As soon as winter approaches Um Jihad begins hanging cords in the middle of her house not to dry up the wet laundry of her children but to hang and dry bread.
Five years ago Um Jihad al-A’araj 45 years old began this profession of collecting and drying the remains of bread in preparation for selling it to make some money in order to provide some of the needs of her family in light of the tragic economic conditions that hit the Gaza Strip.
As usual Um Jihad wakes up in the morning hours to do her work to get the old bread from her neighbors and relatives so she could dry and sell it.
During the day the PIC reporter was present at her house in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip as flour had run out of her house forcing her to collect some of the loaves she placed on the ground giving them to her children with cooked lentils.
The family lives in a very poor condition with a total of eight children because of the siege and the lack of jobs especially with the inability of her husband who is in his fifties to work because of suffering from hypertrophy in the liver who needs expensive daily treatment with no source of income.
Um Jihad herself suffers from stress and diabetes but she has not succumbed to these diseases and insisted that she would fight her battle to stay in a house that lacks any source of income except for their social insurance money that is given to them every five instead of three months as it used to be.
She said in an interview with the PIC that she packed bread in bags to sell it to sheep and cattle herders or neighbors who raise birds and livestock.
She says that the reality of life and the difficult living conditions in the Gaza Strip have made her self-reliant which increased the challenges and difficulties facing her and her family.
Her bag is packed with 40 kg of dried bread to sell it at a rate of 10 to 15 shekels per bag which is equivalent to about 3 dollars.
The mother of eight children uses her modest dilapidated two-bedroom house and a small lounge to dry the bread for fear of rain in the winter while she dries it outside in the summer.
She hopes with tears toeing down her cheeks that this crisis she is going through along with other residents of the Gaza Strip will end soon to end her fatigue and pain which accompany her all the time.
The siege imposed by the Israeli occupation forces 12 years ago and the sanctions imposed by the Palestinian Authority since April 2017 on the Gaza Strip have led to the deterioration of economic conditions and increasing suffering in Gaza turning hundreds of thousands to needy families and aid recipients.
In response to this situation thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip resort to any work that brings them some money to help them buy some necessities.
