Tajikiblog

Safe and Sound in Tajikistan

2004-08-01T12:20:00.000+05:00

Peter here -

Sunday August 1st, the beginning of our last week in Tajikistan. Now bookending are trip here in Central Asia are terrorist attacks in Tashkent. I'm not sure how much this made news in the US, but we certainly learned about it as soon as it happened, though being across a secure international border, haven't felt any immediate effects.

A little history: At the end of March, beginning of April there were a spate of suicide bombings in Tashkent seemingly aimed at the Uzbek police (occurring on the weekend we bought our plane tickets to Tashkent). The Uzbek authorities cracked down in Tashkent and Bukhara (where they claimed another suicide bombing happened or a safehouse for terrorists accidentally blew up in the process of making bombs). Regardless, the truth of these incidents remains shrouded in mystery. Whenever such situations occur in Uzbekistan, the police close the area entirely to all people including journalists.

The Uzbek authorities placed the blame for these bombings on an organization called the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan). The trial for the 15 suspects in the March attacks was to begin this week. For the most part trials in Uzbekistan are shams (like in Tajikistan, see Juno's post below), with suspects detained and tortured into signing confessions (a tactic extensively used in Soviet times).

On Friday 3 bombings, currently being labeled as suicide bombings, occurred in Tashkent: 1 outside the US Embassy, 1 outside the Israeli Embassy, and 1 in the Uzbek general prosecutors office. The bombing in the prosecutors office would seem to draw a link between the current bombings and the start of the IMU trial.

The United States also recently pulled funding from Uzbekistan accusing the Uzbek govenment of not making sufficient progress in demiocratic reforms in the country. The United States also operates a military base in Uzbekistan near the Afghan border. There is the possibility (often voiced, but nearly impossible to prove) that the Uzbek government is responsible directly for the bombings in hopes of presenting itself as an important battleground in the war on terror thereby justifying huge western aid packages. True or not, the Uzbek government is certainly indirectly responsible with it's authoritarian dictorial corrupt iron-fisted rule of its people and the squashing free religious practice.

Both the IMU and Hizb ut-Tahrir have claimed responsibilty for the recent bombings. Hizb ut-Tahrir preaches non-violence, so it's curious they would claim responsibility for the attacks. Certainly anger amongst the muslim community is welling up in Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, bombing the US embassy isn't going help the situation in the slightest no matter who is responsible. All this ever seems to do is cause us to pull out of the country and then everyone suffers.

Personally I was a tad dissappointed all this action happened 1 week before we were to be in Tashkent as the hotel we stay in is right down the street from the Israeli Embassy - I missed my chance at having exclusive photos of an international event! As soon as the police arrive at something like this in Uzbekistan the entire area is sealed and no facts can get out. Instead we were swilling vodka safe and sound at our Australian friends compound.

Now, most of all, I'm hoping they don't seal the borders as they did after the March bombings. We plan to travel to Tashkent next Friday, spend the night, then wake up around 3:30 am for our 5 o'clock flight home! I'd prefer not to be delayed at this point, but it's stille Central Asia. By now we've learned to roll with the punches.

Pamiri odyssey

2004-07-30T15:33:00.000+05:00

Juno:

So, we are very busy getting ready for our departure one week from today, and triumphant return to the States on August 7, and haven’t had much time for blogging. We wanted to give you all a quick account of our trip to the Pamirs. No pictures right now, ‘cause Pete is still downloading/resizing/whatever else he does in his digital nerd life! But hopefully we’ll have a few up before we leave. Anyway, here’s the brief run-down on our incredible journey:

We (me, Pete, Jill – another XXX employee from Uzbekistan, and Dilik, the driver, all tucked into the Niva, a sort of Russian Jeep Wrangler) left Dushanbe going on the northern road instead of on the southern route as planned, because a key part of the road to the south was washed out from the unseasonably heavy rain we had been having. We went north and hoped the road would be fixed by the time we completed our circle. We spent the first night in a place called Jirgital, a quiet and idyllic spot from which you can see Mt Communism (now Somoni peak), the tallest in the FSU. Sadly it was cloudy, and we couldn’t see more than a bit of it. But it was damn big! We stayed in a nice guesthouse and Dilik made us delicious baked eggs with fresh dill and tomatoes for dinner.

Next day we headed for Kyrgyzstan. Along the way we were stopped at multiple checkpoints, the last of which was manned by a group of staggering drunk border guards. These guys were all reeling, and it was about noon. They are especially suspicious of Tajiks, who have a mostly undeserved reputation as drug smugglers. They grilled us about whether we were carrying narcotics, but Dilik kept his cool (after warning us to keep an eye on them in case they tried to plant anything in the Niva) and we eventually got into the Alay Valley, a gorgeous stretch of ground just north of the Tajik border. The last range of the Pamirs is to the south, mountainous Kyrgystan to the north. We spent that night in the lovely warm house of a friendly Kyrgyz family. They cooked us delicious potatoes and kept the fire (fueled by cow shit) roaring – good thing, cause it was not much above freezing. The Kyrgyz people look really Asian – almost Chinese, sort of the way I picture Ghengis Khan. The people we met were friendly and hardworking – we felt like total wusses when we shook our host’s hand – he was younger than us and his hands were calloused beyond recognition. He must have thought we were a bunch of first-class sissies from our smooth little paws.

