Sesame Street’s first Afghan Muppet empowers girls

KABUL: With purple skin and an orange nose, her multi-coloured braids wrapped in a headscarf, Zari is Sesame Street’s first female, Afghan muppet and she has a message: girl power.

Producers hope the character, who debuted on the local version of the show this month, will provide a much needed boost to gender equality in a country where girls still trail behind boys across the board.

Dressed in traditional garb Zari, whose name means ‘shimmering’ in Dari and Pashto, is confident and inquisitive. Afghan puppeteer Mansoora Shirzad says she hopes the muppet will become a role model for young girls and send messages of empowerment to kids in the country.

“Our goal is to entertain children and educate them,” Shirzad told AFP at the Sesame Street recording studio.

She said she hopes six-year-old Zari will “bring new colour to the show and enable us to convey our message”, her eyes lighting up as she speaks. Known in Afghanistan as ‘Baghch-e-Simsim,’ or Sesame Garden, the programme debuted in the country in 2011 and is the most popular children’s series on television today.

Partly funded by the US aid agency, the show features segments catered to local issues, and includes dubbed content from other Sesame Street versions including from Egypt, Bangladesh, Mexico and Russia. For her part, Zari – who debuted on April 7 and has appeared in three episodes so far – has a full agenda this season.

She’ll promote the virtues of exercising and playing sports, she’ll speak to a female paediatrician about how to become a doctor, and she’ll remind Afghanistan’s young people to use the traditional Islamic greeting with friends: ‘Asalaam Alaikum’ (peace be upon you). — AFP