Herat is a big, ancient, and beautiful city with nice people and many historical places. People speak Pashto and Dari. And street children are a familiar sight here. Every day in the city and the villages I see many street children working hard. Some of them not only work the streets, but spend half of the day studying. They look very young and helpless, both boys and girls, all under eighteen years old, and many of them are susceptible to crises and social problems such as drugs and violence.
Street children in Afghanistan work to provide the family’s income. They beg, shine shoes, clean vehicles, and sell newspapers, glasses, chewing gum, plastic bags, phone cards, and flowers. Sometimes they are abused physically and emotionally, and they get involved in robbery and drug trafficking.
Most of these street children are refugees from the many insecure places in my country, or their parents were killed in the war. They are always hungry and have limited access to medical care, food, education, protection, and shelter because they have to work from dawn to dusk to support their families. Thousands of children work the streets to help their families through the harsh winter.
I recently graduated from Herat University and while at the university, my research was about street children. Despite the progress in school enrollment over the last two years, half of school-age children are out of school. Some of these street children’s families are addicted to narcotics and their parents force them to work in the streets. Other street children simply live in poverty or insecurity.
One twelve-year-old boy told me, “My father is dead and I have my mother and three sisters. I work to support them and pay the monthly rent for our house.”
Afsana, a street girl who sells plastics, told me she sells on the street in the afternoon but in the morning she goes to school because she wants to become a teacher and teach street children. “I want people to help me so I can achieve my dreams.” I did my research with a group of my classmates at the university. I found that despite the problems that street children have, they are very eager to study and help their families escape from poverty.
When I finished this project, I concluded that the government must recognize and help these street children, and provide them with temporary shelter and access to education. Most of these families have too many children and they need to be taught about birth control. These children need a healthy environment so they can learn. Another priority is to open age-appropriate workshops and offer skills training to these children. I believe that children also should have the right to play and experience joy. I hope that one day all these children achieve their goals and get access to education and have a bright future.
By Khadija N.
UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein
These children sound amazing! I can’t imagine being so young, working to provide for a family and still determined to get an education. Their strength is admirable but I can see that they could easily fall prey to predatory people who will lead them down the wrong path — and abuse them as well. I hope that the government will pay attention to your research and find a way to take care of these special children who so desperately need help. These street children have the potential to grow up to be a powerful part of Afghanistan’s future. Thank you for sharing their stories.
Your essay leaves me better informed. It is too easy for people like me, who are far from the situation you describe, to hold a simple stereotype of “street children.” But of course, every situation is different. Thank you for representing these children, with compassion, for your readers.
Salam, I have already read your essay, Weldon. when i read your essay i interested to talk with you more on your research about street children and i like to contact with you, because my field of working is also on street children.if it is possible contact with me by this this phone number. +93 795 057563
Some of theses street childrens are soo talented,i see alots of knowledge on them,but due to financial problem they can not afford it to goto school.
Its really hurts when i see them at all.in balkh (mazar e sharif) its like common thing that childrens works and strugle at small ages.its really hurt.weldone in you r hand writhing and best of luck for ur mission.im with u.
This passage reminded me with the plot in “a thousand splendid suns ” when Rasheed asked Aziza to become a street begger. I feel like Aziza’s life is similar to the poor child in the passage, because they are both forced to go begging on the street in order to support the family. This passage made me have a better understanding of that book, and leads me feel extremely sympathy with those little children who have no choice but to go begging on the street because of their family’s poor condition.
The experience of those children breaks my heart. They were born in this living case that having no chance to get education and even hard to feed themselves. It’s so cruel for those little children because they are too small and have no ability to fight for their right. Hope your essay can let more and more people to know there are so many poor kids in the world so they can help them. May those children can grow up healthily and happily without any worries about living. Thank you for writing this essay and it will hope those poor kids a lot. May the world has no war in the future.
I feel sorry to them, for being so young to take the pressure of living under such poor condition. They do not have the freedom that children from the U.S. have, and I cannot imagine how much physical and mental stress they have.
I think at the same time of reading the stories, it is more important to spread them out in our lives, and let more people to know these stories. I hope things would get better with the helps of humanitarian organizations and one thing will be proved that love could overcome all the hardness in the world. And thank you for letting this story to be known by us and inspire us.
