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How Afghanistan’s urban gardens are changing women’s lives
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, June 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – It may look like they’re
just planting and weeding, but for the women tending the public gardens of
Jalalabad, the tasks represent far more: the rare chance to work outside the
home in one of Afghanistan’s most conservative and unstable provinces.
A hood and scarf partially hiding their faces, the women working in the
eastern city’s public gardens wear an ample fluorescent orange work blouse —
like their male colleagues — which contrasts sharply with the deep green of
the grass.
It is a dapper take on the traditional sky-blue burqa worn by the few
other women seen in public in Jalalabad.
For six days a week the women gardeners — all of them poor, and many of
them widowed — are busy between the rose hedges and the fruit trees.
Their salary, amounting to roughly $130 per month, is for most of them the
first they have ever earned.
“Men think the women can work only inside their home. By doing this, we
are showing to everybody the women can do much more,” says team leader
Lailuma Shirzad, 26, so wrapped in hood and scarf that only her eyes show.
Employing women was not an obvious choice in Nangarhar.
The province — home to the Tora Bora mountain range, where Al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden hid after the 9/11 attacks — is now a stronghold of
the Islamic State group, where they compete with the Taliban.
The United Nations agency UN-Habitat, which is behind the initiative, had
to negotiate hard with families.
“For most women, this is the first work experience out of the home,” said
Mohammad Nader Sargand, head of UN-Habitat’s “Clean and Green City” programme
in Jalalabad.
But the culture of Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in eastern
Afghanistan, “imposes so many restrictions on women, far more than Islam,” he
says. “It’s not allowed for women to go outside without a man of the family.”
MORE/MR/ 1050 hrs
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– Pashtun bastions –
The programme, launched in 2016, aims to create, rehabilitate and maintain
urban parks in Afghanistan’s main cities by employing the most vulnerable:
including women and those displaced by war.
Some 8,000 apprentice gardeners selected from among these populations have
been hired in a dozen provinces, including Kabul.
Among them are 1,000 women. One hundred of them, aged 18 to 60, are active
in Jalalabad.
According to the World Bank, 19 percent of Afghan women had official jobs
in 2017.
“Jalalabad and Kandahar have been proved the most difficult areas to work
in,” says Sargand, citing the southern city that is the birthplace of the
Taliban and, like Jalalabad, a Pashtun and conservative bastion.
In an Asia Foundation study in May 2017, 66 percent of Pashtun Afghans
surveyed accepted the idea of women working outside the home — compared to
74 percent of the national average.
“The main concern was to make sure that women would not be in contact with
men outside the family,” says Sargand.
“In the first week, brothers and husbands continually checked that their
virtue and dignity were preserved.”
– ‘Difficult, not impossible’ –
Most of the women are untrained widows, their husbands’ deaths leaving
them destitute in a country where men are often the sole breadwinners in
their families.
Najiba, in her 40s, advances with a billhook in hand in Bibi Saira, one of
the five gardens of Jalalabad where the programme is run.
“People in the country say I shouldn’t come and work with men but I am
very happy to do that work and I am really happy to come here,” she laughs.
“I hope my daughters will be able to join me too.”
Torpaikay, a delegate from the Ministry of Women who goes by one name,
explains that most of these women were already attending social workshops
organised by the UN.
“Afghan women are powerful, they can work if given the same opportunities
(as men) and they want it,” she adds.
“But this is the first time that they are given a chance to work,” she
adds. “It’s difficult, but not impossible.”
In the absence of funding, the greening agenda for Afghan cities is set to
end in June in Jalalabad and by December elsewhere.
But with the support of enthusiastic municipalities, UN-Habitat hopes to
convince donors to continue funding the programme.
Zalmay Akhehar, a community leader in Jalalabad, is in any case also
convinced that in this case, women do a better job.
“Here women are sweeping the paths. If we stop, we’ll have garbage
everywhere.”
BSS/AFP/MR/1050 hrs