It all started in Chase-Duckett’s dining hall. I was working on my ENG 200 reading assignment when my friend, Basira, realized that the dining workers had put matcha powder next to the coffee machines. So, she decided to make a matcha drink to show off the skills she picked up the summer before Smith.
As Basira walked back toward our table with two cups of matcha, I remembered how, over my recent summer in Kabul, I never found a place that both served cold drinks and provided me a space to read, write and think. I had wanted a place to enjoy my solitude, but cafés in Kabul are often used to socialize. I realized that there was definitely a need to mold café culture in Kabul: to turn cafés into places with books, free WiFi and an environment where you can both be by yourself and socialize.
I shared this with Basira, and we agreed to look into finding the funding needed to open such a place. I had initially planned to take on an internship over the summer, so I knew about almost all the available funding at Smith College. Most importantly, I learned about the “Conway Center Student Project Fund,” designed to support Smith undergraduates in their financial and business endeavours.
We applied for the funding, and in the meantime, we asked Mansoora Daryabie, a first year student at Kyrgyzstan’s American University of Central Asia, to join our team. Soon enough, Basira and I each received a $2000 grant from the Conway Center for our café project, added our own investments and began developing a plan of action.
When we first began work, Mansoora and I were the only ones in Kabul. The process was exhausting, but also enjoyable, especially when we could see things coming together.
There were many waves of emotions throughout this process. There were many difficulties that we did not learn to tackle in school. We did not know how to talk to a landowner who did not want to deal with women, a doctor who only referred to women by “daughter of” or neighbors who assumed that a café was a safe yet corruptive place for teenagers to have secret intimacies and smoke hookah. The dominant male patriarchy believed opening a beauty salon to be the only potential career path for women, so no matter how independent we wanted to be, it seemed that to start our business in Afghanistan, we needed to have men accompany us through the unfamiliar markets and deals.
Despite all this, we were finally able to rent a place in Golaye, an impoverished area west of Kabul. It is known to nurture gangster groups who have killed, raped, injured and threatened many people over the years, yet, we decided to rent this risky place for three reasons: there was no other café in this area, the rent was cheap and it was close to the street. Most importantly, Basira, Mansoora and I lived relatively close to the café.
Initially, we planned to only hire female workers (because a woman’s economic independence can help her secure a better place in society) and wanted to keep the store open to at least 9 p.m. However, security is a constant worry for the people of Kabul, and since the crime rate has increased by 30 percent in the past year, we could not open the store past 7 p.m. At the same time, as girls could not work late at night, we ended up hiring boys for our afternoon shift.
Now at Afra, which means maple, we aim to create an affordable place for students to read, write and use WiFi, given that no other place in Kabul provided all of these at once. Keeping in mind our target customers, we have carefully selected our books for both leisure and reference — especially since in current Afghanistan, even reading and education can be a privilege.
Lastly, Afra would not have been possible if not for the support from Smith College’s Conway Center and that of our family members and friends in Kabul. Thank you to everyone who helped make our idea a reality!