The essay is very encouraging. To work and support your own mother and three sisters is a very hard job to do. If offered better opportunities, I think they will be very talented. Their dreams are really inspiring and I know they will fulfill it. I really support the children with determination and I believe they are the future of the nation. I can relate the story to my dad, he also went through the same experience as he studied and supported himself and his family of seven people. He did not get any support whatsoever and was very determined. I am really impressed with the essay and it encourages me.
Hi Khadija, thank you so much for writing this article! As a tenth grader who’s about to study Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, it is an honor to read an article about many of Afghanistan’s children working to support their families. It is very inspiring to read about how many children make the best of their situations. The circumstances they are in are not great and I do hope they receive more help soon, if not already. I agree with your opinion that the government should provide children with education and temporary shelter. In response to what you wrote about families needing to be educated on birth control, I know from prior knowledge that many families have many children because there is not a guarantee that every child will survive due to poverty. This article also reminded me to not take education, food, shelter, and other blessings of life for granted. I also feel sadness in my heart that children all around the world, not just in Afghanistan, need to work so hard to support their family. But it also warms my heart that many of these children really want to support their families and work whole-heartedly. In addition, I completely support the children having bigger dreams for their lives in the future, and I do hope that many of them will be fulfilled. Thank you again for writing this informative article.
Dear Khadij,
Thank you so much for providing us this vivid but sorrowful story from your own experience. From the words you described the poor kids’ lives, I totally emphasize them and that really makes me feel not only sorrowful for them but also enraged about the governments. They did not carry the appropriate responsibility to take care of all the individuals in the city, especially these kids in needed. I agree with what you said about the government should help the kids out, and if they do so I believe there will be eventually be fewer and fewer children suffering from poverty or starving.
Thank you
First off, the essay itself was really well written and detailed. It really opened my eyes to the city. One can never really understand the situation of Herat unless they’re actually there. I myself cannot even fathom some of these hardships that children and families face. Education in the United States oftenly seems like a given, however, like you stated, it’s a privilege. The youth are trying to break out of the hardships that their families carry, however, ultimately some will fall prey and continue to take part in that cycle. It’s a very sad, devastating, yet powerful thing for them to take the role on as the providers of their households. With their drive and tenacity, they probably could have thrived in school… As the author of this piece, I really admire you for being able to be one of those few to break out of the society’s norms and utilize your education. Even going as far as to ‘come back’ to the community of Herat and go to lengths to improve upon it. By observing these occurrences, documenting, and addressing problems that need to be fixed, waves are being made. I truly hope that the government will listen and implement them in the future.
Dear Khadija,
First of all, I want to say is that these children are amazing. They are so great. I am seventeen years old but I cannot believe what am I doing to make money if one day my parents do not have money, to be honest. Some of them also noticed the importance of studying that at least they spend half of the day studying. Second of all, I feel so sorry. For me, I live in Vietnam which not a really rich country but studying is essential, and most children in Vietnam can still go to school. But in Herat, I believe it is something we call “privilege”. Yes, not all the kids around the world can be treated fairly and can go to school. I hope the children will be better in the future. Be brave and stay beautiful
Dear Kadija,
I thank you for the new insight that you have given me about; you have not just told us about the lives of the children of the Afghanistan society, but also a hint of the general urban life of Afghanistan. The children have to go through a lot of pain to support their family, just for the parents to either overdose or die of other causes, and they end up also getting abused because of the parents’ drug problems. It is because of this that I feel bad for the urban society of Afghanistan, and I am glad that I saw this article since history textbooks and sometimes English stories cannot really describe these kinds of issues of society as well as this article has.
Dear Khadija,
Your passage provides valuable context to the crisis of street children in Herat and around the world, a topic that is grossly under discussed in popular culture in the West. I believe that many people make assumptions about street children without understanding their story. In many cases, they are looked on very negatively without first understanding their story. Rather than looking at them negatively, your story provides details that humanize their struggle and thoroughly makes the case for taking more action to provide support for them and their families. I especially found the details about drug use and violence very interesting because it helps to provide cultural context towards these young people. Oftentimes, westerners tend to assume that street children are disconnected from the modern world; in some stone age where there are none of these “modern” problems like drug addiction and violence. However, similar to the desperation we also see in the west, you highlight that multiple intersecting issues can push people into the streets and that the experiences and struggles of people in poverty in our globalized world are often similar. Overall, your work is very good at both humanizing the struggles of these children and their families and showing the importance of working towards a constructive solution to the problems facing these street children and their families.
Thanks and best regards,
Timothy