices, combined with the drought’s impact on agriculture, continue to drive inflation in Afghanistan. In the year after the political change of August 2021, the price of the food basket had increased by almost 35 percent.
Due to his hypertension, Fazil is nearly completely paralyzed on the left side of his body. His wife Sherbano has already had three surgeries in the last two years. “The only medicine that I can afford is what is in this bottle. I blow on it and pray and wish that it will help my wife,” says Fazil while holding a blue plastic bottle filled with water. Last year, the family lost their three-year-old daughter, who suffocated on a bean.
“There has been a lot of tragedy in our life, but now we can continue our life through the support of CARE,” says the father. CARE helped the family by giving them 40 chickens, equipment to feed the chickens and by building a coop for the animals. The family also received training on how to take care of the little farm and the animals.
Sherbano and her daughters sell the eggs from the chickens in the neighborhood and generate income that helps them with their daily expenses. “I do not have to go begging anymore and I am very thankful. We can now develop our farm further to save my family. We already have 20 new chickens. This is our main source of income. Without this, we do not have anything,” says Fazil while his wife Sherbano enters the chicken coop with a green plastic bowl and starts collecting the eggs.
Today she collects 52 of them. In a small tent in the courtyard of her home, she puts a metal pan on a small blue gas cooker, to start dinner for her family. The eggs are not only used to generate income but also to feed her family. “Now we can eat twice a day. I am very happy that we survived and do not go hungry anymore,” concludes Fazil.