Inadvertent consequences

Women have learned to maneuver around the patriarchal system in an intelligent way and which does not disturb the status quo.

By HEIDI KINGSTONE
Afghan women2_521 (photo credit: Lorenzo Tugnoli)
Afghan women2_521
(photo credit: Lorenzo Tugnoli)
Gul Jan looks like a 1,000-year old egg. She has a long gray braid tucked under her faded hijab, two bottom teeth are all that are left in her mouth, and her face is a complex web of folds and wrinkles. Even though I can’t understand the words she is speaking, I can understand her happiness.
Gul Jan is the beneficiary of one of the many hundreds, probably thousands, of foreign aid projects popular throughout Afghanistan in an attempt to win hearts and minds and, in theory, contribute to economic empowerment and political stability. Many of these projects consist of a gender mainstreaming to enable women who remain the most vulnerable sector of society to have some security. I met Gul Jan when I traveled to the north to write about projects funded by the German government through GTZ, a private international enterprise. It was a fascinating opportunity to see another part of the country – the four provinces of Kunduz, Balkh, Badakhshan and Takhar.
Which is how I met Gul Jan. Nothing provides a sense of impact like the women themselves. As the wife of a farmer, she dried vegetables grown in her garden on the roof of her house or under a tree, where they would collect dust and be eaten by insects. There was no market; and when there was, the price was low.
This German program provided her with a solar dryer – low-level technology that is not more complicated than a table, a net and a solar-powered heating tube. She produces a nutritious commodity and sells her produce for a fair price at the market. That was the intended consequence, to make women more economically independent and help increase family living standards. Even small amounts of money can make significant differences in one of the world’s poorest and most food-insecure countries in the world. The common quoted statistic is that the average Afghan family earns less than $600 a year.
The unintended consequence was even more powerful. “After I went to WEA [Women’s Entrepreneurship Association, funded by GTZ], I saw other women,” said Gul Jan, eager to talk. “Now I know if you sit at home and are jobless, this is not good. I come here and am encouraged. I can tell other women in the village.”
For most of us who read that last statement, it would seem obvious. Of course, women should go out if they want to. The context is important.
Like many, many women in Afghanistan, going out is an issue; maybe not for all of them, as many do work, but for an overwhelming majority, being inside the home is where society and their husbands expect them to be. One Pashto saying makes the point: “A woman should be at home or in the grave.”
So for Gul Jan to see another small slice of life is even more precious than the skills she was taught. And she is absolutely correct. She can tell other women in the village. That gives women the power of knowledge. Like Gul Jan’s originally dusty and insecteaten vegetables, her new nutritious vegetables that she can take to market have sowed a seed in her brain that women can work, that they can get out of the house, that they have a useful purpose, that they can think, that there is another way.
Women remain at the bottom of a big high heap in Afghanistan. Disabled women come even further down. Women who are poor or who have lost a leg fight against all sorts of prejudice in a country that has a harsh, intolerant landscape, internal and external, as well as a harsh climate.
In Kunduz there is a leather factory where disabled men and disabled women work producing bags and other accessories. They work in separate rooms to conform to the cultural norms.
The province of Kunduz has become much more unstable in the past few years. The Taliban runs shadow governments cutting off access to certain areas. The Taliban frontline is only three kilometers from the provincial center, Kunduz City. Should the Taliban return in force, it will enforce its strict codes of behavior, and women will once again be pushed behind locked doors.
Every day, eight women come to work at the leather factory. They are picked up and transported to the studio. The women’s work is quite impressive considering they have only trained for three months. Afghan leather is tough, closer to cardboard than the finely processed finished products that we are used to. This workshop teaches them skills that they will be able to translate into economic viability.
The eight women stand or sit around a large table in a small room and work and chat and gossip. They are quite young. Some have brought their children, one has brought a sibling. Some wear nail polish, all wear head scarves and all are united by being at the bottom of this terrible heap of humanity. Each has lost a leg through either stepping on a land mine or from a rocket attack.
Pari wears purple nail polish. She is short, and it looks as if a hump is forming on her back. At first she is very quiet as she plays with the tools used to cut the leather and glue and stitch the bags and just avoids answering the questions I ask the group.
As the discussion rolls on, her personality starts to emerge. She has lots of ideas and is quite talkative, smart and insightful. She discusses how close the women have become and how much the friendships mean to each of them and how it unites them – all of them, she says. No one is left out. That isn’t the typical measure used to evaluate projects, but it seals the deal for me. If I were a disgruntled German taxpayer, after hearing these women I would change my mind. It breaks my heart.
Then Lalimeh, another of the women, says that she prefers to be with women like herself. She has had eight prostheses over the many years since her leg was blown off in a rocket attack that destroyed her house when she was six. Since then, none has been comfortable. “Children called me names when I was young,” she says. “I prefer to be around people like myself.”
Pari, who is unmarried, says that being at home with nothing to do is boring. Getting out of the house with somewhere to go and having something to do while earning some vital income has changed her life. She hopes it will continue.
No matter how much is written about the deplorable condition of women’s lives in Afghanistan, it is not enough. To hear these women talk about the importance of being together, how much it meant to them to have this group of friends, how they hoped to find the money they needed for transportation, all the other ideals of sustainable development faded away. That is not the point of any of the programs or projects, but it is the human side and probably even more important, as it offers hope, and sometimes there is nothing else.
Pashtun’s situation is different. She came three months ago to another project and has learned to spin wool. The day I met her, she had brought her five-year-old daughter with her to work on the morning shift. At the end of the project, she will be able to take the spinning wheel home and work there, like many other women do. “I will buy wool from the bazaar and spin it and sell it back to them and make a good income,” she says. Pashtun is 29 and has five children. Her husband is 78.
Changing a culture, in the naive way that was perhaps envisioned in the early days when the NATO forces went into Afghanistan at the invitation of the government, is a far cry from what will actually be done in the end. Daily life in Afghanistan continues to be a struggle. People are very very poor, the security situation is constantly deteriorating, there are few job opportunities. But Afghan men and women who work for foreign NGOs or other organizations also learn English; some even go to anger management classes – all unexpected consequences of what we are supposed to be doing.
The debate about aid, whether it works or not, or what the West is doing here, throws up big questions that include the serious one about transforming women’s lives by teaching them skills so they can be economically independent. The jury may still be out, but on a micro level, moments of joy in otherwise hard lives, moments of freedom, make the attempt worthwhile. The worry is what next, and that scenario is not looking good.