On day 3, we passed another series of checkpoints before returning to Tajikistan and the autonomous GBAO region. It seems to be autonomous more from force of habit than anything else – the southern border continues to be manned by Russian border forces, but they are pulling out in the next few months and the general expectation is that all hell will then break loose, with border security descending into nepotism and a favor/bribe economy like the rest of TJ. We cruised through occasional snowstorms and a bleak mountain landscape before arriving in Murghab, the most remote town I’ve ever seen. It’s a true outpost, perched on the edge of Tajikistan, almost in China. It’s very high up and in an ecologically threatened area, thus the target of the few eco-tourism efforts going in T-stan. We stayed in another guesthouse, great food, but FREEZING. Thankfully the next day was sunny and we enjoyed looking around the town before getting on the road again.

Next day we drove south from Murghab, and the landscape began to really be spectacular – or maybe it had been spectacular all along, but since it was cloudy we hadn’t been seeing it!   We drove down a valley fringed with huge mountains and populated by yaks, the main source of milk up there – and the source of fabulous yak cream, which tastes like clotted cream and is in abundant supply! We started seeing yurts dotting the valley – the summer residences of people from the towns nearby – they come with their livestock for the good grazing in the summertime. We stopped at a “holy place” – a lake that is deep blue and full of fish – holy because it never freezes – I imagine whatever chemical keeps it blue keeps it from freezing as well. Lunch was a feast of fried dried carp, lovely fresh bread, yogurt (from yaks) and great gobs of yak cream. Jill and I fell on the yak cream like wolves on their kill.

We slept in a yurt that night and it was great. A yurt, for the uninitiated, is a round structure with a hole at the top – a cylinder with a half sphere roof. Picture the Pantheon in Rome, but much more rustic. It’s made of felt (yes, felt, very thick felt) draped over an intricate framework of wood and lattices. There’s a wood (or in this case shit) burning stove inside, and it’s very comfortable and surprisingly warm, even in a fierce wind. This particular yurt was built by our host’s grandfather, a big man in the village who, we later discovered, disappeared during Stalin’s purges and was never heard from again.

The following day we awoke to discover that our host was 3 sheets to the wind at 6:30 a.m. Apparently the local border forces commander had come by and they had been celebrating something. We got outta there quick and continued south to Langar, a town in the Panj valley. The Panj is the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and the two countries both have major mountain ranges that come together in a glorious, fertile valley. Afghanistan was so close we threw rocks and hit it. All along the Afghan side, the Hindu Kush towered over the valley, craggy and completely forbidding, a nice buffer zone between us and the nastier parts of Afghanistan.

We saw several Afghans, and each time we made Dilik pull over so we could look at them through our binoculars. Fortunately he seemed just as mesmerized by the other side of the river as we were. We saw some camels cooling off in the river, and then in Langar a crazy old man was walking a group of 3 camels down the road on our side! It was pretty amazing, and I think the camel up close is the weirdest creature I have ever seen.

We spent 3 days driving along the Panj, marveling at the huge mountains, the Afghan villages, the beautiful local people with their blue/green eyes. The people in the western Pamirs are Ismali Muslims, people who believe that the Aga Khan is a sort of living god (that’s not quite accurate, I think he’s more of a Pope figure, but I need to do some research). Anyway the current Aga Khan is this rich guy who lives in Switzerland, and the Aga Khan foundation is really active supporting the people in the region. Apparently they pretty much saved the entire population during the civil war – the roads and borders were closed, and the people were completely cut off and would have starved were it not for the help of the AK. Even now you can see that the people in the Pamirs, though isolated, are doing ok for themselves, with the help of international aid.

This valley was once the route of the so-called Buddhist silk road, so it’s full of interesting relics. We stopped at several ruins including an ancient Buddhist monastery and a really old fortress.   We also visited two hot springs and soaked to our hearts’ content. In one of them, some saggy old local women thoroughly enjoyed inspecting a couple of western women like us. It was a little bizarre but since they were friendly we didn’t mind.

At night, Dilik taught us (after some pretty hefty language difficulties) how to play Durak, a Russian card game that quickly became an obsession. We had a great time and I even learned how to knock back the fierce Tajik vodka with ease. Just like college…

It was a glorious few days. This was the best part of the trip – the weather was perfect, the people were friendly, and none of us could take our eyes off Afghanistan on the far side. I don’t think I can really do it justice in words, so we’ll wait for the pictures!

After a few days, we drove north to Khorog, the largest city in the GBAO. It was a real town, and quite edgy – it sounds like a fair bit of drug traffic goes through there, and there are plenty of fancy cars to prove it. Still we enjoyed ourselves and prepared for the long trip home. Fortunately the road was back in place and we had a long 2 days in the car to get back to Dushanbe – this road, which you would think would be decent since it goes to the capital city, was the worst we’d seen the whole trip. Lucky for us it was clear and gorgeous, and we all got along so well by this point that we just talked all day in the car, looked at the scenery, and drank vodka and played cards at night. All very jolly.

So that’s the brief summary – tons more happened, but we’ll save the details for our return. Pete took over 2000 pictures so you will all have to see them when we come home. In the meantime, hope to have some up on the blog ASAP. We’re getting excited about coming home, but also sad about leaving Tajikistan, despite its occasional absurdity.   Can't wait to see all of you, though!

Our return, and some revisions

2004-07-27T14:40:00.000+05:00

Peter:
Back from the Pamirs, we needed a vaction.

Juno and I returned to Khujand yesterday evening safely (no thanks to Tajik Air, but that story is for another time). Our jeep trek around the Pamirs I’m sure will be the highlight of our time here in Tajikistan. It was absolutely spectacular for many, many reasons. Sleeping in yurts, eating yak meat, drinking yak milk, Juno obsessing about yak cream (like English clotted cream) and yoghurt. Amazing hot springs that cured our eye problems, others that were to cure our skin ailments, though I fear getting into a spring full of people with skin diseases may have done more harm for me than good. We’ll see soon enough.

