A flickering flame of paper, rags and random twigs is the only heat that can keep her 18-month-old son warm.
The highway is flanked by hills. Occasionally a driver pushes an Afghani note into the bare hand of a woman. She sits for hours on the highway median, positioned just beyond a bump in the road that slows traffic.
Khalida is her 16-year-old sister. There are burqas behind them. By the end of the day, the person who gave just the name said they could make 300 Afghanis. Most days it is less.
The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August caused billions of dollars in international assistance to leave the country and led to a humanitarian catastrophe.
International aid organizations are scrambling to save millions of people from starving or freezing because of the bitter winter cold. For the poor, the only way to cook is with the coal or wood they can scrounge from the snowy streets or from aid groups.
The extent of the problem in Afghanistan for people is dire, according to a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. We need to get to families in difficult areas. It's winter and it's cold.
The cost of humanitarian work is staggering. The WFP will need over $2 billion this year.
Break that number down. We are asking for 30 cents per person per day, and that's what we're asking for. She said that they need the money because they need to reach people quickly.
The United Nations launched its largest single country appeal to help Afghanistan.
It is estimated that 90 percent of Afghanistan's 38 million people are dependent on aid.
In 2020 alone, hundreds of thousands of Afghans became displaced, many living in desperate conditions on the outskirts of cities, in parks and open spaces, wherever they could find a shelter.
Her husband was a shoemaker in the northern province of Kunduz. She sat with her sister on the side of the highway linking Logar's capital, Pul-e-Alam, and said that her brother's work dried up after the Taliban came to power.
She said that they have no heat at home and every day they come and sit here.
In Pul-e-Alam, where temperatures in January and February can drop to lows of minus-16 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit), thousands of men and women line up in the bitter cold to collect a World Food Program ration of flour, oil, salt and lentils.
The WFP surveyed the city for the neediest, giving each a voucher to collect their ration, but word spread quickly through the snow and mud-covered streets that food was being distributed and soon scores of men and women pushed and pleaded for ration. Security forces tried to keep people without vouchers off one side of the crowd.
The WFP distributes food to as many as 500 families a day, said Hussain Andisha, who manages the distribution. He said that most people in Logar province are desperate.
Four women wearing burqas walked past the men at the gate taking vouchers as he spoke. They begged for food, even though they didn't have a ration card. One woman, who gave her name only as Sadarat, said that her husband was a drug user and that he was an 8% of Afghanistan's population.
I don't know where he is. I don't have any food for my children. She said she needed something.
Poverty and conflict drove Sadarat and her five children from their rural home in Logar province to the capital, 38 kilometers away.
Riza Gul yelled from behind Sadarat, saying she has 10 children and a husband who earns less than $1 a day as a laborer on the days he can find work.
What can we do? She asked where we could go.
In Pul-e-Alam, the capital of 23,000 people, the January distribution will provide staple foods to 2,250 families. The WFP has begun distribution in four of the seven districts of Logar province. Hundreds of trucks transporting food are slow going in the snow and can be dangerous.
The need gets worse with each passing day.
From the first day we arrived, the situation has gotten worse. He said that women who were working before the Taliban took power can't work in government departments.
It is certain that the situation will get worse.
The Taliban administration in Logar has not interfered with the aid work of the WFP.
Donor contributions go directly to the people, even as aid organizations and the international community struggle to address one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters without dealing directly with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.
She said that people come first and that any donation received will be given directly to the people.
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