Unbelievable Robbery at Our House of Flowers Orphanage in Kabul
The earthquake in Nepal on April 28 was unexpected, and the scale of its disaster has kept the caring people of the world bewildered. The House Flowers in Kabul has also experienced its own kind of “earthquake” recently: an unprecedented and frightening robbery. We ask ourselves, who in their right mind and humanly moral fiber would rob the belongings of orphans?
And yet, around 9:30 PM a couple of weeks ago, five armed masked men entered the House, forced all the staff in a room and demanded the safe. They threatened to shoot if the staff resisted. Eventually the thieves took the safe with money of the House and the back-up funds of Hewad, our partner NGO. They also took Hewad’s car. Fortunately, most of the children were in bed except one and were not aware of what was happening. And luckily no one was physically hurt. But the trauma lingered for a several days as the stress hit some of the children and staff, and they fell sick and could not eat or sleep.
The police investigation is ongoing with no definite results. They recommended that we have an armed guard from now on. Having a man with a live ammunition at the gate of the House of Flowers is the last thing we wish to have in a Montessori-medium school, but the realities of Kabul regrettably dictate otherwise. This is also another additional cost we have to undertake; the police do not provide this service for us. This is in addition to our recent decision to try to increase the budget of the House in order to keep up the annual increase in cost of living.
We are now pleading to our very generous donors and friends of the House of Flowers to help out in an emergency manner to replace almost 2 months’ worth of our budget we have lost in this robbery (“financial earthquake”). Meanwhile we need to sustain (and hopefully increase slightly) the monthly salaries of the teachers and staff, the children’s food and supplies, as well as the house rent for the remaining months of 2015.
Please accompany and help us, as we are trying to help both the House of Flowers and the Nepal earthquake victims during this difficult time. Let us not give up and abandon those children because of the dreadful and intimidating bandits who shame Afghanistan’s integrity every day.
You are our only conduit to transfer solidarity and love to those who need help throughout this unusual chapter of events.
Thank you for being there.
Mostafa and Allison May 2, 2015