In a country where basically nothing works the way it's supposed to, it's really quite noteworthy when you actually find something functional, let alone actually efficient. Thus, the system that has been set up for selling and distributing cell phone minutes in Afghanistan is really eye-catching. Other reports have been written about this before, but I don't know where they are, and besides, if you're reading this you probably want to hear my take on it anyway.
Anyway. Some context is necessary. Five or six years ago, there were basically no cell phones in Afghanistan. Today, only the most rural districts of the most backwater provinces lack at least some cell service, although the service often doesn't function at night.*
*The Taliban usually pressures providers to turn the cell towers off at night. With no cell phone service, villagers can't alert the local PRT to Taliban movements.
Getting a phone is not too hard. In any market area, there is guaranteed to be at least one person selling Indian or Pakistani knockoff phones. The standard phone is a utilitarian Nokia model, which retails for anywhere from 1200-1600 afghanis ($26-$35), depending on the uprightness of the seller and the degree of illegality of the phone. The phones come with SIM cards from one of the major Afghan cell providers: the three largest ones, at least in the Kabul area, are AWCC (Afghan Wireless Communications Company), Etisalat, and Roshan. I don't know much about the first two, but Roshan was founded by a rich Afghan businessman and has won numerous awards for entrepreneuership and community contributions.
So now you have your phone and SIM card. You will put on an initial balance of money, say 500 afghanis (about $11), at the store. Then you go about using your phone, paying reasonable rates for in-country calling and texting, semi-reasonable rates for international texts, and ungodly rates for international calls (at least to the US; presumably it's pretty cheap to call a Pakistani number). This is all standard. The amazing part is what happens when you need to refill your phone.
On every street corner in Kabul, in every market, in every tiny village, at least one person will be selling phone cards. These cards are used to refill your phone balance, and come in denominations ranging from 25 afghanis (about $0.60) to 1000 afghanis (about $22). Nobody polices these vendors, because if they cheat their customers, people will simply buy from another vendor. The true beauty of it, though, is that there is absolutely no danger of fraud. Each card has a scratch-off box with a code below it. When you get a card, you scratch off that weird gray stuff to reveal the code, which you then dial as if it were a phone number (prefixed by some code to tell the phone what you're doing). Dialing this number adds the amount of money to your SIM card and deactivates the code on the card, preventing anyone from getting a free addition to their phone balance. You throw away the card, and you're on your way.
It's simple. It's elegant. It's fraud-proof. I'm not sure there's anything else in this country that can be described with all three of those adjectives.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Price Check
As an addendum to the previous post, here are some selected price quotes for Kabul (mostly from Finest, unless otherwise noted):
4 Chinese White Pears (these are arguably the greatest fruit ever - they're shaped like apples and taste like a cross between pears and apples): $2.89 total.
1 jar of peanut butter: $5.56
1 box of Honey Nut Cheerios: $6.67
1 "loaf" of bread from local bakery (2/3 of a "loaf" is about sufficient for breakfast): $0.22
1 can tuna fish: $3.34
1 pirated English-language DVD: $1.56
24 cans of low-quality Danish beer (roughly equivalent to a Heineken; the liquor delivery man only has one kind of beer and only sells it by the case): $90
3 liters orange juice and 1.5 liters of Sprite (from local corner store): $4.89 total
2.2 pounds fresh cheese from local store: $5.33
1 Pashto textbook (minus the audio CD that is supposed to be included): $40
1 standard-issue cell phone (minutes bought separately): $27
"Import tax" on a package containing a sleeping bag and some small household sundries: $25
"Import tax" on the same package, had "value of contents less than $100" been written on the outside: $0
There are some things money can't buy.* Etc.
*Consistent electricity being at the top of the list.
4 Chinese White Pears (these are arguably the greatest fruit ever - they're shaped like apples and taste like a cross between pears and apples): $2.89 total.
1 jar of peanut butter: $5.56
1 box of Honey Nut Cheerios: $6.67
1 "loaf" of bread from local bakery (2/3 of a "loaf" is about sufficient for breakfast): $0.22
1 can tuna fish: $3.34
1 pirated English-language DVD: $1.56
24 cans of low-quality Danish beer (roughly equivalent to a Heineken; the liquor delivery man only has one kind of beer and only sells it by the case): $90
3 liters orange juice and 1.5 liters of Sprite (from local corner store): $4.89 total
2.2 pounds fresh cheese from local store: $5.33
1 Pashto textbook (minus the audio CD that is supposed to be included): $40
1 standard-issue cell phone (minutes bought separately): $27
"Import tax" on a package containing a sleeping bag and some small household sundries: $25
"Import tax" on the same package, had "value of contents less than $100" been written on the outside: $0
There are some things money can't buy.* Etc.
