Gaza Blog: Unusual life
Written by our Gaza-blogger, Kamil Shamil
"Abu-Ahmed", a sixty years old man living right across from the SOS children's village in Rafah with a family of 9; four of them finished high school but they could never get into collage due to lack of income, he has been unemployed for a long time since he lost his job when he was working in Israel years ago.
Nowadays, he is living of what he gets as donations just to stay alive, as for his children's lives; is a complete stop and there is nothing they can do about it, all of this is because of the lack of jobs availability. Abu-Ahmed says that he feels so disappointed of this really hard life, and there is no glimpse of hope in the near future.
It's not easy to get a cup of coffee in Gaza strip; it's an item that is on the list of the banned goods that are not allowed into Gaza Strip, there are more than 1500 items on that list.
You will not be able to remodel your house or even build a new one, you can't do anything that has to do with building or construction, building supplies are not allowed in Gaza Strip and they are not available in the market; this is been like this for a long time.
All of this; caused lots of problems and that led to collapse the construction sector and the economy in general, but for other sectors, they did not get effected as bad, such as the education and health department, but they suffer from lack of employees and shortage of supplies.
The New Israeli Shekel (NIS) currency is banned from coming into the banks due to the siege, that caused the banks to run out of currency, therefore, people started not to go to the banks for the reason that may be one day there will be no currency at all and may lose their money if they deposited in the banks, and its possible for the banking sector to collapse as well as the other sectors.
Societies in Gaza Strip are young societies where almost %55 of them are under the age of 15, kids and young people need education utilities such as schools and kindergartens, they are very crowded, plus; there is not enough teaching materials, they also need universities and entertainment parks and utilities, but there is no way to develop anything due to the shortage of supplies and materials.
Siege is a very hard matter that people are suffering from badly, it paralyzes their lives and they way of thinking, it also kills their dreams of they are attempted to have one about a better life style.
Every year thousands of young people want to travel abroad looking for work or education, but they are not allowed because of the tight siege, but they end up in the line of the unemployed, then they start to go toward the donation centers; looking for some help for them and for their families, despite the fact that they can go abroad to work and get education from active society to help their society and participate in building their surrounding and live better days.
Read more Gaza blogs:
The Village Director and his daily worries
How Farah lived her days during the war
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