Market Hour

Just north of Kabul we pass through the bustle of the morning market. It is just after 0600 on a Saturday and I am moving to Mazar e-Sharif to take up my position as Area Coordinator (Regional Manager) for northwest Afghanistan which covers the provinces of Balkh (Mazar), Jawzan (against the Uzbekistan border), Faryab (close to Turkmenistan border) and Samangan (the beautifully mountainous area between Kabul and Mazar).

Back in the market we are fifth in line of what I imagine to be an infinite row of north-bounders who get stuck behind about ten of the brightly decorated tok-tok trucks now greedily muscling their way into a barely-there alley way into the belly of the market. Thousands of brightly colored fruits and vegetables are carefully stacked on one of an army of pushcarts, or loaded onto barrows who battle one another and the commuters to cross the used-up road.

A pair of long legs carries a bag of potatoes the size of my driver. The hunched figure attached to the bag is somewhere between thirty-five and seventy-five. In this place where the average life expectancy is only forty-three, it is not uncommon for people to look much older. I suppose that life doesn't "begin" at forty for everyone.

The burqa clutches the baby in the median break. We haven't moved an inch. Drivers emerge from preceding vehicles to facilitate a negotiated escape from between the bumpers of these beasts. The man occupying the middle front seat of a yellow corolla station wagon hands the boy with the banana-loaded push cart a dirty note of Afghanis. Behind him four more companions on the back seat and one more in the trunk look on as he receives his bananas through the window.

We sputter to a crawl as we too slide in between the two trucks currently occupying all of the driveway. Further up the road to the roundabout where hundreds of men (mostly Asian-looking, Mongolian is my guess) line the curb propped up next to their caked-up paint buckets and tired brushes hoping for a job for the day. Not surprisingly it is, what with an unemployment rate of 40% and no natural resources nor industry, Afghanistan is not a land of prosperity.

Further even the small boy drags the young cow by the nose. Under a tree a goat ram looks up into his shady haven as if waiting for the second coming, ostensibly aiming to reach up for something to eat. Into the next town and another market where we are suddenly swallowed by a sea of three-wheeled motorcycle type canopied taxis. A cynic will say those on bicycles in Afghanistan have never actually learned how to operate the two-wheeled soviet-era, solid steel mode of transportation, at least not judging by the swaying and swerving that swings the rider from side to side and into dangerous positions in front of vehicles operated by questionable drivers themselves. On the other hand I suppose you could consider them experts in the trade, after all how many of us could transport a family of four on a single-speed steel horse.

The markets are packed. Bikes, taxis, laborer, burqas, toddlers, vendors, boys with bread, girls with water, and onions, everywhere the onions. Tons of onions. Turns out there was a severe shortage of inions in 2006, so everyone with a square foot of land to spare planted onions.

Leaving the strong urge for French onion soup behind we start the climb into the mountains past the painted fuel truck with the ominous warning "DANGRS PETROL". Herds of goats and sheep are coaxed out of our way by Kuchis with sticks. I settle into my seat for the remainder of the nine hour drive. The river still flows strongly. It is a nice morning.