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My name is Ihsan jan.
I am 10 years old. I am from Deh Sabz, in Kabul.
I guide the cars on Jalalabad Road. It is the school holidays at the moment so I come every day, all day. Otherwise I come here to work after school, if I am not helping in my father’s shop.
I don’t have a set time for when I start work. It could be 6 or 10… any time. I come by car from Pul-e-Charki where my dad’s shop is. Sometimes I work with my older brother too if he isn’t in the shop but we normally work in teams of four and the police commandant slaps anyone who tries to take control of the road. Lots of people come here for work. Those guys over there, they sell biscuits, that guy is mental so I don’t know what he does, he doesn’t go to school though, and these ones are like me, guiding the traffic.
Every car that we guide, they give about 10-20 Afs so I make about 400 Afs a day. The truck drivers are the people we mainly deal with. A lot of them are transporting goods from or to Pakistan.
In winter there are a lot of accidents if there is heavy snowfall. I gets so cold but I wear these gloves and try to prevent the accidents by guiding the cars. Once there was a huge fuel tanker passing and the tank slipped off and burst into flames. The people inside died. That happens quite a lot actually.
Sometimes when it rains stones fall from the cliffs, so we move them to prevent more accidents.
When there are accidents, the people from the traffic department come and fine the drivers something like 1000-2000 Afs. They also blame kids like me for not preventing it. If the police don’t come, the drivers themselves resolve it themsleves.
If the truck drivers are Pakistani they normally get the blame. Not many of us like Pakistanis.
One day a mini-bus driver had an accident with a Pakistani and took 1500 Afs from him. It was only a small accident but the mini-bus driver beat him up even though it wasn’t his fault. I told the traffic police that he didn’t do it; that the Pakistani was just going about his business and the accident happened because of the other driver so they let him off.
There used to be many attacks by the Taliban in this area. When I first came here I remember there were still Taliban skirmishes. They used to fire a lot of rockets. One day, there were two Talibs fighting so the Afghan forces fired back with a rocket and even though they missed, the Talibs left. But they came back in the evening, there was so much fighting and bullets were flying everywhere.
I remember that one day I was here on Jalalabad Road and some fuel tankers were passing through a checkpoint and were ambushed by the Taliban or bandits or something. The police at the checkpoint ran away. They must have been scared as they haven’t been back since. This road is often dangerous as the foreign troops have bases here and use the road for their convoys and are targeted with bombs or rockets, which are noisy.
I like my job as people are generous and I like showing the cars and trucks the way so that there are no accidents. But I don’t like the smoke that comes from the cars. It hurts my lungs and makes me cough a lot.
I think one day, I’d like to be an engineer, a soldier or a teacher. Actually yes, I’d like to be a teacher and teach people how to read.
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