Lal o Sar Jangal – Coach Day
They promised to take me along with their trucks Cheragh was his nickname, literally means ‘lamp’. I don’t really know why he was called like that. He was a fat Hazara truck driver whom I talked with yesterday. He was agree to give me a lift up till Panjao, in Bamiyan province. Cheragh had interesting history. He spent 2 weeks in an island near Jakarta, of which he ever didn’t know the name. North of Jakarta, there are hundreds of small islands which are called as ‘thousand islands’. He, together with other 400 Afghans, was in a ship to Australia from Malaysia, their adventure for getting a better life, a dream from their warring country, 6 years ago. “The Indonesian government didn’t give us permission. Australia also didn’t give us permission,” They failed to get refugee visas even from Indonesia, and the archipelago government just allowed them to stay in an isolated island for two months. The government provided them food anyway, and the Indonesians they saw were only army who sent the food to the island. Thus Cheragh had not much other impression of Indonesia but its good weather and abundant water. Cheragh was a truck driver, who got [...]