Classes lift Afghanistan's war widows

Muslima cradles a scared chicken in her arms, tending to it with all the careful treatment due a precious object. She gently hands it to her teacher, Farima, who is lecturing a roomful of about 25 women on the best way to care for the bird. Farima's students, all widows, are eagerly attentive.

Although long past school age, these women - most of whom have children of their own - have never been to school themselves. This dark, mud-walled room in Muslima's home is their first classroom. They sit on the floor leaning against the walls, their faces lined in concentration. This poultry-raising class has the potential to guide them from unemployment to self-sufficiency.

In Afghanistan, where many families have lost husbands and sons during 23 years of continual warfare, widows have suffered a particularly severe fate. In a nation with a fractured infrastructure and, at $250 a year, one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the world, many widows are left without relatives able to take them in or offer even modest financial support.

In Kabul alone there are an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 of these women. Only about one in five Afghan women can read and write, one of the lowest rates in the world. Uneducated, illiterate, and lacking basic job skills, many widows are left to fend for themselves.

During Taliban times, severe restrictions on women denied them the right to leave their homes. Even today, with the Taliban defeated, many Afghan women are still reluctant to step outside their houses, and traveling or walking anywhere without a male escort can be an uncomfortable experience for some.

Their attempts to earn a living usually mean fighting against societal taboos. Without education, these widows at best can only use the skills they know from home life. They might clean houses or become tailors.

The most desperate are reduced to begging or even to prostitution.

Aware of the widows' plight, the international relief group CARE started the Kabul Widows Emergency Food Program in 1996. Today, approximately 10,000 widows and their families - about 60,000 people - receive food assistance every month. A large sack of wheat flour, a smaller sack of beans, cooking oil, and salt provide a family of five about half of their monthly food requirements. Home visits by aid workers confirm a family's eligibility: a female-headed household with no property and at least two children, and no son older than 16. A typical widow in the program is an illiterate 30-year-old with five children.

In a barren field on the edge of Kabul, an endless blue line of burqa-clad figures patiently wait their turn to show their documents and receive their monthly handouts. Samia Merza Mohammed, mother of six, heads out with her wheelbarrow full of foodstuffs. Her husband was killed 10 years ago. She has received food aid for seven years.

Yet as grateful as the widows are for the assistance, simply feeding them will not liberate them from a life of dependency.

"I used to wash clothes at other people's houses," says Samia. "I don't have any other job because I can't read or write."

That's why CARE's program for Humanitarian Assistance for Women of Afghanistan (HAWA) includes vocational training and literacy classes designed for women like Muslima.

Widowed 11 years ago, with four children to feed, Muslima (who like many Afghan women, only uses her first name) was fortunate that her father-in-law supported her, but when he died two years ago, she faced destitution. Through this income-generating program, she is learning how to raise chickens so she can eat or sell their eggs. If she can earn just $1 a day, she can start supporting her family.

Poultry farming is just one of the classes the widows can take. CARE surveyed the women about their preferences for vocational training. At the top of the list were poultry raising and beauty-salon training. They also suggested carpet weaving, silk screening, spinning wool, engraving, and bagmaking.

Nafisa Nakara's classmates hold a small piece of white fabric taut as she pulls a wooden bar across a silkscreen, letting the green paint pass onto the cloth through the spaces left open by a stencil.

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