A cooperative registered with the Afghan Minisrty of Agriculture in which all assets, risks and revenues are the joint property of those who contribute effort to its activities, Arghand Kandahar is the production facility in which our line of skin care products is crafted.  We start with raw materials, which include a variety of locally grown fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and flowers. 

 

Our male and female members work separately but simultaneously within the same compound at their own request, and in accordance with cultural norms.  As such, the work has become divided along gender lines.  The women prepare the raw materials (cracking nuts, washing pomegranate seeds, etc.) from which the men extract a variety of cold pressed and essential oils.  Using these oils, they make soap which then gets passed back to the women.  The women grate the soap and melt it back down, adding in both the precious essential oils and natural dyes for color.  They weigh and hand mold each of the bars, which is hard enough by the following day to be hand-smoothed in a basin of cool water.  After this first polish, the women take the soaps down to the basement where they sit curing for six weeks.  It is the men who retrieve the soaps and use their strong, gloved thumbs to perform the final polish.  When this step has been completed, the men wrap the soaps in strips of turban silk, attach the labels, wrap them again in newspaper and load the shipping cartons. 

Cooperative members work from 8:00 in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon, at which point a communal meal is served.  Again, the two groups eat seperately but the work is divided between the men who shop and the women who cook. 

 

Important decisions regarding the security, sustainability, expansion and overall direction of the cooperative are made by consensus.  Typically, a meeting or "shura" will be initiated by Sarah who will ask for the opinions of all members before making a decision that may impact them in any way.

 

At Arghand, as in most of Afghanistan, men and women are not in the habit of forming close friendships.  Yet the comfort level between all colleagues has grown high across the past three years, transforming the cooperative into a rich, inter-tribal  family that is also a productive workplace, in spite of the dangers and hardships that have been imposed by ongoing political turmoil.

 

When planning the website, our intention was to show thumbnail portraits of each Arghand member, along with a brief bio that would help to familiarize our customers and supporters with them not just as workers but also as people who have families and interests outside of work.  But as Kandahar security deteriorates and it becomes increasingly risky for our staff just to come to work every day, we came to the sad realization that this would not be a good time to publish their identities on the world wide web. 

 

If the Taliban threatens to cut off the ink stained finger of anyone caught votiong in the presidential election, just imagine how someone who works for a progressive, co-ed, foreign affiliated business cooperative is likely to  be perceived.  When this page is filled with portraits of our Afghan members  beside their real names and words to describe them, it will be an indication that southern Afghanistan is no longer at the brink of catastrophe.