Dreaming The Dream

I have discussed thankless jobs before on this blog so you can imagine my pleasure in finding that another of these exceptional roles is being practised at the moment. Its only a 'temporary' position that is only resurrected every couple of decades or so, but I doubt many would say its not both dangerous and thankless.

I give you Mohammad Younas Nawandish, "The Mayor Of Kabul" in Afghanistan. I honestly had never thought that there was anyone foolhardy enough to do this job ..... when the Taliban get back in to the city (around the year 2015 I would guess), it would not be good to have been in that job. Apparently he did not even campaign for the job, because Kabul did not have the resources to hold an election, or because there was no one stupid enough to do the job, so President Karzai simply appointed him.

Mohammad Younas Nawandish - Mayor Of Kabul - has big plans.

No one can say he doesn't have a vision "In three years, we will have Kabul covered with trees, history shows the mountains of Kabul were green 200 years ago. We are trying to repeat history here."....he has ordered his officials to begin planting 30,000 saplings on top of and around Shirdarwaza mountain. The rest of his plans are equally optimistic, and despite accusations of failure and corruption (who isn't both in Afghanistan?), no one else is rushing to take the job from his hands.

You gotta  hail a brave man ...... for as long as he's still here.

Globalising Funerals

There are jobs and there are jobs ...... the bad ones seem to follow Death around as he carries out his gruesome duties. Now I am aware of the Chinese boatman who collects suicides bodies from the Yellow River and either returns them to the families (for a fee), or buries them, so I was much taken by the tale of Abdul Hakim.

Apparently, more by accident than planning he has become the body collector for the Taliban after firefights with the NATO troops (so he's a busy man then), in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.  For over six years he has collected many many bodies on behalf of the local Taliban, even though they killed his two sons, and also his son-in-law. So far he has tallied the body count as 250 (127 were Taliban, 28 civilians, and the balance government supporters).

A fairly thankless task but I guess someone has to do it ......

What particularly drew my attention though, was the gravestones ..... it was the surprising fact that they were predominately in English.

Afghanistan Cemetery

Maybe its because they are Red Cross cemeteries (ICRC) via the Red Crescent affiliate, but I just assumed that any English would be restricted to an ID number, and that the rest of the details would be in the local language or Arabic.

Globalisation just marches relentlessly on, without us even noticing.