1. My Poor Story By: Anson Li
Hmm another day at Afghanistan, my name is Naseem
Mayanad, my family is very poor, everyday I work from sunrise to
sunset by walking and walking to get water from the only well for
the whole village, in sunset, we get to eat bread, even if it’s hard, I
always say it’s better than nothing, we do not get to eat breakfast
or lunch, if we’re lucky the villagers will give you some water to
drink and you go back to work.
The reason why we’re so important is because we are very strong
and can walk for a long distances time but the adults are too weak
to walk a kilometer to get water and back plus multiple times.
At night we go out in the forest and cut wood with our
wooden axe and then we get the wood to make a fire lastly, we
sleep in the plain ground, in the winter it gets cold so we have to
make a bow and arrow out of wood then we go to the forest to find
some animals to hunt then we collect it’s fur and meat we make
clothes out of the fur, and we cook the meat in our fire and eat it
but we rarely find animals to hunt because animals with fur are
much warmer so they go even higher in the mountain because it is
more colder and more animals eat each others.
My Mom is called Al Chador, and my Dad is called Jakan Jaka.
In the next summer sadly my dad got taken away by the
money lender because our family didn’t have enough money to pay
the debt so my mother wanted our father back so the money lender
say we had to pay double amount of the dept to see father again,
after my mother heard that she tried to find a way to earn more
money, she only had one choice and that choice is to send me to a
brick factory to work for extra money so they could see their father
again.
So after I heard that and seeing that my mom Al Chador was
crying for a long time even when I was sleeping I heard my mom
crying very hard I knew I had to do something so what I did is me
and a couple other good friends said we were going to go to the
brick factory to earn more money.
Lano Barno, Baken Garno and me went on the truck it was
very big inside it was roomy inside and at home we heard that they
were two different kinds of cars one kind was a truck and another a
was a taxi, I learned that a taxi picks up people and the people tell
for a place to go and when they arrive at the place they will have to
pay some money to the taxi driver.
Anyways when we got there the brick factory was very
smelly and very dirty the first thing I thought to myself where was I
going to sleep I wouldn’t want to sleep on the floor because it was
very dirty, anyways the master of the brick factory Abdul Maka was
very mean and I didn’t like him because of his wrinkly face and with
the evil eye plus he told us that we will be sleeping in a bunk bed
which was pretty small and he said 3 of us must squeeze in and we

2. didn’t get any blankets then he shut the door and before he left he
said prepare for tomorrow you will have to work very hard, when
we were sleeping I kept thinking what was the meaning of that,
does that mean we’re going to work hard I knew my friend also had
the same feeling.
The next day, the master woke as up at about five in the
morning, I was still very sleepy same as my friends, when we got
up we saw the factory it was even dirtier then yesterday because
the machines were on and I thought we were going to start making
bricks that’s when Abdul Maka put chains around our foot and
hands and told us if we work hard we will be able to eat dinner also
told us how to make bricks, so after we listen to that we worked
very hard, and when Abdul Maka gave us dinner it was just a slice
of hard bread and some drinkable water and after dinner we worked
even more.
At midnight he gave us 5 rupee each now we had 15 rupee
we would need 250 rupee before we could pay the dept so we
worked hard, after 1 week we had 105 rupee.
We worked for another week we had enough money to pay
the dept but sadly Lano Barno my friend broke its leg and passed
away because when he was making bricks and burning sand he
felled down from a height we all feel very sad for him.
When we paid the dept and got to see our father back me
and Baken Garno rushed to hug my Mom and Dad especially my
Dad when they first ask us something they ask us where is Lano
Barno? We sighed and we told them he passed away when they
heard that they just froze and didn’t move, after a while they told
us that to sleep well today and relax from all of the things that
happened.
The next day Mom gave me and Baken Garno milk from the
cows we raised, the milk was yummy, after that we worked
normally like other days later on in the day I felt that we had to
stop the money lenders from doing this when we didn’t pay the dept
they should just count double the amount of money next time they
didn’t had to take a family member away and force us to earn
money faster.
So me and my Dad walked to the city and went to the police
station to report this situation, they didn’t seem so friendly so we
walked away, then we saw a children rights station and we thought
that could help us with the situation because before we went to the
market and saw this group take volunteers to join the group, the
people were very kind and when we told them that we had little
money and told that a money lender took our Dad away before,
they became more serious and listened carefully, we told them our
story and told a bunch of men to follow us, I knew they were
serious so I said yes with my brave and low voice I took them to
the money lender, they used handcuffs to not let him escape, when

3. he was gone and in jail I became so happy, and our family kept
living normally.