KABUL - Tirelessly, the sound of hammers keep echoing in the valley in Samangan province, northern Afghanistan.

It is a rainy day, as the climate suddenly changed in the middle of November.

Soon winter will be here.

Sitting around a huge heap of stones, 20 women wearing Iranian-style veils and helmets are patiently gravelling those stones with small hammers.

“Hurry up, there’s not much time left for today,” said Adela, the head of the shura community that employs these women.

Since December 2007, the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) has supported the Government of Afghanistan in implementing the Swedish-funded Rural Accessibility Improvement Project, in order to supplement rural accessibility in the two northern provinces of Sar-i-Pul and Samangan.

As a part of this project, with the aim to build 50 kilometres of road with gravel surface and structures in Samangan province, women started to be employed in June 2009.

So far, 52 women are involved in gravelling-producing activities, in three different gravelling sites of the province.

Many of them are householders who work eight hours a day for three months on these gravelling sites.

Sometimes their small salary is the only income for their whole family.

“I do this job because of poverty,” said Bibi Haji, one of the women working in Samangan. “This money is a vital need for my family. My husband is too old to work and I have six children, all of them under the age of 16. I am the only person able to work in this family.”

Like the other women working on the site, Bibi Haji earns four dollars a day, the minimum salary they can get in Afghanistan.

“I encourage the women of the province to do this work,” said Adela. “Although the income is small and the working conditions difficult, this project is an opportunity for these women to contribute to the development of Afghanistan’s infrastructure and to play an active role in their community,” she added.

“We tried to improve their working conditions by providing them with helmets and gloves,” said Ramin a UNOPS staff member in charge of this sector. “We would like to continue to work with women and to train them in order to employ them for other projects.”

Since the beginning of this project, more than 150m3 of gravel has been produced by the women of Samangan.

Working on these types of projects is very difficult for women but many of them consider this activity as an opportunity with the number of volunteers to participate in this project growing all the time.

At the end of the working day night slowly falls across the valley.

One by one, the women go home, sometimes accompanied by their children.

From the neighbouring houses comes the smell of boiled vegetables.

“Tomorrow we’ll continue our work, and the day after also, until the first colds of the winter arrive. It is difficult, but this is life. We are happy to do this,” said Bibi Haji before leaving.

By Alexandre Brecher-Dolivet, UNAMA