Golf Aid?

After having been to a load of meetings with different UN-organisations, NGO:s and other stakeholders in the development and international aid community, you realise that there are a lot of different kinds of devolopment projects going on and some of them rather strange or odd. I just heard on a local tv-channel that there is a German project or cooperation aiming to popularise golf in Afghanistan! They said that golf had a 50-years history in Afghanistan, but fell in despair during the three decades of war but now there is rehabilitation going on. Amazing! That might be someting for me in case our projects would not work...


The fabolous Kabul Golf Course, Afghanistan's best; and only! I can really recommend a visit to the wed site: www.kabulgolfcourse.com


The greens are browns. Talking about extreme sport!

But actually that is not so weird as it might sound. Of course it wont help the poor people who are on the brink of starvation because of the draught, nor will it empower women or improve the childrens education, but I hope the money for this comes from other sources than development aid and will not crowd out projects on those issues too. In a way i think it is important to work on things that makes life a little more bearable for the ones who are not really starving. I belive that might give them a little hope for the development of the country. On the other hand I have absolutely no idea who is playing golf here, maybe it is only the international community...

Anyway, I heard that there are people, Afghans too, who do rock-climbing in the mountains, at the Salang pass. It makes me feel good to hear that, that there are some "normal" and enjoyable things to do and that people do it. I can not really explain why, but it gives a feeling of some normality to a situation that often seem very hopeless.