Author: Sophia Schultz

I am at a meeting at the Ronald Reagan Center, hosted by the Washington DC-based nonprofit Culturfied, and whoops I just agreed to participate in their annual International Children’s Festival.

Now, I am on the metro, on my way back to the office, carrying a folder with informational material and forms to sign, thinking about activities for children that convey Afghanistan’s impressive cultural legacy in an engaging way.

The Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mr. Majeedullah Qarar, gave our cultural heritage nonprofit the exciting opportunity to organize this event on his behalf. Needless to say, I jumped on the opportunity. At ARCH we are striving to reach everyone with our work, especially the younger generation.

I tried to meet three criteria: 1) Educate the audience about Afghanistan’s culture in a fun way. 2) Come up with activities that only take a couple of minutes to complete (the event can get crowded, so the kids get easily distracted, and yes, the parents, too). Point 3) Be quick and try to work on a low budget.

And I thought about this: 1) How can we pull people in? 2) Provide something so appealing people will want to take it home 3) Make the visitors curious about learning more about Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.

Here is what we came up with: Everyone knows the Bamiyan Buddhas, so why not welcome the visitors with a familiar image? Our hope – they stop at our stand, because they recognize the Buddhas. And then we could explain to them that an important part of cultural heritage preservation is the awareness that restoring historic monuments goes hand in hand with restoring communities.

The Bamiyan Buddhas were willfully destroyed. It was such an incisive and far-reaching tragedy, that people we have since spoken to about this, always remember where they were when it happened. Yet the Buddhas’ memory lives on. They might be only a shadow of their former selves, but people revere them to this day. The hope that they will one day be restored lives on, and the number of people who make their way to Bamiyan each year even under the present difficult circumstances, is amazing.

The Bamiyan Buddhas were looked up upon in awe by Silk Road traders, Buddhist pilgrims, and young Europeans who later became known for forming the Hippie Trail. Bamiyan province has a lot to offer, hidden caves in mountain ranges, the Band-e Amir lakes, nice hotels as well as camping grounds for the more adventurous traveler. People come here to hike, to play volleyball, to attend various festivals. We decided that the Buddhas would be a wonderful symbol to work with as a starting point to introduce children to Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, because even though they were destroyed they stand strong in the face of history, people are still going the extra mile to see them, and that is the power of cultural heritage, it has more meaning than just its material embodiment.

The activity we crafted connected to the Buddhas: a puzzle. Local artist Mills Brown was a big help, she created the puzzle on short notice. The frame onto which the kids could glue the puzzle pieces, she designed with geometric Islamic patterns typical for Mazar-i-Sharif. Over the frame it says, “I put the Buddha back together!”

Even though she was feeling under the weather that day, Asma Faraz, events manager at the Afghan embassy, helped me cut the puzzle into pieces. 300 sets! The two current embassy interns Lauren Yeoman and Amelia Arden Green assisted on the day of the event, and the embassy’s director of communications, Aundrea Paulett, came by as well to take photos and then stayed and puzzled with the younger kids. Another big thank you goes out to Zahra Babayee, who volunteered to offer free face paint for children. The idea was to turn them into little snow leopards, as this is the national animal of Afghanistan, but of course kids have their own requests, for example to be transformed into unicorns (see photos below).

For the ones who had not heard about the Bamiyan Buddhas, it was a good learning experience. They would ask “What is the religion of Afghanistan?” and we would reply that the main religion is Islam, but that in ancient times, trade routes connected different ethnicities and people, so, yes, these gigantic Buddha figures stand in Afghanistan. Their most recent story – that they were dynamited into pieces – is only a snippet of all the other stories connected to them; they became part of local folklore and storytelling traditions way before that, and they have always attracted visitors.

Something that is not visible even on the oldest existing images, is that the Buddhas once wore colorful garments. Researchers from Germany analyzed the fragments and found remnants of bright color. As part of the activity, after the puzzle is glued back together, it becomes a coloring sheet.
This brings us to the second set of activities. Coloring sheets (download here) based on the illustrations of our first book Musiqar, part of Afghanistan’s intangible cultural heritage, a story that has been told from generation to generation.

Musiqar is a magical bird that has lived for one thousand years. The evil king shoots the bird, thinking that he will kill all of the knowledge and all of the joy that the bird has carried over the centuries, but when he does, a new baby bird is immediately born. One message here is that you cannot kill a nation’s cultural legacy, it lives in the people, in their stories, poetry and music. There are many other lessons in Musiqar, and I recommend you read the beautiful story. Christmas is coming up! But really it’s the perfect gift for any occasion. And by buying a copy you support our work 😊
The children’s festival happens every year, admission is free, and this year 30 embassies participated. It was an all-day event, invigoratingly busy from 11am to 4pm. There were dance and music performances in the large atrium of the Ronald Reagan Center, and the kids were given a passport. When traveling to the different stands they would present the passport and ask for a stamp. “Welcome to Afghanistan!” we would say.

As a last note, I would like to thank Mr. Qarar. It was very pleasant to work with him and it turned out to be a very successful event.