She is wearing blue jeans, a red shirt and ball cap with her long ponytail hanging down her back. Her friend in blue jeans and striped top is also wearing a base ball cap. Both have their caps on backwards. They dip the paint brushes into the buckets of newly mixed paint and with a slap slap slapping apply it to the walls surrounding their school. Others wear the traditional black shamwar kamez covering their heads with a white scarf. There are over 50 young girls with 20 at a time slap slap slapping the paint to the graying walls of their school. There are different ways of approaching this exercise of getting gray to become white but the similarity amongst all is that there is paint all over. It is on the clothes, on the hair, on the faces, on the noses, and on the ball caps that are turned backwards.
Welcome to Kabul Girls High School, day before international Peace Day where countries or many groups of people take time to think about peace in the world. The girls are having fun changing the color gray to white. The white walls are a symbol of peace. The media arrive with their cameras and start interviewing these young girls and women who could be anywhere in the world of youth culture. Some girls are shy and move away while others have a definite message. The eyes of one ten year old provide thoughts that have been growing with her for years. She looked in the camera, with her microscopic eyes, peering into your heart. She said it was time for peace and countries nearby and not nearby should only be involved to bring a good live to the people of Afghanistan. The people are not deserving of this war and she also in her all of ten years is tired of it. She wants to be a doctor and help her people and will she be able to? The 16 year old with paint on her hair, nose and clothes requests those fighting to “put down their weapons and pick up pens”. The young boy wants to be part of a bigger world and not a place where there is such sadness. Others see it as what it is, the dust in the air will soon cover the white which covers the gray and so it goes on.
Some of the posters and bill boards around town show white doves flying over Kabul, others show the white doves dropping the weapons into a fire. Some of the white doves are graying already.
What is it that helps a country’s youth continue to think life will get better? How can a country’s spirit after over 30 years of war see beyond? Who carries the memories of the past when white was white? How will the memories of peace be shared with the young people so the youth will really know what peace is? Will the peace be different from what it was 30 years ago? Does peace age? Does it get old and tired? How does it change if it does change?
The country’s youth hope it will get better but the mines continue to blow off their limbs, their little fingers continue to make rugs and their futures continue to be woven with the past.
Some survive and they know the meaning of white, the meaning of peace and the meaning of something that is not happening right now. It is a life that is different from today.
When you see these young girls with the ball caps on backwards slap slap slapping the white paint on the gray walls you think that peace has finally come. We from the different parts of the world and not this part are welcome to this internal peace.