*Consistent electricity being at the top of the list.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Lost in the Supermarket
There are three major Westerner-oriented supermarkets in my part of town: two branches of a company called Finest, and one store run by a Middle Eastern supermarket chain called Spinney's. All three of these places cater quite explicitly to us kharijis, from their inventories to the fact that you can pay in Afghanis, dollars, or even, at least in theory, with a credit card (the two Finest outlets are the only stores I've seen in Kabul that take credit cards).* They are also interesting enough in their own right to merit a post.
*I have tried a couple of times to pay with my credit card, but nobody at these stores seems to be able to work the machine. Either that or it's just broken. But still, it's the thought that counts.
Shopping at Finest or Spinney's is something of an experience. You are likely to be able to find anything you need for your house there, from peanut butter (about $6 per jar) to Frosted Flakes (about $8 per box) to pirated English-language DVDs (about $1.40 each; only at Finest) to fancy-looking china (sorry, no price quote here). Annoyingly, the only things I can't seem to find in either place are notecards; apparently the Afghans don't study vocabulary. There is a small fruit section, a deli, and even some Western-style medicines. Some of the medicines even come from the West, such as the 144-count boxes of Costco-brand knockoff decongestant pills.
But the really strange part is the fact that the shelves in Finest and Spinney's are far more about volume than about diversity, although this is not to say that they have too limited of a selection. Rather, it is quite typical to see five or six five-deep rows of each food item in an aisle. There are usually around a hundred cans of peanut butter, which is stocked purely for the Americans in town, on the shelves of Finest at any given time. One could buy twenty jars of jelly without making a dent in the selection.
In fact, this bizarre obsession with volume of inventory carries over to just about every store in this town. The little Afghan stores on the main street near our house have entire shelves full of orange juice, mango juice, soda, etc. - perhaps 30 or 40 liters of each at any one time. And there are two or three of these stores per block. The bakeries (which are the only businesses open 24/7, even on the biggest Afghan holidays) have mounds of nan ready for sale all the time, even if it's 8:00 at night. I drove by a store the other day whose interior walls were lined with nothing but rows and rows of fire extinguishers, perhaps 50 in total.**
**As far as I can tell, Kabul has no fire department, and I don't think I've seen a fire extinguisher in a building yet (other than this store). This store's business model might need some re-tooling.
Perhaps the immensity and repetitiveness of store inventories reflects nothing more than a hedge against the inevitable delay/cancellation of shipments into Kabul, or merely the fact that space is at a premium downtown (where many small shops lack basements or storerooms). But it still strikes me as odd. The small store on Taimani Street that is wall-to-wall juice inside is never, ever, going to sell even a quarter of its juice inventory in a single day, and it may never even approach that pace of sales. Spinney's could probably put 50, rather than 200, cans of beans on its shelves, and customers wouldn't notice the difference. What's the use of having 50 fire extinguishers in a space the size of a suburban American walk-in closet?
These questions are only underscored by the deprivation of most Afghans. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. In Kabul, corrugated-iron shacks often sit only a block or two away from palatial, lavishly-decorated compounds. Most of the city makes little to no money, while those in positions of power take field trips with $52 million in cash in a suitcase. Why, then, am I surprised that foodstuffs seem to be found in a Poisson distribution--little to none for long stretches, and then huge clusters? It's only fitting, right?
*I have tried a couple of times to pay with my credit card, but nobody at these stores seems to be able to work the machine. Either that or it's just broken. But still, it's the thought that counts.
Shopping at Finest or Spinney's is something of an experience. You are likely to be able to find anything you need for your house there, from peanut butter (about $6 per jar) to Frosted Flakes (about $8 per box) to pirated English-language DVDs (about $1.40 each; only at Finest) to fancy-looking china (sorry, no price quote here). Annoyingly, the only things I can't seem to find in either place are notecards; apparently the Afghans don't study vocabulary. There is a small fruit section, a deli, and even some Western-style medicines. Some of the medicines even come from the West, such as the 144-count boxes of Costco-brand knockoff decongestant pills.
But the really strange part is the fact that the shelves in Finest and Spinney's are far more about volume than about diversity, although this is not to say that they have too limited of a selection. Rather, it is quite typical to see five or six five-deep rows of each food item in an aisle. There are usually around a hundred cans of peanut butter, which is stocked purely for the Americans in town, on the shelves of Finest at any given time. One could buy twenty jars of jelly without making a dent in the selection.
In fact, this bizarre obsession with volume of inventory carries over to just about every store in this town. The little Afghan stores on the main street near our house have entire shelves full of orange juice, mango juice, soda, etc. - perhaps 30 or 40 liters of each at any one time. And there are two or three of these stores per block. The bakeries (which are the only businesses open 24/7, even on the biggest Afghan holidays) have mounds of nan ready for sale all the time, even if it's 8:00 at night. I drove by a store the other day whose interior walls were lined with nothing but rows and rows of fire extinguishers, perhaps 50 in total.**
**As far as I can tell, Kabul has no fire department, and I don't think I've seen a fire extinguisher in a building yet (other than this store). This store's business model might need some re-tooling.
