Hafize, 54, Kosovo
As a female head of household, and having children with a disability, life has challenged me a lot. Most of the time we cook with flour as it is cheap, so our main meals are often pastry. Alhamdulillah my children do not complain and enjoy it.
Meat is not part of our regular diet, we only ever have it occasionally. My children, one of whom is disabled, associate meat with special holidays like Qurbani as those are the times we have meat in our diets.
Buying meat is very challenging and expensive for us, some local families try to help us out with some food now and then. We live in a village and I try to plant vegetables in order to avoid buying things. We are a large family and things are hard, my youngest children are going to school and my eldest had to stop because we cannot afford it.
Eid-al-Adha, for me and family, means solidarity and bliss. On that day people come and visit us and we feel united and close to each other. The meat pack from Islamic Relief gives us an opportunity to enrich our diet, the Qurbani meat lasts a while for us. We divide the meat into small pieces and put it in the freezer so we can have it with other meals.
I am thankful to Islamic Relief staff for not only helping us with Qurbani, but also helping my children with schoolbags and stationary, and helping us throughout our difficulties.