LOST
CHILDHOOD
‘ I want to go to school but we don’ t have any money’
By KARIN RONNOW
B rothers Dawood and Alidad squatted next to an engine on the ground outside the mechanic’ s shop. Like mechanics everywhere, their hands, all the way to the tips of their short fingernails, were coated with dirt and oil. The smudges on their faces revealed where they had reached up to swat a fly or scratch an itch. Their brown work clothes – pants, a jacket or sweatshirt, and brown watchcaps – were so encrusted with oil and grease they looked like they’ d stand up by themselves.
“ Three or four years they’ ve been working here,” said Bashir, the mechanic who owns the shop in the local bazaar.“ They came here to work. We are good at our work. Any problem we can fix. So they are learning.”
The boys were 11 and 9 years old when they dropped out of school in Surkh Darah, a small mountain village southwest of here. They now live with relatives in this town on the Afghan-Tajik border and work full time to help support their impoverished family.
“ Our father comes regularly, takes money and goes back to home,” Dawood, 15, said shyly.“ My family is poor.”
As he spoke, 13-year-old Alidad listened quietly and shook his head when asked if he wanted to say anything.
The brothers worked side by side with
Khaliq Nazar, 15. Although he, too, has to work to help support his family, he has remained in school, attending classes at the boys’ high school in the morning before coming to work.
As the three boys squatted next to the engine, a few adult men who also work at the shop— some of whom also became mechanics when they were young boys— stood behind them, instructing the boys at every turn of the wrench.
An estimated 30 percent of Afghan children are forced to work everyday to help support their families. Some are orphans, or their families’ breadwinners were killed or disabled during the past 35 years of war. Others reflect the economic reality: In a country where roughly 70 percent of the population is illiterate and the average person earns only $ 570 a year, according to UNICEF, there is an unspoken expectation that children will pitch in to help feed their families.
Child labor is a reality everywhere Central Asia Institute( CAI) works. Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the top 10 countries in the world where children are at extreme risk of hazardous labor, according to Maplecroft, a UK risk-analysis think tank. Tajik children are also at high risk.
Brothers Dawood, far right, and Alidad, second from right, stand with another boy and a young man at the mechanic shop where they work in Ishkashim, Afghanistan. The two dropped out of school in order to work and help support their impoverished family.
In all three countries it is not unusual to see young children working long hours for“ small money” in shops or factories, on farms, and in rudimentary mining operations. Decreasing security, increasing conflict, and the global economic meltdown— which results in decreased donor money for education— have all made it worse, according to Maplecroft.
“ These children often work on the streets and in small car-service workshops at very
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