Hardship Life's of a Cavewoman in Bameyan

Most of the people living in the caves came in the past 10 to 20 years from Bameyan Districts. Poor and landless, they needed a free place to stay while eking out livelihoods by farming small plots of land or working in Bamiyan's bazaar, which is in a valley about a mile away. 

The pictures which is included with the text is a home belong to a local Bameyani women who life's in a cave beside of Budhha. Her name is Zainab and she has a small family who came from Darasof district when their home town was conflict and war between Hezb Wahdat and Taliban in 2000. 

Zainab's home, where she lives with her husband and five children (the oldest about 12, the youngest about 1 and half) is one room. The rounded ceiling is 7 feet high at its peak. The floor area is 10 feet square. A small stove sits near the door. Dried animal dung from nearby fields is used for fuel. There aren't enough trees for kindling.

Zainab says that life is very hard here and we are living with nothings. not enough furniture nor foods, even water.  She has a small family and passing hard times in the cave. The cave interiors are dark and simply decorated with old and just few things of furniture. 

They are living in a small cave beside of world's largest Budhha in Bameyan which was created hundreds of years ago. Experts say the two Buddha statues, one 175 feet tall and the other 125 or 130 feet, probably were carved in the third and fifth centuries. The homes are literally holes in the wall -- some carved by wind and rain, others cut by hand decades, even centuries, ago.

Almost all the children appear ill with colds or respiratory infections that are brought on by winter's frigid nights and summer's choking dust.

Those who live here say they have no other place to go. They're too poor to get anything better. As the residents see it, at least they're not living outside or in abandoned homes. There is no other dwellings there for them and they have not any other choice. 

Photos by Najeeb Farzad