Afghan Miners Get Another Chance
Hadi, who is part of a group of refugee miners working in the cramped quarters, never imagined himself in this line of work. As a child, Hadi, who is now 38, pictured himself in a white coat walking down the halls of a hospital healing the wounded. However, when he was 17 things changed because his father became ill and couldn’t afford to take care of his family anymore forcing Hadi to quit school and look for work. “I looked around for work when I left school, and the only available choice was to work in the mines because there were no other opportunities.”
The mine, which is located by a refugee camp in the remote province of Balochistan in Pakistan, has workers digging for chromate, which is used in steel production. Even though the conditions of the work aren’t ideal, Hadi has no complaints. He is able to send his older son to a better school outside of the refugee camp in hopes that he will have the opportunities to become a doctor. Hadi misses his country but is happy his family was able to find sanctuary during the 1979 Soviet invasion.