Perhaps the immensity and repetitiveness of store inventories reflects nothing more than a hedge against the inevitable delay/cancellation of shipments into Kabul, or merely the fact that space is at a premium downtown (where many small shops lack basements or storerooms). But it still strikes me as odd. The small store on Taimani Street that is wall-to-wall juice inside is never, ever, going to sell even a quarter of its juice inventory in a single day, and it may never even approach that pace of sales. Spinney's could probably put 50, rather than 200, cans of beans on its shelves, and customers wouldn't notice the difference. What's the use of having 50 fire extinguishers in a space the size of a suburban American walk-in closet?
These questions are only underscored by the deprivation of most Afghans. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. In Kabul, corrugated-iron shacks often sit only a block or two away from palatial, lavishly-decorated compounds. Most of the city makes little to no money, while those in positions of power take field trips with $52 million in cash in a suitcase. Why, then, am I surprised that foodstuffs seem to be found in a Poisson distribution--little to none for long stretches, and then huge clusters? It's only fitting, right?
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Arguably the silliest garment ever
So I just tried on a shalwar kameez for the first time, and it has to be up there with the most weirdly designed outfits I've ever seen. It's essentially a very long dress shirt (although with only five or six buttons), and then the baggiest pair of pants imaginable. Seriously. The waist on these things has to be a good 60 inches, which seems to be just a waste of material (no pun intended). The standard shalwar belt is actually shorter than the circumference of the waist, and it has to be threaded through a tunnel of fabric painstakingly. And then once you get it all the way through, because it's too short, you have to bunch up the fabric to prevent it from slipping back into the depths of the waist.
But wait. There's more. The only pocket in the pants is a zip-up affair positioned directly over the crotch. And it's really not very big, either (although I'm not sure I'd want to risk putting too much in that pocket anyway).
The loose, billowy nature of this outfit might make sense in a warmer climate, and it does indeed get warm in Kabul in the summer. But in the winter, when it barely breaks 50 in Kabul (and doesn't get anywhere near that warm in the north), it really doesn't make sense to be wearing such a loose outfit. And yet they do. And therefore, so do I.
P.S. Sorry for the hiatus in posting over the last week - I've had a hellacious head cold (verging on the flu) that is just now clearing up after six days, and I've also been on deadline with a series of 4 reports for the Dutch government. And then a week from today, I'm off to the provinces. So posting may continue to be spotty. Apologies to my legions of loyal readers.
But wait. There's more. The only pocket in the pants is a zip-up affair positioned directly over the crotch. And it's really not very big, either (although I'm not sure I'd want to risk putting too much in that pocket anyway).
The loose, billowy nature of this outfit might make sense in a warmer climate, and it does indeed get warm in Kabul in the summer. But in the winter, when it barely breaks 50 in Kabul (and doesn't get anywhere near that warm in the north), it really doesn't make sense to be wearing such a loose outfit. And yet they do. And therefore, so do I.
P.S. Sorry for the hiatus in posting over the last week - I've had a hellacious head cold (verging on the flu) that is just now clearing up after six days, and I've also been on deadline with a series of 4 reports for the Dutch government. And then a week from today, I'm off to the provinces. So posting may continue to be spotty. Apologies to my legions of loyal readers.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
"Well, it seemed kind of silly to have me guarding a guard, you know..."
One of the most interesting parts of driving around Kabul is noticing the overt security presence outside different buildings. Obviously the embassies and consulates are heavily secured, so I'm not going to mention these here. But here's a look at some of the more interesting places which are heavily secured:
1. Banks: Outside of embassies and consulates, Kabul's few bank branches are some of the most heavily guarded places in the city. A bank branch generally will have at least three armed guards outside, a big gate of the type that sit across the exits to parking garages (although the flimsy piece of metal in the parking garage gates has been replaced with a gigantic, 6-to-8-inch thick metal pole), and three to four security cameras trained on the parking lot. Actually, banks are also distinguished by the mere presence of a parking lot, even though I can probably count on one hand the number of cars I've seen parked in front of banks in my almost three weeks in Kabul.
2. Ex-pat bars and restaurants: The fact that gathering places for foreigners come with heavy security is unsurprising, but I have still been taken a little aback by the sheer number of precautions taken. One bar has four thick iron doors between the street and the interior, each one with at least one armed guard--in addition to security cameras and an exterior guard post with walls reinforced by sandbags (there is also a sort of corridor to the exterior door formed by about two-foot-high sandbag walls). Another restaurant has what must be an 8-inch-thick wooden door into a bizarre and disorienting foyer, which houses armed guards and is separated from the restaurant by another very thick, and extremely narrow--and therefore awkward--wooden door. A third bar has its own maze of iron doors and guards, all of which begin far behind a huge iron gate which is marked only with the logo of a package-delivery company. Physical separation from the street seems to be as important as guns and personnel, which is quite sensible.
