back-to-square-one: Back to Square One
by Robert Knoth
Men and older boys from surrounding villages in the district of Shahr-e-Bozorg have gathered to start work on a road to connect the isolated district to other parts of Afghanistan in 2001. The labourers work in exchange for food. Harvests failed for three years in a row and many families don’t have sufficient food supplies but importing food across the mountain is very expensive. When the road was completed in 2007 it immediately halved the food prices in the bazaars of all villages in the district. Floods and rainfall in 2009 have destroyed much of that newly built road.
