IN-KABUL-The Kabul authorities are painting houses bright colours in order to give a new lease of life to the area - and improve residents' mental health.

“Afghans know the impact colour can have on life,” says Abdul Waheed, a 21-year-old clerk at the Afghan Parliament and resident of one of the thousands of mud-brown houses that blanket the mountains surrounding Kabul. Or, rather, the houses that were mud-brown – Waheed’s home, and the others behind him, are now painted in joyful pinks, blues and whites, as part of a new initiative to brighten Afghanistan’s capital.

It isn’t easy to climb up to the houses located on the mountain tops. There’s no road; there’s barely even a path, and every step is a gamble. Open sewage flows down the rocky slopes; you have to find firm ground with every step upwards. Yet small children and older men and women who have been living in these hills for ages navigate easily as they carry water back to their houses for daily use.

Despite extreme adversity, the Afghan affinity for colour has always been visible in the form of small decorations, colourful doors and hand-painted flower pots outside nearly every mud house. Now, the Kabul city administration has taken this aesthetic and run with it, launching a project to paint the exteriors of nearly 2000 houses on the western-facing hills of Kabul.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Kabul grew fast. Migrant workers and their families moved to the capital to make a decent living, the post-conflict economy mushrooming and bolstered by foreign aid. Refugees returned after years of war, and new homes were erected across the city. Those with fewer resources built their homes on the slopes of the mountains that fence the city, often without necessary city permits. Occupied by the poorest of the poor, a more resilient form of shanty town, they’re a stark contrast with the fifth fastest-growing city in the world.

Though it’s being executed by the Kabul Municipal Authority, the plan is the brainchild of the Capital Regional Independent Development Authority, set up by President Ashraf Ghani himself. As well as the painted houses, it will see infrastructure improvements including electricity, water resources and paved streets.

But the project, which launched last month, goes beyond providing basic services, as the colour-popping houses make clear. So far, several hundred homes in the neighbourhood of Asmayee Road are sporting bright paint jobs, transforming the previously brown landscape. The blue and pink shades were chosen by the residents themselves – other colours (including yellow, orange and red) were on offer, but residents refused shades that reminded them of bloodshed.