3. Government agencies: Extremely heavily guarded and often equally badly marked. The Afghan Attorney General's office sits behind two huge gates, at least one gigantic blast wall (I can't see if there are more behind it), and five or six Kalashnikov-toting ANA soldiers (that's the Afghan National Army, for the Statesiders). The ministry that doles out the foreigner registration cards does not have a sign outside it; if you didn't know it was there, you would never find it, except if you inferred its existence from the presence of five uniformed, armed guards crowded into a doorway only wide enough for two of them. The sign for the Ministry of Hajj and Mosques--I may be mangling the actual title--looks for all the world like it was handwritten over the gate. Its two guards make it the least protected ministry I've seen, presumably because the religious fundamentalist opposition has fewer problems with the mosque ministry than with any of its cohorts in the government.
4. Western-style supermarkets: Another surprising (at least to me) entry on this list. The three main Western-oriented supermarkets in this part of town are interesting enough to warrant their own post, which will appear eventually. But they also all have at least one armed guard in front, and the one across the street from the British Embassy has three or four milling around nearby. These stores also have no parking lots, although they are set back from the street slightly, which to Afghan drivers is the equivalent of a football-stadium-sized sprawl of parking.
5. Entire streets in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood: Wazir Akbar Khan is a small neighborhood of Kabul, no more than seven or eight blocks long and five or six blocks wide. But it happens to be the area where most of the security contractors live and work. This means a few things. First, essentially all of the vehicles you see in WAK are SUVs. Second, the houses are enormous and almost comically fortified, with bales upon bales of concertina wire on top of huge concrete blast walls and gigantic sliding gates for the aforementioned SUVs. Third, almost all of the WAK guards wear sunglasses, while sunglasses are extremely rare elsewhere in Kabul (perhaps a manifestation of some form of Stockholm Syndrome, given whom they're guarding?). Finally, many of the streets in WAK--at least those which empty onto the main thoroughfare going through the neighborhood--have guard posts and big metal gates (the same type as those outside the banks) at the intersections with the main street. You can't even get onto the street without passing a guard inspection. Of course, this is just one of the many absurdities surrounding the life of a security contractor in Kabul...but that's for another time.
**Bonus points if you get the (probably mangled) reference in this post's title.
1. Banks: Outside of embassies and consulates, Kabul's few bank branches are some of the most heavily guarded places in the city. A bank branch generally will have at least three armed guards outside, a big gate of the type that sit across the exits to parking garages (although the flimsy piece of metal in the parking garage gates has been replaced with a gigantic, 6-to-8-inch thick metal pole), and three to four security cameras trained on the parking lot. Actually, banks are also distinguished by the mere presence of a parking lot, even though I can probably count on one hand the number of cars I've seen parked in front of banks in my almost three weeks in Kabul.
2. Ex-pat bars and restaurants: The fact that gathering places for foreigners come with heavy security is unsurprising, but I have still been taken a little aback by the sheer number of precautions taken. One bar has four thick iron doors between the street and the interior, each one with at least one armed guard--in addition to security cameras and an exterior guard post with walls reinforced by sandbags (there is also a sort of corridor to the exterior door formed by about two-foot-high sandbag walls). Another restaurant has what must be an 8-inch-thick wooden door into a bizarre and disorienting foyer, which houses armed guards and is separated from the restaurant by another very thick, and extremely narrow--and therefore awkward--wooden door. A third bar has its own maze of iron doors and guards, all of which begin far behind a huge iron gate which is marked only with the logo of a package-delivery company. Physical separation from the street seems to be as important as guns and personnel, which is quite sensible.
3. Government agencies: Extremely heavily guarded and often equally badly marked. The Afghan Attorney General's office sits behind two huge gates, at least one gigantic blast wall (I can't see if there are more behind it), and five or six Kalashnikov-toting ANA soldiers (that's the Afghan National Army, for the Statesiders). The ministry that doles out the foreigner registration cards does not have a sign outside it; if you didn't know it was there, you would never find it, except if you inferred its existence from the presence of five uniformed, armed guards crowded into a doorway only wide enough for two of them. The sign for the Ministry of Hajj and Mosques--I may be mangling the actual title--looks for all the world like it was handwritten over the gate. Its two guards make it the least protected ministry I've seen, presumably because the religious fundamentalist opposition has fewer problems with the mosque ministry than with any of its cohorts in the government.
4. Western-style supermarkets: Another surprising (at least to me) entry on this list. The three main Western-oriented supermarkets in this part of town are interesting enough to warrant their own post, which will appear eventually. But they also all have at least one armed guard in front, and the one across the street from the British Embassy has three or four milling around nearby. These stores also have no parking lots, although they are set back from the street slightly, which to Afghan drivers is the equivalent of a football-stadium-sized sprawl of parking.
