Afghanistan 1 - Kabul

First of all, we want to say THANKS to Alexia and all the NGO "Afghanistan Demain". Without them, this fantastic part of our World trip would not have been possible.
After 9 days in Delhi we got the visa to Afghanistan. At the beginning we didn’t want to tell anybody, because we knew that they would be worried, especially our family. We decide to come here because Nic has a friend who is working for a French NGO, www.afghanistan-demain.org, and she was going back to Belgium on 19/9.
First, we were a little bit afraid of what we were going to see and experience. I think that it is normal, especially in a country where all the news on TV, newspaper, etc we see, are bad. But when we arrived, we met all the staff, most of them Afghans, and we really felt "safe". Of course there are safeties rules that we needed to respect. Like for ex.: We go to the places with a driver, live in the NGO house, etc. All the people that we met and worked with were really nice and in all the places we felt welcome. About the jobs that we did here, I made a report about all the 3 centers that they have and also I gave classes about creativity to the children. The children that we work with are the poorest ones, most of then are between 8 and 16 years old. They study 4hs a day in the centers and the rest they work, trying to bring money for their families. Every time that I went out, I need to wear trousers, tunic, and a scarf on my head. At the beginning I felt weird but in the end you get used to it. Alexia made a farewell party to the staff and the women couldn’t dance in front of the men, so for a moment we closed the living room to allow the women to dance. There are few places in Kabul (restaurants) where you can feel somewhere in Europe, Brazil, etc. One of them is called Atmosphere, it is a French restaurant where they have a swimming pool that you (women) can go and swim.Well I will let Nic to explain more about our experience here ;-)

Why Afghanistan? After so many weeks of travels, sightseeing and new activities; we wanted to put a social dimension to our trip. We knew that Alexia, a Belgian friend, had been making a fantastic work in Kabul for more than one year. She told us to come and we could work as volunteers for her NGO. We know that we could make social works in countries that are more peaceful. Nevertheless, here was the opportunity!
We were in Delhi, India, not so far from Afghanistan. Of course, we knew that there were risks of kidnapping, terrorist attacks and riots. Nobody except Alexia recommended us to go. We seriously thought in the positive and negative points of the trip and finally decided to go. To take risks to help people was more acceptable to us than to go to Afghanistan just for tourism. We knew that during 3 weeks we couldn’t help a lot but it was better than nothing. Once arrived, it was really worth. The work for the NGO was great! The main purpose of the NGO "Afghanistan Demain", is to re-insert street working children into the public school.
I helped to orient the poor families of the childrens into Micro finance institutions and vocational training. There are 70 persons working for this NGO and on our arrival, only Alex, Tina and I were foreigners. Usually they only have 3 expatriates working there permanently. All the rest were great Afghan Colleagues. We like the Afghans! They are proud and beautiful persons. A funny side was also that we were happy to be in the routine again. To wake up at the same time every day, to follow a timetable, to live in a house was such a pleasure for us, after having traveled so much.
Also the expat life was interesting, many people who chose to live and work in Kabul looked a bit strange to us. Nevertheless, some of them were really interesting. One day, we were received by the French Ambassador and we had a delicious dinner in his house.