We traveled along the Chinese border for a while, though the barbed wire fence to our left only marked the beginning of the 25km no-man’s-land before the actual border. And perhaps the highlight, traveling for 3 days down the stunning Panj River valley, one side of the Panj being Tajikistan, the other Afghanistan. We were so close I could throw a rock into Afghanistan. I’d have liked to wade across, but between the fast moving water and the Russian border guards who still manage the Tajik-Afghan border, I decided against it. At one point a couple of Afghani men gestured for me to come to the water’s edge and so the 3 of us stood directly across from each other, the Panj roaring between us, gesturing hello, I’ve got a few photographs of my new friends (along with 2500 more of the Pamirs, I’m sorting through them now and trying to back them all up! A tedious and nerve wracking process.).

Juno and I are still trying to figure out how to best summarize the trip for you, our loyal readers. Photos with captions would be nice, but our ability to upload photos is completely at the whims of the Internet gods (who seem to be fussy here in Central Asia). 9 days is a lot to catch up on, but we’ll try!

Our time here is quickly winding down, and we’ve much work to do to be ready to leave. I’m a bit sorry that my ABC rant had to hover at the top of Tajikiblog for the last 10 days. I’m sure you’re tired of seeing that headline. I’m also afraid people may have the misconception that I’m not enjoying myself here. Truth of the matter is that all that crap, while intensely frustrating, I actually find quite amusing and interesting, frustration simply being a part of life here. Now, if I were here permanently, I think I might be a little more upset by the hassles. In the shortrun, though, its rather entertaining. I will say I was angry and am still angry with the Mayor of Taboshar threatening Nargiza. The incidents described in those posts are indicative of life in Tajikistan today and it’s important for people in the west to understand the little things that make life difficult for people here and in many other countries where freedoms are challenged.

I’m happy to describe the police as lazy, that seems to be an accurate assessment. But worse than lazy, the police are extremely and blatantly corrupt. As an example, just to leave the capital city of Dushanbe as we began our trek to the Pamirs, we were stopped at 6 checkpoints and our driver Dilik (one of the coolest guys in Tajikistan) had to pay bribes totaling more than $10 (which is a lot in Tajikistan). The cops saw our bags on the roof and knew we were going somewhere far so must have money on us (even without knowing we were western) so they waved us down at each checkpoint (they don’t check for anything at checkpoints). Or our taxi home from Salsa (Dushanbe’s Mexican restaurant) down the main street of the capital was stopped 3 times in less than 1 mile to pay bribes. Needless to say, the ride ended up costing us 3 times what it should have. Unless these corrupt cops can be reined in (possibly by paying them more upfront so they don’t have to rely on bribes to live) many of Tajikistan’s problems will continue.

As for the people of Tajikistan – hard work is in their blood. Most of the people come from a peasant tradition, farming fields every day with old fashioned back breaking labor. Perhaps inefficient is still a good assessment, as much work could be saved with tractors, but there is no money for that, nor tractors to buy. You should see some of the rusted out antique machinery that seems to have long since plowed its last field suddenly roar to life and sputter around the cotton fields.

To further correct my previous misstatement, it’s not laziness that’s the problem here, but complacency. Protest is not a large part of Tajik society now, if it ever was, and it’s difficult to do without being intimidated by the powers that be. I hope more people will be able to find their voice. The corruption in the government needs to be stopped but first the people need to see that it’s wrong. An interesting aspect of the post-communist society here (and elsewhere, I’m told) is that people still think of community first, then the individual. It’s hard to say this is wrong. In America it might help us to think of community over the individual more often.

But the government uses this to control the individual – as if it’s for the community’s good that KGB always know where each person lives, what they do, and that they never make any noise or have curiosity or behave in any way out of the ordinary. A new government-installed propaganda banner was recently unfurled across the country with a statement along the lines of “a good mahalla (neighborhood) makes a good individual”. How does one achieve a good mahalla? By trusting the corrupt government to consider your individual concerns?

Before we left for the Pamirs, Dushanbe’s water was not working. We return 10 days later, THE WATER IS STILL OFF. And this is the capital city of Tajikistan. There had been heavy rains and rumors were that a cemetery was flooded. The water is some neighborhoods returned, but the government still said not to drink it and that even for bathing all water should be boiled TWICE. The US Embassy sent out an email recommending to just use bottled water. The new rumor is that the water is highly radioactive, a believable proposition. I’m not sure that boiling will really help at all for this. People grumble but not much more. Juno wanted to make a sign that said “Mr. President, where is our water?” and march back in forth in front of the presidential palace. We wonder what would happen.

We were pretty upset not to be able to shower after our long trek in the mountains, but for the people of Dushanbe it was much worse. 10 days, 100 degree heat, and no explanation from the Government. Maybe it’s just more of the same that they’ve dealt with for so many years, this being a minor blip in time. But I hope they get their water back soon and that it’s clean and safe and that they might learn that it’s okay to hold your government responsible for providing some basic necessities of life.

In conclusion, both Juno and I really like Tajikistan. It’s an amazing place with amazing history and amazing people. It’s always interesting, even if just because of how it’s messed up. Are we happy to be returning to the states soon? I think so. I’m looking forward to processing everything, doing more research, understanding this region and its history even better. Maybe as preparation for coming back to work more to complete the work I’ve began. But we will see…

Meantime, we’ll try and get some photos and details of our trip up in the next few days, so that you all can see the spectacularly beautiful parts of this country and its people.

