The schoolteacher, Shawqi A, lives with his family under severe circumstances, as he explained, after he lost his salary, his only source of livelihood. “How can I and my family survive and live a decent life?” he complained.
The teacher Shawqi, so typical of Yemeni teachers under war today, was forced to leave the teaching profession and abandon his students in search for another income-generating work and a source of livelihood as a result of the interruption of his salary years ago due to the war waged by the Saudi-led Coalition against Yemen.
The teacher keeps on remembering the thrilling moments of morning classes with his young students in one of the schools of Haradh city in Hajjah Governorate, while he is working in his alternative hard job that is fraught with dangers and hardship within the heat of the sun and sands. He was forced to choose this job only to compensate for the interruption of salaries, which caused him to lose his only source of income to support himself and his only two children.
With tearful eyes and painful looks, Mr. Shawqi mutters with crackles of intermittent voice, and with sweat pouring from his forehead through the wrinkles of his brown face and the white beard that was years ahead of his age, saying that the war has robbed him of everything, including his job. Now, he is thrown into this place among piles of stones, cement and hard work that exhausted him and sapped the spirit of his life.
He adds that what hurts him the most is his inability to continue working as a teacher in his school, which will cause students to drop out of school. He feels that the problem of dropping out from school will affect the students’ future and cause a catastrophic imbalance in the structure of society.
Unfortunately, the problem has already started. Schools no longer receive the usual number of students, and the educational process system has deteriorated and become more fragile after the interruption of teachers’ salary payment. As a result, the teachers are forced to search for alternative incomes that would help them survive and preserve their value and dignity in life.
