I bet you didn't know....

Now we may all hear a fair bit about the wars and suffering that have taken place in the countries that we work in. But here are a few things I bet you didn’t know about Afghanistan....

Vida Samadzai, 25, was the first Afghan women to compete in a beauty contest for more than 30 years in 2003 following the fall of the Taliban. She competed alongside 60 other women from across the world for the Miss Earth title. She was only the second Miss Afghanistan to take part in a beauty contest, the last one being in 1974.

Zainab Salbi, an author and activist, has provided hands-on aid and support via mail to women in war-torn regions. Her organization, which she started from scratch, has helped more than 120,000 women, distributed more than $33 million in direct aid and loans, trained thousands of women in rights awareness, and helped thousands to start their own small businesses. She was honoured by the then President Clinton, in 1995, at a White House ceremony for her humanitarian work in Bosnia. She has also been nominated by Amnesty International for the Arthur Ashe Award and by Physicians for Human Rights for the Reebok Human Rights Award.

Khaled Hosseini is a Kabul-born American novelist. His best-selling first novel, The Kite Runner, (2003), has become a publishing industry’s success story. It has been published in 38 countries, translated into 42 languages, turned into an Oscar-nominated movie and sold more than 10 million copies.

Buzkashi is a national sport in Afghanistan. It is similar to polo and played by horsemen in two teams, each trying to grab and hold a goat carcass. Although literacy levels are very low, classic poetry plays a very important role in the Afghan culture. Private poetry competition events known as “musha’era” are rather popular, even among the general public.