June 22, 2010. School children greet us in Shuhada, a district in Badakhshan, named Mahmudan High School, built by the Central Asia Institute, where they attend school in two shifts, because it's so crowded. All the school children were there at once to greet us. They gave us flowers and sang songs to us. Karin Ronnow, the writer of CAI's publication, Journey of Hope, asked girls in one classroom what they wanted to be when they got older, and two girls said they wanted to be journalists. I saw boys--relatives of the school girls-- wearing a strips of red material on their arms, and they carried sticks. They said that that meant it was their turn to guard the school. After visiting classrooms, at least 40 elders of the community gave us lunch, with fresh mulberries, cherries, chicken and yogurt. Photo by Ellen Jaskol.