Spring has come to Kabul. The mountains wear a lighter cap of snow than they did when I was here in January. Down in the city green leaves are on all the trees and grass struggles up wherever feet are not constant.
Since I was last here another growth, a most curious mushroom, has sprung up by the roadside all over town. A bar of cream-painted steel, turned into an oval 2m tall, the ends cemented into the earth. The oval contains a blue sign, stenciled in white with the icon of a bus - under a Japanese flag. Yes, they are bus stops, apparently the sequential perches for that species of city bus (among the many which roam the streets) which wears just that plumage of cream of blue. I am assured, however, that the bus system is not yet running.
I find myself thinking that this is very odd, this partial attempt to capture and tame the unruly beast of Kabul traffic by laying some sort of order on a part of it. I marvel at the effort and the determination to plant these signs over the whole of the city in a few short months - and wonder if they (and the money) might have been better spent.
I am disappointed, as I always am all over the world, at the need for the donor nation to put their flag on any work, great or small, paid for by their taxpayers (Afghans surely did the work of planting, and presumably Afghans did the work of planning as well). Now, Kabulis will always know that Japan bought them a bus system. But what else will Kabulis know of Japan? Is this how Japan cements its friendship with Afghanistan and gains the goodwill of Afghans?
"The Japanese? What do I think of them? They like bus stops."
. . .
This is a country with one (poorly trained, poorly paid, and completely unsupplied) teacher for every 150 schoolchildren. But the capital city is getting a brand new bus system!
This is a country where, because of war, 24 of 31 districts either have a minimally functional irrigation system or do not have one at all and no district's irrigation system is operating at even the levels of 1978. But the capital city has bus stops!
I really can't go on. It would just make you cry.
Posted by Martial