5. Entire streets in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood: Wazir Akbar Khan is a small neighborhood of Kabul, no more than seven or eight blocks long and five or six blocks wide. But it happens to be the area where most of the security contractors live and work. This means a few things. First, essentially all of the vehicles you see in WAK are SUVs. Second, the houses are enormous and almost comically fortified, with bales upon bales of concertina wire on top of huge concrete blast walls and gigantic sliding gates for the aforementioned SUVs. Third, almost all of the WAK guards wear sunglasses, while sunglasses are extremely rare elsewhere in Kabul (perhaps a manifestation of some form of Stockholm Syndrome, given whom they're guarding?). Finally, many of the streets in WAK--at least those which empty onto the main thoroughfare going through the neighborhood--have guard posts and big metal gates (the same type as those outside the banks) at the intersections with the main street. You can't even get onto the street without passing a guard inspection. Of course, this is just one of the many absurdities surrounding the life of a security contractor in Kabul...but that's for another time.
**Bonus points if you get the (probably mangled) reference in this post's title.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Ashes, Ashes, All Fell Down
I was driving through some of the residential outskirts of Kabul last night, and two things struck me. First, I finally saw a road with lane markers! And it also had some street signs!!! Now, granted, this was Highway 1, the southern half of the Ring Road that goes around the mountainous center of Afghanistan and connects all the major cities (this part goes from Kabul to Herat, via Kandahar), but I was still quite impressed. Not that Kabuli drivers seemed to have any idea what exactly the little white stripes on the road meant, exactly, but points to the government for trying.
More interestingly, I saw the Kabul that, frankly, I had been expecting to see more of all along: bombed-out buildings, people living in sheds made of scraps of corrugated iron, and a generally post-apocalyptic-looking sort of industrial wasteland. Sure, much of the inner core of Kabul, including where I live, is under construction, but around here, most (although not all) of the construction is actually building towards something (or actively taking something down). But out by Pagman, where I was yesterday, buildings are half-built--perhaps half-destroyed would be more accurate--and staying that way.
I asked the Afghan I was with, who has lived in the country since before the Russian invasion, how long this part of Kabul has looked like this. He said, interestingly, that it wasn't the Russians that did this to Kabul. It was actually during the civil wars of the early 1990s, after the Russians had left but before the Taliban rose to power, that Kabul suffered most. Bombs, rockets, and horrifically intense street fighting ravaged Kabul and the other cities of Afghanistan as warlords, bandits, and heroes scratched and clawed for inches of territory soon to be rendered uninhabitable by reprisal violence. This part of the city isn't dead--far from it, thanks to the Afghan people's trademark tenacity in the face of hardship. But at twilight, under smog-choked skies, stuck in the gridlock of yet another Kabul rush hour, it sure doesn't look very alive, either.
More interestingly, I saw the Kabul that, frankly, I had been expecting to see more of all along: bombed-out buildings, people living in sheds made of scraps of corrugated iron, and a generally post-apocalyptic-looking sort of industrial wasteland. Sure, much of the inner core of Kabul, including where I live, is under construction, but around here, most (although not all) of the construction is actually building towards something (or actively taking something down). But out by Pagman, where I was yesterday, buildings are half-built--perhaps half-destroyed would be more accurate--and staying that way.
I asked the Afghan I was with, who has lived in the country since before the Russian invasion, how long this part of Kabul has looked like this. He said, interestingly, that it wasn't the Russians that did this to Kabul. It was actually during the civil wars of the early 1990s, after the Russians had left but before the Taliban rose to power, that Kabul suffered most. Bombs, rockets, and horrifically intense street fighting ravaged Kabul and the other cities of Afghanistan as warlords, bandits, and heroes scratched and clawed for inches of territory soon to be rendered uninhabitable by reprisal violence. This part of the city isn't dead--far from it, thanks to the Afghan people's trademark tenacity in the face of hardship. But at twilight, under smog-choked skies, stuck in the gridlock of yet another Kabul rush hour, it sure doesn't look very alive, either.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Traffic, Kabul-style
As I have alluded to in previous posts, driving around Kabul is something of an experience. Normally I wouldn't subject you, dear readers, to a post about something as mundane as traffic, but as is proving to be the case quite often, Kabul is different from just about any other city in this regard. There's nothing mundane about driving around this town.
First of all, there are essentially none of the aids to drivers that we in the West are used to. There are no lines on the streets, even the paved ones. There are no street signs, and virtually no road signs (i.e. stop signs, yield signs, etc.). Maybe 30% of the roads are paved, and the roads that aren't paved are filled with large rocks and larger ditches. There are two traffic lights, neither of which works with any regularity. Police checkpoints ring the downtown area, forming what is hilariously labeled as the "Ring of Steel"--given the fact that the most a policeman will ever do at one of these checkpoints is ask you for your passport/ID, the Ring of Steel mostly serves to snarl traffic.
