KABUL: In Kabul, many streets
have no name and houses often have no number, meaning that postmen already
braving the constant threat of suicide bombings must play detective to deliver
mail.
Mohammad Rahim makes his rounds on the
tattered, hilly streets of the Afghan capital riding an old bicycle. After 10
years on the job he is undaunted by even the vaguest addresses on letters.
"Here we have a letter for a man who
lives near Doctor Hashmat's house," Rahim, 46, says. "I don't know
the address, so let's see, how can we find the right place?"
His only clues are the addressee Mohammad
Naeem, the doctor's name and instructions on the back of the envelope saying
"Kart-e-Sakhi hilltop, behind the agricultural ministry".
Wearing a black fur hat, blue jeans and a
violet T-shirt, he cuts a familiar figure and is often recognised by Kabul residents.
He sets off from the neighbourhood post office to start asking people for help.
"Brother, can you tell me -- where is
Doctor Hashmat's house?" Rahim shouts at a shopkeeper.
"Go up the hill, and turn right,"
comes the reply, so Rahim sets off up the rocky road.
Further on, another man tells him: "Turn
right and it is the third house on the left."
After waiting outside the gate, a woman in her
40s comes out: Mohammad Naeem's wife, who takes the letter for her husband.
"We have received letters from the US,
Canada, Germany and Pakistan, and the postman always brings them safely and on
time," she says.
Rahim delivers dozens of letters every day
across west and southwest Kabul, a city reduced almost to ruins in the brutal
1992-96 civil war.
The Kabul population has boomed to five
million as people have flooded in seeking employment and an escape from the
fight against the Taliban,
but much of the recent expansion is illegal, with many houses and shacks built
on contested land or without planning permission.
But the days of confusion over addresses could
soon be over, as last month the communications ministry signed an agreement
with the city authorities to create a comprehensive new address system.
All streets and houses will be coded, numbered
and mapped in a two-year project that the government hopes to expand to other
cities.
The scheme -- which will use global
positioning system (GPS) surveying -- should help Rahim, and fellow postmen
such as Khan Agha, 42, who works in a post office in the central Shar-e-Naw
district.
For now Agha, who first started delivering
mail 22 years ago, says the chaotic street mapping makes it "the most
difficult job in the world".
"We don't care about traffic, summer or
winter, smog or rain but there are many vague addresses, though a telephone
number on the back of the envelope can help," he says.
"We ring them up and they say 'I'm
standing here' so we go and hand over the letter.
"I do my best to treat people well. We
see on television that postmen are admired in foreign society, because we
connect the sender and receiver."
The job is even more challenging for Agha, who
lost his right eye when he was serving as a soldier more than 20 years ago,
another victim of the fighting that has battered Afghanistan for decades.
"One day in the fighting, I was shot with
a bullet in the back of my head and the bullet came out of my right eye
socket."
Admitting that the injury continues to trouble
him, Agha scrabbles through a huge pile of mail on the post office floor,
looking for what needed to be delivered to his area.
"We are going to take a letter to a Mrs
Barbara in Sherpoor sent in from Germany," he says.
As so often, the letter has only the district
name without any house or street number.
After a search lasting nearly two hours and
asking 12 different people, including the local baker, he finally finds the
small lane where the intended recipient works in a health centre.
Such hard work is not well-rewarded in
Afghanistan, which has 900 postmen nationwide with 100 in Kabul.
Agha earns just 5,000 Afghanis ($90) a month.
Barely enough, he says, to feed his family of eight.
But he is hopeful that soon most streets and
houses in Kabul will have a proper name and number.
"This is a good move by ministry to
create a new postal system," he says. "With the completion of this
project, we could do our job more easily."
