Visit by Christopher Bellew to Karte Se, Kabul, May 2008.

May 30, 2008

Visit by Christopher Bellew to Afghan Action’s carpet factory and training school, Karte Se, Kabul, May 2008.

Since I started trying to help the Afghan Training Foundation last year the most frequently asked question has been “have you been to Afghanistan”. To correct this omission I went for nearly three weeks earlier this year with two friends of an adventurous disposition.

When in London I am rather particular about punctuality but in Kabul my Irish side asserted itself and I was two hours late for my appointment with Abdullah Haiwad at the school in the Karte Se suburb of Kabul. His warm reception did not betray any of the irritation that he may well have felt. It was a Saturday morning and the school and workshop are open six days a week as is the norm in Afghanistan, only closing on Fridays. There was an atmosphere of achievement amongst the 80 people as by working long hours for the previous couple of days they had completed their first order from Habitat on time to be sent to the UK the following day.

After a chat with Abdullah and Haseeb, the deputy manager, over a cup of tea I did a tour. First I met Friba, the nurse, in her dispensary. She also teaches in the small classroom and has subsequently become responsible for the management of the whole site. There are two large long rooms where the training is done. They are about 50 feet long and each has roughly ten looms. One workshop is for men and one for women. It was lunchtime and everyone was sitting on the floor having rice with meat stew, followed by water melon.

The master trainer, Habib, showed me the store room where the dyes are kept. These are mostly natural dyes in powder form. When a new batch of wool arrives the dyeing is done in the yard outside the weaving rooms. Big cauldrons are filled with water heated by a wood fire and the right strength of dye added; a job requiring considerable experience to achieve the consistency of colour that stores like Habitat expect. 

The wool is then stored on the roofs of the buildings. This keeps it out of the way and stops any incursions by termites or the like. Of course when it looks like rain it has all to be brought inside.

By now lunch was over and banging noises that sounded like the beginning of a prison riot were coming from the workshops. Teams of two to four weavers were sitting cross legged working on the vertical looms. As the knots are made, about 14 in each square centimetre, the knots are hammered to get a tight and consistent finish which explained all the noise. Some weavers were wearing masks to protect them from the dust but the majority found the masks uncomfortable.

A trained weaver with experience can make 1.5 square metres in a month. It is a slow and painstaking job. The patterns are drawn on graph-paper by Habib another skilful part of the process. The average age seemed to be about 16 and everyone seemed happy. The young men grinning a lot and the women being rather shy. In all my time in Afghanistan I hardly saw any Afghan women again. They are either at home or completely shrouded in burkhas.

I left with a strong sense of happiness and a sense of purpose among the trainees, weavers and staff. Clearly jobs in Kabul are very scarce and virtually non-existent for women. But they did not give the impression of being part of a charity but a small thriving business.