And then there are the drivers. Kabulis look down their noses at things like turn signals and side-view mirrors--actually, it would be an improvement if they looked down their nose at the latter, because maybe then they might actually see something in it. Turning two-lane roads (with "lane" being a relative term, given the lack of line markings) into four-lane clusterf*cks seems to be a local sport, as does incessant horn-blowing when said clusterf*ck prevents one from getting where one wants to go. Drivers often find themselves trying to squeeze between cars waiting to turn left and the often quite deep ditches that line most roads (and serve as anything from drainage to open sewers), with a remarkably high success rate.
Indeed, perhaps the most bizarre thing about this whole nightmare scenario is that people actually get where they need to go in one piece and reasonably effectively. Sure, there are no traffic lights, but I've been consistently surprised by how short my trips end up being, although I admit that most of the places I go aren't too far away to begin with. Afghans as a rule don't wear seat belts--it is sometimes considered an insult to the driver if you put on the seat belt, the theory being that it means you don't trust him--but very few people are killed in car accidents, at least in Kabul, because nobody ever gets their car moving fast enough to do any damage to the passengers in an accident.* And the complete lack of traffic rules means a concomitant lack of police oversight, so people have no compunctions about doing whatever they need to do to get around the latest traffic jam. It's certainly a spectacle, and I am immensely glad that I don't have to do the driving. But perhaps the traffic situation here can serve as something of an object lesson. I don't want to think about what would happen to traffic here if the government tried to force people to do things like stay in lanes, obey traffic lights, or use their horns less to decrease noise pollution. The current system isn't pretty, and it doesn't meet Western ideals of order and predictability. But, to channel James Scott from Seeing Like A State, I'm not sure that trying to completely overhaul the system wouldn't end up making things substantially worse.
*The Kabul-Jalalabad highway, usually called the Jalalabad Road, is an entirely different story. It is one of the deadliest roads in the world, wending its way along the side of a cliff face down a gorge in the Kabul River. As if the treacherous terrain weren't enough, it is also essentially the only way to get a truck from Pakistan to Kabul, which is perhaps the single most important import pathway for Afghanistan. I'm quite thankful that my work here is not going to take me to Jalalabad...
First of all, there are essentially none of the aids to drivers that we in the West are used to. There are no lines on the streets, even the paved ones. There are no street signs, and virtually no road signs (i.e. stop signs, yield signs, etc.). Maybe 30% of the roads are paved, and the roads that aren't paved are filled with large rocks and larger ditches. There are two traffic lights, neither of which works with any regularity. Police checkpoints ring the downtown area, forming what is hilariously labeled as the "Ring of Steel"--given the fact that the most a policeman will ever do at one of these checkpoints is ask you for your passport/ID, the Ring of Steel mostly serves to snarl traffic.
And then there are the drivers. Kabulis look down their noses at things like turn signals and side-view mirrors--actually, it would be an improvement if they looked down their nose at the latter, because maybe then they might actually see something in it. Turning two-lane roads (with "lane" being a relative term, given the lack of line markings) into four-lane clusterf*cks seems to be a local sport, as does incessant horn-blowing when said clusterf*ck prevents one from getting where one wants to go. Drivers often find themselves trying to squeeze between cars waiting to turn left and the often quite deep ditches that line most roads (and serve as anything from drainage to open sewers), with a remarkably high success rate.
Indeed, perhaps the most bizarre thing about this whole nightmare scenario is that people actually get where they need to go in one piece and reasonably effectively. Sure, there are no traffic lights, but I've been consistently surprised by how short my trips end up being, although I admit that most of the places I go aren't too far away to begin with. Afghans as a rule don't wear seat belts--it is sometimes considered an insult to the driver if you put on the seat belt, the theory being that it means you don't trust him--but very few people are killed in car accidents, at least in Kabul, because nobody ever gets their car moving fast enough to do any damage to the passengers in an accident.* And the complete lack of traffic rules means a concomitant lack of police oversight, so people have no compunctions about doing whatever they need to do to get around the latest traffic jam. It's certainly a spectacle, and I am immensely glad that I don't have to do the driving. But perhaps the traffic situation here can serve as something of an object lesson. I don't want to think about what would happen to traffic here if the government tried to force people to do things like stay in lanes, obey traffic lights, or use their horns less to decrease noise pollution. The current system isn't pretty, and it doesn't meet Western ideals of order and predictability. But, to channel James Scott from Seeing Like A State, I'm not sure that trying to completely overhaul the system wouldn't end up making things substantially worse.
