Читать книгу Gathering Strength: - Peggy Kelsey - Страница 30

Laila

Engineer, City of Kabul, Urban Planning Department

I'm very interested in helping women in remote areas. Those women are excluded from every kind of life. I could organize health care or sanitation projects. In some places, women are not even aware of sanitation.

I visited Laila in her office in the distant outskirts of Kabul. The cavernous main room had a few dusty tables and chairs, some empty, others piled with untouched, rolled up city maps and unbound collections of reports written in Russian. On one wall hung a big plastic-covered map of the planned community, Macrorayon, where Soviet families had lived during the 1980s and Afghans live now. This spacious room surrounded a small inner sanctum, sealed off against the winter cold. This provided a cramped working space for five employees, who didn’t seem to have much to do. In its prime, the office had been filled with 30 busy workers.

Laila’s boss and two other women sat in on our interview. I’ve included some of their comments.

Laila was born in Baghlan Province, but completed high school in Kunduz. Throughout most of the Soviet war, she studied in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she learned Russian and worked on her Master’s and PhD degrees. She obtained a job in the government housing construction department upon her return to Afghanistan, but this job doesn’t utilize many of her skills, and she only earns $81 a month. She is happily married and has one son and two daughters.