Tajik ABCs: Autocrat, Bureaucracy, Closed Society

2004-07-15T17:46:00.000+05:00

Sometimes it sure is nice to be able to drive around in a white SUV with diplomatic tags. How else could we go 15 minutes out of town to Kairakum (aka the Tajik Sea) to have Chinese Food for dinner instead of 45 minutes of police checkpoints? The food is damn good, so maybe it would be worth the hassle, but it’s more enjoyable to watch the policemen lower their batons and visibly deflate as a pile of internationals cruise by. After my day yesterday, I’m happy to hold my head high and scoff at the ridiculousness of this country. Sometimes it seems Tajikistan is getting what it deserves with this despot running the show. Unfortunately, I remember, it’s the regular people who suffer – and who become so frustrated and angry that peaceful solutions appear less and less appealing. Revenge certainly feels better.

3 examples of the troubles with Tajikistan experienced by Juno and me during the past week follow: the ABCs of why Tajikistan sucks.

(Please note: the Tajikiblog is going on an expedition to the Pamirs, the remote mountain range in eastern Tajikistan (see B below). Enjoy the following 4 posts from today. We will return on July 26th with more harrowing tales of our adventures! Love J&P)

Autocratic Asshole

2004-07-15T17:39:00.000+05:00

Emomali Rahmonov, the benevolent dictator of Tajikistan, decided to visit our fair city this past week. The visit, a top secret of the government, is probably the worst kept secret in all Tajikistan. Why else would the entire bridge be painted in one weekend, new patriotic banners unfurled quoting the great leader himself, colorful flags flying from lampposts, and the sudden vaporization of the small bazaar just down the street from our house (we witness the crane lifting the last kiosk into a truck and driven away on Sunday morning – right from where I bought tomatoes less than 24 hours before!)?

On Monday, I had been planning to visit the old German-built uranium-mining ghost town of Taboshar but decide to stay in Khujand figuring it’d be impossible to leave the city. I guess the secret surprise is his waiting until Tuesday before actually appearing in Khujand. It’s quite obvious Tuesday is the day, though, as soon as we step out the door of our house. The streets are completely quiet, no cars in sight and people – everyone – walking. Juno and I proceed to get yelled at for not walking in the crosswalk (oops) as we cross Lenin Street heading to her office.

It’s pleasantly eerie on the streets. Normally crossing Lenin Street is a lifesize game of Frogger with lots of smoke and honking. Today it is silent, calm, peaceful (aside from the asses in the funny hats and stupid shoulder boards). Near Juno’s office buses are parked blocking all access to Lenin Street from Khujand’s main intersection all the way across the bridge to the other side of the river. I decide stealth mode is in order and head out to investigate and photograph what I can of this strange phenomenon.

Wandering towards the bridge, which incidentally sits next to the Khukamat (government office buildings), I’m quickly singled out of the crowd and stopped by some oafish policemen. First they start asking for my passport (which was in Dushanbe – more on this in B) and then they mutter and mumble in Tajik while I smilingly cooperate in this charade, gesturing towards the hundreds of other people who are allowed to walk across the bridge. They ask me to follow them while they find a cop who speaks better English.

Soon enough we find a guy lounging lazily in a car – many cops means many lazy asses. This young fellow begins asking for my passport, too, which I tell him is in Dushanbe (failing to mention I have a copy in my bag).

He states, “The law in Tajikistan says foreigners must carry their papers at all times.”
I reply, “The law also states foreigners don’t need to show their papers unless they’ve done something wrong.”

Struck dumb, they miss their opening to fabricate some offense I’ve committed. Next they ask me who I’m in Tajikistan with (to be in Tajikistan one must have a letter of invitation) and I tell them the XXX, which they don’t understand. I say "XXX” they say “ahhhhh, the XXX” and seem to become a tad more respectful. Then I start the ignorant foreigner act:

“What is the address of their office?” Since none of the streets have streets signs, I nearly truthfully answer, “I don’t know.”
“What is the phone number?” I untruthfully answer, “I don’t know.”

Well, we quickly reach a standstill, their questioning going nowhere, my obvious innocence of everything (aside from a few stealth photos – it’s unclear to me whether this is illegal) obvious to all. What do these morons decide to do? They write their names and phone number on a piece of paper and tell me to call them! Huh? What? Why – so we can drink vodka together this weekend? What dumbasses.

So much for Tuesday, everyone’s plans for the day ruined or delayed due to the visit of the great leader. Waking up Wednesday, what do we find? Same story, Emomali decides to stay another day! I just miss seeing his Mercedes drive by, but catch the 25 black Volgas in his entourage.

Ironically the past few days during the president’s visit have been rainy, the only rainy days we’ve had here, and rumor has it he came north to spend some days on the Tajik Sea. BUST! (The president, from the Southwest part of Tajikistan, is not much liked here in the north. In fact, there was an attempt on his life here in 1997 with a grenade.) My trip to Taboshar is again delayed with exits to the city closed, but for only a few hours today (more on this in C below). Emomali’s final strike - closing the airport for 6 hours – brings additional pain (but this is described in B below).