*The Kabul-Jalalabad highway, usually called the Jalalabad Road, is an entirely different story. It is one of the deadliest roads in the world, wending its way along the side of a cliff face down a gorge in the Kabul River. As if the treacherous terrain weren't enough, it is also essentially the only way to get a truck from Pakistan to Kabul, which is perhaps the single most important import pathway for Afghanistan. I'm quite thankful that my work here is not going to take me to Jalalabad...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Microcosms
A couple of days ago I went to one of the government ministries (at least I think it was a ministry) to get my khariji (Dari for "foreigner") registration card. Two anecdotes from this trip that strike me as excellent microcosms of Kabul as I know it so far:
1. The simple fact that I had to make this trip at all is a wonderful illustration of how dysfunctionally bureaucratic the Afghan government is. Kharijis have to present this card at the airport when leaving the country, although I have yet to get a clear explanation of why, since the card contains no information that is not contained in my visa and passport. We are supposed to receive the card on first arriving in Afghanistan. Nobody gave this to me. In fact, if the other interns at my office hadn't told me about it, I would never have had any clue that I needed the card...until I showed up at the airport to leave the country and had to present it. What's more, it took about five or six tries to find someone in my office who had heard of this card and knew where to go to get it. Of course, the word on the street is that if you show up at the airport without the card, $50 or $100 will get the officials there to look the other way. Afghanistan: where the restrictions are inane, labyrinthine, and entirely avoidable for the right price.
2. The ministry was actually a small compound of buildings, the largest of which reminded me eerily of a run-down middle school, complete with disgruntled-looking people sitting on wooden chairs in the hall (although in this case the people were at least 40 years old). Outside of this building, an old, sick-looking man was kneeling on a set of three or four stairs, bent over a stone ramp that had been built over them, presumably for handicapped access. The man, astoundingly, seemed to be spending his time brushing dust off of the ramp. Brushing dust. In a city where it essentially doesn't rain from late April until January, where the average humidity in the dry months is probably lower than my age, and where there's probably more dust in the air than any non-oxygen substance. Brushing dust. Inside a government ministry.
If Kabul were safer and had better a better electrical grid, I'd suggest that the Onion open a bureau here.
1. The simple fact that I had to make this trip at all is a wonderful illustration of how dysfunctionally bureaucratic the Afghan government is. Kharijis have to present this card at the airport when leaving the country, although I have yet to get a clear explanation of why, since the card contains no information that is not contained in my visa and passport. We are supposed to receive the card on first arriving in Afghanistan. Nobody gave this to me. In fact, if the other interns at my office hadn't told me about it, I would never have had any clue that I needed the card...until I showed up at the airport to leave the country and had to present it. What's more, it took about five or six tries to find someone in my office who had heard of this card and knew where to go to get it. Of course, the word on the street is that if you show up at the airport without the card, $50 or $100 will get the officials there to look the other way. Afghanistan: where the restrictions are inane, labyrinthine, and entirely avoidable for the right price.
2. The ministry was actually a small compound of buildings, the largest of which reminded me eerily of a run-down middle school, complete with disgruntled-looking people sitting on wooden chairs in the hall (although in this case the people were at least 40 years old). Outside of this building, an old, sick-looking man was kneeling on a set of three or four stairs, bent over a stone ramp that had been built over them, presumably for handicapped access. The man, astoundingly, seemed to be spending his time brushing dust off of the ramp. Brushing dust. In a city where it essentially doesn't rain from late April until January, where the average humidity in the dry months is probably lower than my age, and where there's probably more dust in the air than any non-oxygen substance. Brushing dust. Inside a government ministry.
If Kabul were safer and had better a better electrical grid, I'd suggest that the Onion open a bureau here.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Welcome to Kabul
Kabul is a fascinating city aurally. Those of us from the West tend to associate certain sounds with big cities: police/fire/ambulance sirens, pulsing bass beats from passing cars, the hiss of steam from passing buses, car horns, and the general hum of conversation produced by hundreds of thousands of human beings in the course of their day-to-day interactions. Kabul is a city of almost three million people, certainly large enough to be considered a sizable urban environment by any definition. There are plenty of ways in which it distinguishes itself from a New York, a London, a Paris, or a Los Angeles, many of which will be covered by your humble correspondent in future missives. But perhaps the most striking characteristic of Kabul in my first week here has been the sounds, both those I hear and those I don't.
Let's start with the latter. Few things about Kabul have stood out to me as much as the near-total lack of sirens in the city. Some of this is understandable: in a place with very little health care infrastructure, the ambulance industry is not exactly a booming labor market. Some of it is also a product of Kabul's ungodly traffic, which will be discussed in more detail in a later post. If the cars on the street are too packed and too disorganized to effectively move out of the way when a siren blares, what's the point of having the siren? But even taking these things into account, the lack of sirens is odd. I have yet to see a fire station or fire truck, which would seem to be relatively important in a generally poorly-constructed city with a very dry climate. The police, who ride around in very macho dark-green pickup trucks, seem to have exchanged flashing lights for roof-mounded tripod machine guns, although thankfully they don't shoot off the guns to alert motorists of their approach. Not that I've ever seen the police actually going anywhere: they all sit at intersections or checkpoints, as if daring crime to try to take a bite out of them. In a week in Kabul, I have heard maybe two sirens. That's about what you would hear in thirty seconds in downtown New Haven.
