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A People in need of a future

Barbie gift brings joy to girl's harsh world

Emma Poole
Calgary Herald
Kabotar Noorzei and her Barbie

Six-year-old Afghan refugee Kabotar Noorzei with her favorite item, a Barbie doll, that she received in her Christmas shoe box, Tuesday.

Kabotar Noorzei has never owned a toy, she's never received a gift and she's certainly never held a Barbie doll -- until Tuesday.

The six-year-old Afghan refugee, who lives in a canvas tent with her father near the Iranian border, received for the first time in her impoverished life, a new toy.

The shoebox had been transported almost 11,000 kilometres from Calgary, courtesy of Operation Christmas Child.

Packed by a Grade 1 class at Andrew Sibbald Elementary School in southeast Calgary, the over-sized box was hand- delivered to the girl by a member of Samaritan's Purse -- a humanitarian relief organization based in Calgary.

Kabotar has been living in the Mile 46 refugee camp for more than two months.

Her family fled the city of Farah, in western Afghanistan, after intense bombing by U.S. forces.

Dressed in tattered clothing with her hair and face covered in dust and grime, Kabotar hesitated to open the box.
She didn't understand the package was stuffed with pens, toys, a bubble maker and a blond-haired Barbie, which she later said was her favourite.

"I'm very happy," she said through Calgary businessman and interpreter Mansoor Deghati. "I've never had a toy before."

Item by item, Deghati demonstrated what the gifts were. Coloured bracelets and rings for dressing up, binoculars to look into the distance, a notebook and a box of Crayola crayons were foreign to her.

As a thank you to the youngsters who packed the box, Kabotar scribbled a few shapes onto a page in the book. The drawings were then ripped out and will be given to the school children upon the team's return to Calgary.

Kabotar's shoebox was one of 3,500 delivered to the isolated and desolate camp Tuesday.

Samaritan's Purse, Operation Christmas Child volunteers distributing Christmas shoe boxes to ground volunteers from a truck, Tuesday.

With more than 5,000 Afghanistan refugees now stationed at Mile 46, Samaritan's Purse assigned sections of the camp to specific groups for delivery of the boxes.

The Canadians -- including MPs Art Hanger, Monte Solberg and Grant McNally -- and a group from Britain hopped onto the back of two open trucks and for a few hours got to play Santa Claus to a group of people who have nothing more than hope about the future.

A top-ranking Iranian official went out of his way to escort Solberg and a Calgary Herald reporter and photographer to a similar refugee camp about 50 kilometres away.

The Makaki camp -- which was previously under the control of the Taliban -- will receive children's shoeboxes later this week with the help of the Iranian Red Crescent Society.

The visit to Makaki revealed the people there are also facing the same hardships as Mile 46, although the contrast between the two is glaring.

Makaki is filthy with garbage and human and animal feces strewn about the rows of tents.

The children appear to be dirtier and not as well cared for. Countless flies hang off the children, crawling around their eyes, mouths and ears.

The Makaki Refugee tent Camp in S.W. Afghanistan, Tuesday, 1.5 km east of Iran.

The tents themselves are not as well-kept as those at Mile 46 and the refugees, many family of Taliban fighters who have yet to return from war, are reluctant to talk to visitors or have their photograph taken.

The camp is heavily guarded by armed Northern Alliance troops who check the identification of visitors coming in and out of the area.

Ali Rostami, the Iranian minister who oversees refugee and non-governmental organizations in the country, says Iran sends aid into Afghanistan's refugee camps three times a week.

An Afghani refugee boy sits outside his tent at the Mile 46 Refugee Camp with flies flying around his food dish and him self.

Thousands of blankets, food, winter clothes and medical supplies are donated directly by Iranian citizens.

"We are neighbours and we need each other," Rostami said. "We asked our people to help the Afghan people and they went to the bank and changed the money to help."

Rostami said prominent Iranian actors donated their time to collect funds to ease the refugee crisis.

Back at the Mile 46 camp, trucks loaded with shoeboxes drove slowly up and down the aisles of tents as the refugees patiently awaited the gifts for their children.

One four-year-old Afghan girl, huddled in a tent with her family, opened her box, only to erupt into tears at the sight of a rubber toy snake. She'd only seen the real thing, but chuckled when told it was fake and Canadian children play with them for fun.

"I think this is an amazing opportunity to bring some joy into the vacant lives in these camps," said Hanger after the shoebox distribution. "This is just surreal.

"On one side of the coin, material things mean nothing to these people. On the other, one small gift means everything."