Three Carpenters from kandahar

Mohammad, Amanullah and Abdul have been friends for over ten years. They are carpenters who work together in Kandahar City. On June 4, 2006, they were finishing a large window frame when a suicide bomber blew himself up just outside their shop. The bomber was targeting a convoy of Canadian troops; as with all injured civilians, the three carpenters were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The three friends were all injured. Pieces of shrapnel became embedded in their legs, arms and faces. Mohammad and Abdul were so badly burned that they were flown to Pakistan where they stayed for a month. “The doctors were looking at me as if I was a dead man,” Abdul told me. Over two years after the incident, the skin on his face and arms is still mottled and scarred from the burns.

The carpenters paid for their hospital treatment by selling their cars and furniture and by relying heavily on the assistance of family members and friends. They now have debts that make it very difficult to survive. The men finally received some assistance when ACAP approached them in January 2007. ACAP agreed to provide them with funding for their carpentry business, with tailoring training for their family members, with stationary for their children and with medical treatment.
I met these men on the day that they were collecting the ACAP assistance. I asked them what the aid meant to them. Mohammad summed up the sentiments felt by all the men: “We are hoping to make an income with the assistance we got. Nowadays, if you get a piece of bread from someone, you are happy. So this aid is very important. It will help to expand my supplies and to expand business. It will bring positive effects to my family. With this business, we can pay off the loans that we owe to people.”