^[1]KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN: Ahmad Shah is a 12-year-old from Panjwayi, a district in Kandahar province. I met him on a chilly January afternoon in Kandahar City while I was in front of my office.

Ahmad approached me and asked whether he could clean my shoes. He had a sad looking face, an oversized coat, and fingers blackened by shoe polish. While he cleaned my shoes he told me a little bit about his life.

Like most villagers in Southern Afghanistan, Ahmad’s father was a farmer. He used to grow many types of vegetables on his land, including onions, tomatoes, and spinach.

One night two years ago Ahmad woke up to the sound of air strikes and gunfire. He told me: “I heard gunshots and blasting everywhere. I realized my father was outside watering his plants and I started to cry. My mother and my sisters also cried. We were all afraid.”

Later that night Ahmad discovered that his father had been shot in the fields and was dead. The neighbors buried him in the village graveyard.

Ahmad’s mother had already lost several relatives in an air strike and she thought that if she remained in the village any longer she would lose her children too, so she decided to move to Kandahar City with her son and her four daughters.

They set up a patched-up tent in Kandahar’s District 7 and tried to begin a new life. Ahmad became a shoe shiner. He said: “I don’t have brothers. I’m the only man in the family so I must work to support my mother and my four sisters.” The family’s finances had become Ahmad’s responsibility.

Ahmad’s mother also tried to find a job, but she is illiterate and has no real working experience, given that she has spent her whole life taking care of basic chores within the four walls of the house. Moreover, employment opportunities for women are rare in Southern Afghanistan because many people think it’s shameful for women to work outside of the house. Therefore, apart from washing her neighbors’ dishes and begging for money in the streets, Ahmad’s mother still has not found a regular job.

Ahmad explained his routine in the following words: “I walk around the streets and I clean people’s shoes. I get paid 5 Afghani for each pair of shoes I clean. On a good day I can make 100 Afghani [the equivalent of US$ 2]. But some days I have no luck and I end up going home with 40 or less.” On those days Ahmad and his family cannot afford to buy enough food for everyone.

The rainy season is especially hard. Ahmad said: “When it rains I can’t get any work and then the rain gets into our tent and the quilts get wet. So we can’t sleep and we’re all wet and hungry. It’s the worst! We have to wait until the sun comes back, and our things dry up, and I can go back to work. Life is tough but I have to take care of my family.”