Struggling through International Family Day
Strong winds off the coastal Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, shake the skinny roof of Aysel’s family’s extremely small home situated near the “Red lake” in Yasamal, the district in capital. Muhammad, 12; Shirin, 8, and Aysel, 5, are cramped with their mother and their father (who they rarely see) in narrow and damp room. Their house sits among construction debris.
Zulfiyya, 34, has nothing but her children. They are what keep her going, striving for survival, day-after-day. "Family is everything to me, particularly my children,” she says. “I perish every time, seeing their hopeful eyes and hands, begging for food. Our family is totally dependent on random and crucial hand-outs brought by people we do not even know," she says.
“I perish every time, seeing their hopeful eyes and hands, begging for food. Our family is totally dependent on random and crucial hand-outs brought by people we do not even know,"
Zulfiyya blames her poverty on the lack support she received from her parents and the absence of proper education. "Our parents disagreed on our alliance,” she explains. “So now we are deprived of their help.”
“It is humiliating that strangers are helping us,” she continues, “but the thought, that my children are hungry, forces me to receive any aid,” she explains, noting that their situation has been desperate for at least five years.
Zulfiyya spends many days waiting for her phone to ring. “I cannot help myself,” she says. “[When I get a] new call from somewhere to go and clean a home or office. [I am happy]. Once I go there, my children know that they will have something to eat,” she explains.
The last steady job Zulfiyya had was at a nearby chicken farm. Unfortunately, the farm was closed about eight years ago. Today, not only does she not have a job, she and her family are dealing with the ongoing negative impacts of the farm, without any of the economic benefits. “All the industrial waste from the abandoned enterprise poured into the lake and neighbouring territory, causing the spread of bacteria,” she says.
“All the industrial waste from the abandoned enterprise poured into the lake and neighbouring territory, causing the spread of bacteria,”
Although she remains married, the job of raising and caring for her children falls squarely on Zulfiyya’s shoulders. “My husband works as a car mechanic in little private enterprise, far away from home,” she says. “He comes back every 10 days. When he is at home, our children are very happy and we can eat fully,” she adds.
In 2012, social workers who were enrolling families in World Vision’s Social Services project found Zulfiyya and her children in their rotten and ramshackle house, during the country-wide social facilities assessment. To keep the children out of institutions, the social workers helped their parents gain access to health, education, legal and other services for their children and also facilitated the medical analysis for the children. The tests revealed various medical risks, including initial stages of asthma in Muhammad, and the presence of worms in Shirin and Aysel’s stomachs. Doctors believe these are the effects of living in such a humid and rundown structure in such close proximity to the large amounts of animal feces.
ENDS
World Vision Azerbaijan trained social workers to go beyond pension-focused care programmes, to also notice and proactively try to find solutions for families living in deep poverty, enabling them to provide services and resources for families, like that of Zulfiyya.