DFIs

I just got out of a meeting with the Mayor. It is a group meeting, when some of the donors get together with the Mayor and his staff so that he can figure out wtf everyone is doing. Since we started work here, and since we have several former (not old, damn it) city managers on the project, we are getting the Mayor organized, and starting to ask people to tell him what plans they have for the town for which he is responsible.

Sadly, this has become the equivalent of a city council meaning, with a bunch of lunatics showing up. Only the lunatics aren’t crazy citizens, but international donors/programs with some damn fool ideas (DFIs). the Mayor doesn’t have a lot of experience so he gets sucked into some of these ideas—which is not to say that he is a victim, for like any mayor in the world, damn fool ideas (DFIs) seem to spring from his mind with frightening regularity. I sometimes feel like I am
at some surreal poker game, with one DFI ante being called by another DFI. I keep thinking that someone has to lose, but it seems the supply of DFIs is virtually bottomless.

Today’s DFIs included:

·         Tree City Kabul—it seems everyone believes that the answer to Afghan problems is to plant a tree. No less an authority than General Petraeus has apparently ordered that there be a nationwide tree-planting program. Of course, the Mayor thinks this is dandy, as ‘clean and green Kabul’ is his vision. So he beat us into promising him 60,000 trees. And the Army of 1 has become the Army of 20,000—trees that is. And everyone from the UN to the US Ambassador has decided to donate trees. I am told they run between $4-$8 a pop—so you do the math. In 20 years Kabul will have shade—but who in the hell is worried about 20 years from now? Petraeus is the father of Counter-Insurgency—who knew he had a minor in urban forestry?

·         Rapid bus transit—which actually is a great idea for many cities, is something that Kabul just isn’t ready for. But that doesn’t keep another donor from proposing yet another feasibility study. The feasibility studies that are done here on dumbass ideas kill entire forests for the paper—but at least the trees being planted will offset the trees that are killed.

·         A Zoo—that’s right, we need to rehab a zoo so people have nice places to go. So the guy from the World Conservation Society showed lovely pictures of a bear in a Seattle zoo, an otter in the Portland Zoo, and a butterfly garden in Central Park. But the crowning achievement was a picture of a lion sitting on a rock in a zoo. It seems the rock is heated, so the lion sits there when it is cold out. Nice. Half the people in the room will be cold in their home tonight, but they will be able to tell their wife, ‘Fahima, in America they heat rocks for lions.’ Meanwhile, in Afghanistan children go cold.

The whole experience is surreal. People are cold, 99% don’t have a sewer, the drinking water is contaminated, and from time to time innocent people die in senseless attacks. Yet a bunch of well-meaning but apparently clueless expats spend time talking about trees in the median, busses that will never be built, and zoos with heated rocks to keep animals warm. It all makes my head hurt.