Afghan war widows build own homes

For the past decade, hundreds of Afghan war widows have gathered together on what has become known as ’Widow’s Hill." These women are living in severe poverty on a slope above a cemetery in an eastern neighborhood of Kabul and most of them have built their mud homes by hand. Three pots, 8 children, and that is about all she has. Except she has something many women in Afghanistan, who are widowed like her, do not have. Her own home. It’s called Zindabad- the women’s hill. Shaima came here over 2 years ago. Her husband, an Afghan soldier, was killed in combat and she had nowhere to go. No one to help her feed her children. Someone told her about this place where women lived, and for about 60 dollars, she bought a small piece of the rocky hillside above Kabul. An Afghan war widow said, "I built this house by myself. I would wake up from my dreams late at night and work. I had no one so I made the bricks by my hands, and it broke my nails." Shaima is very poor and there are few government services to help her and women like her. Her only income comes from trying to sell the bread she bakes, made with garbage and plastic as fuel. She sends her eldest child, who she says is 12 but looks half that, out every day to collect anything he can find. None of her kids go to school. They have no real shoes, no pens, no paper. They can’t go. But she is not your average Afghan woman. Women do not live on their own here. They cannot just go out and rent a house, or they will face discrimination, or threats. Shaima’s brother in law calls her a prostitute for being here. Yet she had nowhere else to go. Courtney Body said, "In Afghanistan when a woman becomes a widow, she usually has no option but to stay with her in-laws, doing their chores with no hope for their own future. These women literally took their lives into their own hands and a built a home for their kids, brick by brick." And Hasina is still doing that. She mixes the straw and mud that will hopefully help keep just a little bit of the heat in, and the cold out. But as they basically are squatting on this land, municipal services are almost non-existent. An Afghan war widow said, "In winter we have nothing to warm ourselves, no electricity, no water. We have nothing." Her work is hard but she does it for her four children. Her husband was killed many years ago when the Taliban were in power. Now she is in control. An Afghan war widow said, "The men were all killed and we alone made this place by ourselves. We made the women’s hill." It is still a difficult life, kids-if they are lucky enough to go to school, walk past open sewers and garbage. In bad weather, they all must climb up here in the mud and snow. The mud homes will fair better than the brick ones in earthquake prone Afghanistan. The picturesque view they have is of a city where many have made fortunes off of the foreigners war. But for the 20 women living here on this hill, they have a home, and they have made that achievement with all the odds set against them.