Bureaucratic Bullshit

2004-07-15T17:38:00.000+05:00

Since the first week of arriving in Tajikistan Juno and I have been planning to take a 9 day Niva (Russian 4wd) tour through the Pamirs – the eastern half of southern Tajikistan comprising almost half the country – a mountain range rivaled in size only by the neighboring Hindu Kush and Himilayas. Good thing we started planning this over a month ago with Tajik bureaucracy looming higher than the former-Communism Peak ((now Somoni Peak), at around 23,000 feet, it is the highest mountain in the former Soviet Union).

Goulya, our fearless organizer, runs a nice eco-tour operation, if only she could have more customers. See, Tajikistan does everything in it’s power to keep tourists from contributing their cash to the hurting Tajik economy from getting a visa to arrive in the country to finding a way into the country (only Tajik Air can fly here) to travel within the country (you’ve heard about the roads).

The Pamirs lie in a region called the Gorno-Badakhshankaya Avtonomnaya Oblast (or GBAO for short). The GBAO sits in an area between Kyrgyzstan, China, and Afghanistan, though this section of Afghanistan is very narrow, with the Pamirs practically bordering on Kashmir. I’ve heard Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places on earth, so I’m hoping the Pamirs are similar. The Pamiri people are said to resemble Europeans, blonde hair and blue eyes even. We’ll see…

Created a long time ago by the Russians after negotiating the border with the British, the GBAO was the final frontier of the Russian empire. The region, due to its remoteness and the high percentage of ethnic minorities and refugees, was granted a semi-autonomous status by the Russians, which continued throughout the Soviet period into today.

What does this mean now? Not much - except that you need a special visa to go there. And a visa that takes over 3 weeks to receive (remember what I said before about inefficiency? Here’s a prime example). We apply immediately. Jill, our travel companion from the XXX office in Ferghana, also applies.

After 4 weeks we find out that Jill’s visa is denied! Why? Who knows? She sends her passport to Dushanbe for one final attempt. Jamshed, the “fixer” in XXX’s Dushanbe office, goes to the proper ministry and manages to get her visa in a day. But still no word on our visas.

A few days later we find out our visas have also been denied! This being 1 week ago from today – we need to go to Dushanbe for the trip tomorrow. We quickly cast out a call to all internationals in Khujand “Do you know anyone traveling to Dushanbe tomorrow?” Our buddy Henk from XXX is going, so we give him our passports and pray for luck.

Jamshed gets our passports first thing Friday morning in Dushanbe and heads to the ministry to begin the process anew. As of Monday, still no word. Our frustration mounts. By Tuesday the president has arrived in Khujand, the power is out in Juno’s office so phones don’t work – we are in the dark. The good news travels by cell-phone though - no crappy communist infrastructure can get in the way of 21st century technology! We’ve won the cold war – our visas are approved.

Now how do we get our passports back? Normally they can be sent with someone traveling on the plane and picked up at the airport. But with the President tooling around, no one knows if planes are flying or if we can reach the airport to pick them up. We lose a day, but by 5pm they should arrive in Chkalovsk, the town outside Khujand with the airport. Not so. One final dash of salt in the wound – the President’s leaving town. No flights in or out until 11pm. Poor Khushed, our fearless driver and “semi-Fixer” (he’s too nice to be a full-fledged fixer), I’m sure he really wanted to spend his whole evening sitting in this radioactive slum (Chkalovsk was a closed city during Soviet times where the uranium mined in nearby villages was processed (see C below)).

Of course, losing days waiting for the visa we lose precious time in buying our plane tickets for tomorrow morning to Dushanbe – plus we need to buy a ticket for Jill and we haven’t a copy of her Tajik visa (required to buy plane tickets here). Miraculously Khurshed manages to buy tickets for all of us, including Jill, for Friday morning (with a mysterious additional cost of $17. But hey, who’s asking?)

Crappy Closed Cities

2004-07-15T17:25:00.000+05:00

All these frustrating autocratic, bureaucratic barriers to doing anything are one thing. But when the authorities threaten you (or your translator), a new facet of the evils of a closed society is expressed – and one that’s personal. My understanding and sympathy are tested, and part of me says “good riddance to you poor assholes. What are you so afraid of? The world knowing there’s nothing worth anything in your country except a lot of oppressed poor people trying to survive?”

After driving circles around Khujand for an hour searching for a way around the police barricades, my translator Nargiza, her mother, and I are finally on our way to Taboshar. My friend Stephanie suggested I see this town, a ghost town since Tajik independence with 80% of the population leaving the country for homes in Russia, Germany and other western places. Built as a mining town in the 40’s by Germans (prisoners?) and Russians, the houses are all stone and look as if part of Europe was plunked down in the hills of Tajikistan. The uranium for the first Soviet nuclear bomb was mined here and processed in nearby Chkolvask (by the airport).

Our driver drops us off in the center of town (by the cute Lenin statue and the Khukamat) then speeds off for Khujand. I guess we will take the bus home or something. The “friendly” mayor had given Stephanie a tour of the city so I thought maybe we should introduce ourselves hoping for the same. Nargiza seems to think this isn’t a good idea and I trust her judgment, though her mother said some men had driven by in a black Volga looking suspicious. I thought I’d rather confront these suspicious men than hide and behave like a spy (since I’m not a spy, or am I?).

Either way, we just slowly begin to explore the town. It’s really quite a nice town with birch trees and huge stone houses lining the streets, aside from the fact that most of the buildings are empty and starting to fall apart. Soon enough, though, another set of suspicious men appears (with their wives and children in tow, not exactly an intimidating sight) and the confrontation begins.

The mayor (who prior to this had a good reputation among internationals) was at the center of the posse. I wanted to meet him anyway hoping for a tour, so this was as fine a time as any to say hello. I must have caught him at a bad time, though, as his mood was sour.

