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Today's visit is the culmination of three years' work, one of the first of what will turn out to be many thousands of visits in the Kabul area in which the No Strings landmine-awareness puppet film will be shown to groups of children and communities all around Afghanistan.
This first No Strings project was a 40-minute film staring ChucheQhalin, which tells the tale of a little boy made of carpet whose destiny is one day to become a real boy, a story loosely based on Pinocchio. First, though, Chuchi must learn to walk to school safely in a world riddled with hidden mines and unexploded bombs. Through his adventures, children and communities learn where it is safe to walk and play, and the places they must on no account enter.
Children at this hillside school still run off to fly kites in the breezes that catch its slopes, a dangerous but generations-old tradition here. Minefields, where marked, are ringed with stones painted red - white stones mean an area has been de-mined, but accidents occur repeatedly.
On this particular afternoon, routine lessons stop with the excitement of the approach of an agricultural motorbike and sidecar unit. Donated by eRanger, the bike, which can handle a vast diversity of terrain, is parked up, and the huge cinema screen, projector and generator stored within its specially-designed sidecar unit are taken into their tented classroom.
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