Cause You Never Know When You're Going to Ride a Camel

No really, you never know.

Barek Aub is a village about an hour north east of Kabul.  We began working there in 2007, starting with building a well, funding the building of a school and clinic and then homes for widows.  My first trip there in 2009 Barek Aub looked like this

Now it looks like this

Upon pulling into Barek Aub on Saturday I was immediately struck by how much the town has grown in the last 18 months.  The clinic used to be the furthest building south, now there are many, many homes south of the clinic as well as a new girls school built by UNICEF.  There are many more homes and even new solar-powered streetlights.  Barek Aub has definitely moved from a village to a town with plenty of room to grow. 

The first thing we did in Barek Aub was to visit with some of the CW workers and thank them for the work that they do.  These women are one of the biggest reasons that Barek Aub is thriving.  Each of them visits 50-75 different homes each Monday to share health lessons and and build community with the women there. Because of them, the families in Barek Aub are healthier and happier.  We then visited the literacy class and gave those women gifts to encourage them to continue to learn to read and write. 

We then headed over to the new girls school.  UNICEF did an amazing job building this school, it is absolutely beautiful!!  It is so wonderful to know that the girls in Barek Aub are receiving a great education in a great building.  We delivered gift bags of clothing, food, school supplies and toys to each of the girls.  They always get so excited to see us, probably because we bring them gifts many times, but just to see their absolute joy is wonderful. Because of the rain on Saturday we decided to return on Sunday.

Today we again headed out to Barek Aub, but the scenery was much different. Yesterday was incredibly rainy while today was a beautiful, warm day full of amazing sunshine.  We started the day at the boys school.  Part of the goal of this trip was to introduce the seed project.  We wanted to distribute seeds and teach people in Barek Aub and Kabul on how to grow them so that they would have a more well-rounded diet.  We took pea, bean and squash seeds as well as seed pots to each classroom and taught them how to plant them and what they look like when they harvest them.  We did the same at the girls school.  The students and teachers were so very thankful for this lesson.  They said that this will help them to become more self-sufficient and to lead healthier lives, which will benefit their entire community and the country of Afghanistan.  

Because the drive to and from Barek Aub takes a little while, the conversations are always interesting.  Today one of the staff members asked us on the way out if we wanted to ride a camel, to which we responded, "of course." He said that if we saw a camel during our drive we would go ride it, and I'm quite sure he never thought that we would see one.  But on the ride home Hillary spotted two off the side of the road, and we immediately turned around.  We did some negotiating on price with the Kuchi (nomad) people and 6 of us rode the camel, Layla, around the field. Like I said you just never know when you're going to ride a camel.