After the initial “hi I’m Peter XXX, photographer from New York” schtick, it was time for the inquisition.
Why are you here? Who guided you here? What do you know about this town? Etc. etc.
Nargiza steadfastly translates the questions and my answers, but suddenly his suspicion and temper rise.

One thing that set him off, I think was my knowledge of the town’s having a high-tech science lab. Stephanie told me about it as the mayor’s sad attempt to attract people to his town, to create a center for technology. Maybe something else is going on, because he certainly didn’t want to speak about it.

His anger appeared to be rooted in the fact that we came to the town and wandered around without a “guide” which I would happily have accepted if one were offered. Out of one side of his mouth he told me they were an open society and I could take photos so long as I had a guide who showed me around and could tell me about what I was seeing. Out of the other side of his mouth he told us that Taborshar was a “closed city” and that we could not be there. (It was a closed city during Soviet times, but as far as I know Tajikistan has no closed cities now). He was amazed when I told him there were no such places in the US. This made him angry and he spewed “Impossible!” (Though I fail to inform him about our own dictator’s ban on photographing coffins returning from his crusade in the middle east).

All this, unfortunately, is being filtered through my translator Nargiza, meaning she took the brunt of his assault. Firstly he accuses her of being my guide, though I insist it was my fault she is there. Then he threatens to get the Tajik KGB after her saying “He’s safe because he is an American, but you are Tajik and you are not safe.” He further intimidates her by accusing her of betraying her country by bringing me here. (When I saw Nargiza today I make sure she understands she has not betrayed her country, and if what she had done really was a betrayal of her country, than she should be happy because any country that doesn’t allow you to travel to regular towns within it deserves to be betrayed.)

Nargiza’s a modern Tajik woman and spent a year in Kentucky, so she holds strong and betrays no fear. Seeing this the mayor turns his assault on her mother! I couldn’t believe it. I try to steer the conversation back to me, to describe my reasons for visiting and my desire to help his town. I think he’s pretty confused and didn’t know what to do. (I want to believe he is actually as friendly as people say, I just rubbed him the wrong way by not presenting myself correctly) So after making Nargiza and her mother intensely fearful, what does he do but hook us up with a guide to take us around town! Unbelievable.

We wander about the place for a few hours. Habib, our guide, is a silly man, a “lawyer” with the mayor. He points out the sites and makes up statistics (this town once had 22,000 people, now it has 15,000 – sure, more like 500.) We stop for lunch and, even if I’m the enemy, his Tajik hospitality won’t let me pay for the meal.

After lunch we pass through the main square and the mayor swings by in his car again stopping to chat with Habib. A bus also pulls into town. Suddenly there’s a sort of panic. We rush to the dilapidated stadium (where I had asked to go) and I’m told I must hurry by Nargiza, a plea more than anything. I’m extremely confused, unsure where this urgency is coming from. I try to hurry but still want to get the pictures, since that’s the whole reason we’re even in this town. Then I see Nargiza again, looking truly upset and decide there must be something happening I don’t understand at all.

We get back to the square and the bus is gone. I thought the panic was a rush for the bus. No problem for me, as we can just take a taxi, faster and nicer anyway, for $10. But if we must take a cab, then I’d like to photograph a bit more. “Maybe the science lab?” I ask - though Nargiza hesitates, afraid to even translate the question. I decide not to push the issue so we get in the cab and fly out of town, desperation on the faces of both Nargiza and her mother.

Unbeknownst to me, Nargiza and her mother have been in complete fear the whole time we are in Taboshar. I feel terrible for causing them such concern, though I really had no idea of the whole undercurrent here and the mayor’s threats until we are in the taxi halfway back to Khujand. Even I get scared as we approach the government checkpoint, hiding my camera’s memory cards in my bag. While the photos seem pretty tame to me (just a bunch of empty old stone buildings) maybe there’s something I don’t see? I’m thinking, “They have my business card! Now the KGB’s after me! I don’t want to be the next Jack XXX!” Of course we make it through the check point no problem. The Taborshar Khukamat is probably still typing on their Teletype machine and making carbon copies while someone winds the phonograph in the corner (inefficiency saves the day). Fortunately they never got Nargiza or her mother’s name, so the KGB ought to leave them alone. I, on the other hand, will be watching my back until I’m back in safe and sound Uzbekistan.

But maybe, just maybe, Taboshar is the home of Tajikistan’s secret nuclear program…should I inform the CIA? (Whoa, I’m getting nervous even joking about this.)

Tomorrow off to the Pamirs!! Just wait for the story of the 1 complete day built into our trip just to cross into Kyrgyzstan from the GBAO – 5 checkpoints on both sides of the border. Wish us luck; I just hope I have some photographs to show for the trip and they don’t confiscate my equipment.

(Just a note: we'll be in the Pamirs, away from computers until Monday July 26. Please do check back then for more stories from "Adventures in Justice: Tajikistan")

"Terrorists" on Trial: Justice in Tajikistan?

2004-07-15T17:22:00.000+05:00

Today I attended the trial of 20 men accused of being members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Muslim extremist group banned here in Tajikistan. It was one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen in a long while, maybe ever.

First of all, even though the trial is supposed to be open to everyone, I had to talk my in by flashing Christine’s business card around. Fortunately Hamida, my translator, did most of the talking or I might have gotten us in trouble.