The other sounds absent from much of Kabul are those of large vehicles. Kabul has essentially zero public transportation (shared taxis may be the only mass transit in town, except for some regional bus services), and once you leave the Jalalabad Road or the nationwide Ring Road, big trucks are quite rare. There are few vehicles larger than a Land Cruiser on the streets of large swathes of Kabul, and therefore the sharp hisses of steam from hydraulic brakes are, mercifully, nowhere to be heard.
This is not to suggest that Kabul is a quiet city. Far from it. For one thing, drivers here use their horns like they're going out of style; side-view mirrors are generally absent or neglected, and turn signals seem to be antithetical to the Kabuli theory of driving, so the horn is used to signal one's presence to other drivers, in addition to carrying its customary "move it, asshole" meaning. Far more interesting, though, are the other sounds of this town. The guesthouse I am staying in is in a substantially better-than-average residential district, one that is pretty densely built-up. And yet every morning at dawn, I can hear someone's roosters crowing loud and clear; they can't be more than 30 or 40 feet away. Generators, hedges against Kabul's irregular but maddeningly frequent power outages, also contribute to the general racket, as do the conversations of irrepressibly chatty Afghans (which is to say, the entire population). And then there are of course the muezzins, whose calls to prayer are, surprisingly, not terribly loud or long most of the week, but who on Friday dominate the aural landscape.
As a final thought, despite the fact that there are no longer official prohibitions on it (as there were under the Taliban), one hears very little music on the streets of Kabul. Car radios are quite often turned to music stations, but people thankfully don't blast their car stereos loud enough to assault the eardrums of innocent bystanders. Indeed, by far the most common music I hear on the streets is that of the ice cream truck, although I've never actually seen said truck.
There will be much more to come in future posts about what I've seen, tasted, smelled, and learned in this town. But for now, I leave you with only sounds, and what those sounds say about the city that produces them.
Let's start with the latter. Few things about Kabul have stood out to me as much as the near-total lack of sirens in the city. Some of this is understandable: in a place with very little health care infrastructure, the ambulance industry is not exactly a booming labor market. Some of it is also a product of Kabul's ungodly traffic, which will be discussed in more detail in a later post. If the cars on the street are too packed and too disorganized to effectively move out of the way when a siren blares, what's the point of having the siren? But even taking these things into account, the lack of sirens is odd. I have yet to see a fire station or fire truck, which would seem to be relatively important in a generally poorly-constructed city with a very dry climate. The police, who ride around in very macho dark-green pickup trucks, seem to have exchanged flashing lights for roof-mounded tripod machine guns, although thankfully they don't shoot off the guns to alert motorists of their approach. Not that I've ever seen the police actually going anywhere: they all sit at intersections or checkpoints, as if daring crime to try to take a bite out of them. In a week in Kabul, I have heard maybe two sirens. That's about what you would hear in thirty seconds in downtown New Haven.
The other sounds absent from much of Kabul are those of large vehicles. Kabul has essentially zero public transportation (shared taxis may be the only mass transit in town, except for some regional bus services), and once you leave the Jalalabad Road or the nationwide Ring Road, big trucks are quite rare. There are few vehicles larger than a Land Cruiser on the streets of large swathes of Kabul, and therefore the sharp hisses of steam from hydraulic brakes are, mercifully, nowhere to be heard.
This is not to suggest that Kabul is a quiet city. Far from it. For one thing, drivers here use their horns like they're going out of style; side-view mirrors are generally absent or neglected, and turn signals seem to be antithetical to the Kabuli theory of driving, so the horn is used to signal one's presence to other drivers, in addition to carrying its customary "move it, asshole" meaning. Far more interesting, though, are the other sounds of this town. The guesthouse I am staying in is in a substantially better-than-average residential district, one that is pretty densely built-up. And yet every morning at dawn, I can hear someone's roosters crowing loud and clear; they can't be more than 30 or 40 feet away. Generators, hedges against Kabul's irregular but maddeningly frequent power outages, also contribute to the general racket, as do the conversations of irrepressibly chatty Afghans (which is to say, the entire population). And then there are of course the muezzins, whose calls to prayer are, surprisingly, not terribly loud or long most of the week, but who on Friday dominate the aural landscape.
As a final thought, despite the fact that there are no longer official prohibitions on it (as there were under the Taliban), one hears very little music on the streets of Kabul. Car radios are quite often turned to music stations, but people thankfully don't blast their car stereos loud enough to assault the eardrums of innocent bystanders. Indeed, by far the most common music I hear on the streets is that of the ice cream truck, although I've never actually seen said truck.
There will be much more to come in future posts about what I've seen, tasted, smelled, and learned in this town. But for now, I leave you with only sounds, and what those sounds say about the city that produces them.
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