Kabul orphans live with squalor and disease

Conditions at Kabul’s only state run orphanage, home to 825 boys and girls, are bleak. Officials at the Taliban-administered facility told IRIN that poor hygiene, lack of sanitation and inadequate nutrition had led to serious health problems. This month alone has seen at least 50 cases of skin infections and chronic malaria. Relief efforts by international agencies are limited, and much more is needed to curb the rapidly deteriorating conditions. Short of the dozens of tiny faces eager to meet any foreigner, there is little indication that the 20 year-old building is an orphanage. Located in the middle of a dusty compound, the Tahia Maskan orphanage in the north of the city is for boys only. Girls coming under the aegis of Tahia Maskan are housed in a separate facility in the west of the city. The building is marked by a lack of doors and windows, which were looted by the Mujahidin fighters years ago. The compound is permeated by the stench of human excrement. The school’s sewerage system has been blocked for five years, and orphanage officials remain in a quandary over what to do. Within the bullet-scarred building, classrooms are furnished by a deteriorating array of broken chairs. As a result, children often sit on the floor. Decorating this despair is a neatly planted rose garden in the middle of the compound. Seemingly out of place, the garden does have a purpose. It was planted by the orphanage’s newly appointed administrator, Mawlawi Makhdum Abdullah, who told IRIN: “I wanted to give the children some hope, something nice to look at.” Recruited especially for the job by Taliban authorities five months ago, the 36 year-old former hotel manager has been given the arduous task of trying to improve conditions for the children. Government assistance is low and, according to Abdullah, the budget for the orphanage is generally paid in arrears. “Ours is a difficult task here,” Abdullah admits. “Children are humans entitled to food, shelter and health. I’m doing the best I can with limited resources,” he adds. Despite some assistance from aid agencies, resources are in short and much-needed supply. According to international aid agencies, there are over one million orphans in Afghanistan today, 28,000 of whom are roaming the streets of Kabul, scavenging for survival. At the orphanage, they range in age from six to sixteen, with new children arriving every day - “sometimes more than 30, sometimes 50”, Abdullah said. Some are brought by police, others by relatives. Of the 825 residents there, 80 percent are true orphans, having no mother, father, nor any other living relative. The other 20 percent is made up of children who have family outside, but unable to care for them. Twelve year-old Mohammaddullah and his eight year-old brother, Mehrullah, are typical of this. “My mother brought me here because we were poor and there was no food in the house to eat,” Mohammaddullah told IRIN. Only 120 of the orphans are girls. Many families unable to care for their children have left their boys at the compound hoping they could better adapt to the harsh conditions and would at least be fed. “Boys are more resilient,” Abdullah says with a smile. “We can’t absorb any more girls - we simply don’t have the facilities.” In addition to the ramshackle classrooms, there is a narrow room serving as a cafeteria, where up to 50 boys at one table sit sharing a cup to drink water from. Kitchen utensils are in short supply, and many eat with their hands. Despite three meals of bread, rice and some vegetables a day, nutrition is substandard and dependent on outside assistance. Meat is a luxury and fruit unheard of. According to Mohammad Yasin Safar, project manager for Children in Crisis (CIC), a British NGO which has provided relief to the orphanage since 1997: “You cannot imagine the poor quality of food these children are eating.” During the day, the orphans attend five hours of classes, including mathematics, religion, and the principal Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu. Older children can also learn carpentry, carpet weaving and shoemaking as part of a vocational training scheme. The school employs 37 government teachers, five of them female, each earning about US $10 or less per month. Many receive supplementary payments from CIC as part of a teacher incentive scheme to facilitate a better learning environment for the children. Further compounding the problem is the psychological wellbeing of the children. Many of the orphans have witnessed or experienced the death of a relative. Some have been traumatised by the horrors of war, some left malnourished and abandoned. Mostly untrained, officials at the orphanage are unsure what to do, often leaving the children to their own devices. Upstairs in the dormitory section, the orphans sleep in their clothes, 12 to a room on soiled beds with ripped blankets and disintegrating sheets. Many of the beds have collapsed entirely. Dust and dirt blow freely through the window apertures, and with no running water and blocked toilets, the children have taken to relieving themselves in the playground at night, often escorted in the darkness by an older child. Shelter Now International (SNI), an American NGO, is currently working to unblock the sewerage system, but the process is slow and arduous. The septic system remains uncovered and presents a constant risk that a child could fall in. Even when completed, it would only provide a temporary solution, requiring an eventual connection with the municipal sewerage system just outside the compound, officials told IRIN. The hardest thing for Abdullah in his new role as orphanage administrator, was the death of a seven year-old girl in the orphanage in February. “To see an orphan, who had no family, die like this was terrible. We felt so helpless,” Abdullah said. Asked about the cause of the girl’s death he replied in one word - “malnutrition”. According to CIC officials, conditions at the Kabul orphanage have improved somewhat since the recent appointment of Abdullah. But that is hardly apparent to the first-time visitor. While the local authorities and aid agencies attempt to relieve some of the suffering of the youngest victims of Afghanistan’s ongoing tragedy, the searching and expectant young eyes of the orphans there, demonstrate that that it is not enough.