RECYCLING

I paid an extraordinary price for an ordinary bottle. About $2.00. The things we throw away here in the United States are very precious in Afghanistan. EVERYTHING is recycled in Afghanistan. And this includes human waste.

One mellow and sunny morning I was waiting to catch a bus to take me to the university. A man was shoveling human waste into bulging bags attached to his donkey. He went from house to house until his donkey bags were full.

Another sunny afternoon I was looking out my apartment window and watched as a man passed by below. He and his cart were being pulled by a donkey, and in the back of the cart was human waste, sloshing from side to side. A mighty horrendous and instantaneous odor overwhelmed my olfactory senses.

Apparently, as in other places in the world, human waste was "made" into fertilizer in Afghanistan. Why not?

But back to recycling. Kabul never had any litter. Every molecule of potential fuel disappeared off the ground. Matter was a very precious matter. Don't mess with Afghanistan!