When we finally got into the courtroom, the first thing I noticed was the cage. The big, wrought-iron, floor-to-ceiling cage that takes up about 1/5 of the courtroom. This is where the defendant sits – in this case, it was full of about 20 guys. Although I haven’t met any of them, I feel that I know some of them because I’ve interviewed their families for my project. I know that they have been tortured at the “6th Department,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ own special torture den. I know that they were all captured in a raid at a chaihana, or teahouse, back in February and were kept incommunicado for 2 weeks to a month, basically until they confessed to being members of HBT. I know that one of them can no longer hear out of one ear (a result of electric shocks administered to help “jog his memory”) and I know that one of them has a severe limp that he didn’t have before. I don’t know if they are guilty or innocent, but I’m pretty damn sure there’s no fair trial to try and find out.

How can a trial be fair when the defendants are all already in a cage? When the court system prioritizes written confessions above all else? When 20 men are lumped together and tried as though they are part of a conspiracy, though there’s no evidence to the fact?

The courtroom itself is, as is to be expected, really crummy. It was dirty and not air conditioned and falling apart. The prosecutor sits on the left, and the defense lawyers (about 6 of them, though it was unclear who was representing who) sit on the right by the cage. There is no jury.

I forgot to mention the guys with guns. Young army recruits in fatigues, their Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders like exceedingly deadly handbags. They keep a stern eye on the defendants and their families and put their hands on their guns whenever anyone starts crying too loud or a little kid starts to chatter.

The whole time we were there, one guy was testifying. The judge interrogated him, asking him about his relationship to Islam and referring to the written testimony where he confessed to being a member of HBT. When the guy gave testimony that differed from his written account, the judge asked him why, and the defendant said that he had been forced to write the confession. The judge played dumb: “What do you mean, forced?” The guy told him he’d been tortured with electric shocks until he signed the confession. The judge’s response? “I don’t believe you – why isn’t this stuff about torture in your confession?”

All this time, the guy’s lawyer doesn’t say anything, just sits there taking notes. I don’t think they are allowed to make an objection or anything like that. The defendant is sparring with the judge from his spot in the cage, with no help. It’s pretty unlikely he’s even been allowed to meet with his lawyer in private. I thought he was incredibly brave for standing up and talking about torture the way he did, especially in front of the Kalashnikov guys and assorted militzia who were present.

After the judge got through with his interrogation, it was the prosecutor’s turn, then finally the defendant’s lawyer was allowed to question him. Not surprisingly, he dwelt heavily on the torture issue. He asked for details about what happened, and the courtroom erupted in gasps and sobs (from the family members) as he related how rings with wires attached had been placed over his fingers, how a hood had been put on his head, how his hands and feet had been bound, and how he had been shocked with electricity until he confessed. I felt ill.

The guy looked ill too – he had big bags under his eyes and a nasty cough. None of the defendants looked very good at all, in fact. They were clearly exhausted and many looked as though their spirits had been broken. They brightened when their wives entered the courtroom, and one guy kept making faces at his little girl who was sitting next to me. I kept thinking how it must feel to see her father in a cage. The whole time, the courtroom was packed with these guys’ parents and wives and children, many of whom I have met. They are poor and uneducated and absolutely certain that their sons and husbands are innocent. The whole sordid process is absolutely awful.

By the time we broke for lunch, the defendant’s lawyer had gotten into a screaming contest with the judge because the prosecutor had been allowed to make a big speech about how these guys are interfering with democracy but the other attorney hadn’t been allowed to respond. The judge tried to shut him up, but the lawyer stood his ground and argued that in Tajikistan there’s nothing illegal about practicing one’s faith. Now, I’m never a huge fan of organized religion, but being in a country where piety can get you thrown in the electric chair shows how important it is to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. The government here clearly views Islam as a threat and therefore prefers to oppress people than be tolerant, with the result that people turn to extremist groups like HBT. It’s not a good plan any way you cut it.

After this morning’s nightmare and the various traumas detailed in Pete’s post below, we’re glad to be heading off on vacation. Of course, we will still be in Tajikistan, but hopefully other people will be dealing with the hassles while we just lie back and enjoy the view.

2004-07-12T13:58:00.000+05:00

Here are a few photos to give you all an idea of what it looks like here. This is the building where my (Juno's) office is. That's a pretty classic Tajik car under the overhang, a Lada if I'm not mistaken.

2004-07-12T13:49:00.000+05:00

This is our living room. It's a little sparse, but it works as a crash pad. Tajik houses often don't have windows from the main rooms directly to the outside - that way, the rooms stay insulated from the winter cold and the summer heat. A good idea, but a bit gloomy.

2004-07-12T13:46:00.000+05:00

The avenue of bread ladies at the bazaar. When you come up to them, they all start telling you that their bread is the best and the freshest! Scroll down for another great bazzar pic.

2004-07-12T13:38:00.000+05:00

Here's the entrance to our apartment building. That's our kitchen window on the left. The other day I came home and Pete was sitting on the (rather rickety) National Sofa getting a lesson in Tajik pronounciation from the neighborhood kids. They are all very cute and know our names, so every time we go anywhere there's a chorus of little voices singing "Hallo Peter, hallo Juno!"

2004-07-12T13:32:00.000+05:00

This is the main bazaar in Khujand, really a magical place - you really feel as though you're in another world when you're there.

Back to the Day-to-Day

2004-07-07T15:28:00.000+05:00

Juno:

Apologies to all for the lack of blogs lately. Basically, ever since we returned from Dushanbe, we’ve just been living our regular lives (“regular” as far as life is ever regular in Central Asia!). Nothing too wildly exciting to report! Also having a bit of trouble posting photos, though we managed to get one up yesterday.

