Regina garden brings Afghan women peace, friendship
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | 2:01 PM CT
CBC News
Afghan refugees Zahra Karini, middle, with her mother, Fatemeh Mohammadi, and niece, Tahera, have found peace and friendship in their community garden plot in Regina. (Nichole Huck/CBC)Coming from a war-torn country can mean witnessing the destruction of everything you love.
So there's a certain joy in bringing something to life.
Three generations of refugees from Afghanistan have discovered this, amid the leafy zucchinis and plush potatoes of their community garden plot in Regina.
The women fled the Central Asian country during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, pulling their belongings in a donkey cart across the dusty terrain to neighbouring Iran.
"We lost our home, we lost our land and we hadn't any place to live," Zahra Karini told CBC News last week.
"We had to leave and go find [a] safe place."
Karini and her mother, Fatemeh Mohammadi, as well as other members of their family, were welcomed as refugees in Iran.
Adjusting to new freedoms
But a shift in policy in Iran about four years ago forced Karini and Mohammadi to find a new home.
That led them to Regina, where Karini, her mother and her niece, Tahera Karini, live together in an apartment downtown.
Karini is enjoying her new freedom in Canada, having learned how to ride a bike, getting her driver's licence and pursuing her high-school education.
Things were tougher on her mother, who is in her sixties, speaks little English and has some health problems.
"She had heart attack. She had to go hospital and she had surgery," said Karini.
"She was so upset and sitting, and she couldn't understand TV. She couldn't understand people … She was almost sick."
Karini remembered how happy her mother was in Iran, working in a vegetable garden.
The pay was small and the hours long, but Mohammadi enjoyed the work and the free vegetables she was allowed to take home.
"Every evening we made tea and then we put our favourite vegetable with cheese on top of the bread. And sit in the garden, and drink the tea and enjoyed it," Karini said, laughing with the memory.
Karini asked a volunteer who was helping them settle in the community to look for a garden. They were given the last plot at the Yara-Grow Regina Community Garden, a 10-minute drive from their apartment.
Finding joy down the garden path
Karini said the little piece of land has made a world of difference to her mother.
"She is much healthier," said Karini.
"Everybody's friendly," said Mohammadi, speaking through a translation provided by her daughter.
"She says the plants she is growing is like the baby she is raising," said Karini, still translating for her mother.
"I have to work very hard. And for that reason, I really like because I work on it," Mohammadi continued.
Karini and her mother are not the only newcomers forming friendships at the Yara garden.
Among the 237 families are people from Congo, China, Japan and South Africa.
"This is a place that even though there is a language barrier … you can still come and understand each other, and feel welcome and feel part of a community, because gardening is universal," said Karen Watkins, chair of Grow Regina, which runs the garden.