Anyway, to quickly fill everyone in on what’s been happening here:

This past weekend we went to our friend Farangis’s birthday party at the Tajik Sea. They had rented a tapchan (the real name of the National Sofa) with a roof on it, and we sheltered under it from the blinding sun and ate many, many meals. The tapchan was on the grounds of a sanatorium – sounds like a place your family locks you up and throws away the key, but actually a sort of Russian retreat – nothing special, but they have a good swimming place and all these nice tapchans. We spent a lovely afternoon swimming about and eating and enjoying the great company – most of the people from my office were there.

On the way to the sea, we were stopped for the first time at one of the roadside checkpoints that intermittently appear on the roads here. It was just us and a non-English-speaking taxi driver, so we just handed over our passports and hoped for the best. The guy kept asking us about our “registratze” and, while we suspected we knew what he meant (a sort of “get out of jail free card” carried by the longer-term international staff here) we just played dumb, shook our heads, and kept saying “we don’t understand Russian or Tajik” in Tajik. This strategy, combined with the excessive deference of the driver, seemed to do the trick, and after a few minutes we cruised on.

That evening, we went round to the Aussie’s house for the 4th of July BBQ we Americans had pressured them to throw. They agreed, but insisted on calling it “Goddamn Day” which we all thought was hilarious. (They call us the goddamns, as in “goddamn yanks.” It’s great.) We all pitched in and put together a jolly time – cooked up some burgers, ribs (man was it good to eat pork!), peach cobbler – it was solid. Then we all rocked out to some Bon Jovi. No patriotic songs were sung, but we had America in our hearts….

In other news, some interesting developments on my project. The local extremist Islamic organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, is in the news a lot here because of a crackdown on its members. While they are a bit heavy on the propaganda for my taste, HBT is no terrorist organization, and its members are usually arrested for passing out leaflets in the bazaar, or some other such triviality. However, the governments here and in other Central Asian countries like to use alleged HBT membership as an excuse to throw people in jail, and now, with the war on terror, they have an even greater license to do as they please.

Lately I’ve been interviewing some people related to accused HBT members. I have no idea if they are in HBT or not, but their story is a horrific one. I will spare you all the details, both because they are gruesome and because, frankly, I don’t want to endanger my sources in such an open forum (I know it sounds mysterious and a little absurd, but people here are really afraid to talk about this stuff), but suffice to say they make Abu Grahib look like preschool. No lawyer will represent them, either because they are in bed with the prosecutors or because they are afraid of what will happen if they are perceived to be representing “terrorists.” While they wait to get a court-appointed lawyer (not much better than having no lawyer from what I understand) the trial proceeds though they remain unrepresented. It’s shocking and very depressing, and there’s next to nothing I or anyone else can do.

Anyway, that’s what I’m up to. Also developing a training for local law students on persuasive legal writing and critical thinking. The training will be held this Saturday and I’m a bit nervous that the students will think I’m a silly ass! Plus, I’ll be training through a translator, which is a royal pain. I’ve been studiously trying to learn Russian, but that damn alphabet is so impossible! 10 vowels! Who ever heard of such a thing? To the credit of my “Take Off in Russian!” book I can now say “Thank you for the borscht!” Still waiting for someone to hand me some borscht so I can practice….

Pete is trying to get a bit more specific in his photo work, having thoroughly documented everyday life in Khujand. He has hired himself a translator and is visiting various orphanages, hospitals, farms, and a government-run “hostel” where sex workers and drug users live – trying to document the need for (and lack of) humanitarian aid here. I will leave the details to him for a later date. He’s also been hired to design a mural for the youth center associated with the hostel, so now he’s trying to figure out what Tajik at-risk youth think is cool. Quite the challenge, I’m sure.

I think that’s about all for now. Not too exciting, I’m afraid, but we should have some more good stuff for you all soon enough. I will admit I have been a little homesick the last few days as the novelty of being in Khujand has worn off. At the same time, I am sad to be leaving one month from today – it feels like there is much to be done here, though I’m not at all sure I would be able to do any of it! So much bureaucracy, so much fear, so little attention from the rest of the world. It’s all very intimidating, and 2 months is just enough time to begin to grasp all of the problems and wonder how to go about fixing them.

2004-07-06T16:58:00.000+05:00

Landscape from early in the drive from Dushanbe to Khujand.

2004-06-30T17:48:00.000+05:00

Iskandarkul, land of poorly worded signboards.

The Dushanbe-Khujand Expressway

2004-06-29T18:57:00.000+05:00

Peter:

“There is no way driving between Dushanbe and Khujand could be scarier than flying,” I thought to myself.

On Thursday morning Juno and I set off for Dushanbe on the early flight, boarding a hunk of junk Air Tajikistan prop-plane with balding tires, port holes, and jury-rigged parts cobbled together over the past 50 years. Nerves rattled, we settle into our seats trusting the law of averages that we’ll arrive safely. From behind me I hear soft singing. Becoming more frantic, the singing mixes with crying then praying. Behind us an elderly lady is shaking in her seat. If the locals are nervous, I guess we should be too.

The first 20 minutes in the air are spent circling and flying parallel to the mountain range in order to gain the altitude necessary to clear the 17,000-foot peaks. Once I convince myself the engine’s not going to fall off the plane, I actually enjoy the spectacular view. As soon as we cross the mountains our descent begins. Not a nice gradual descent but a 45-degree circling nosedive. The landing gear drops (with a nice bald spot directly facing my window) and the woman behind me starts her tearful ritual anew. Fortunately wheels hold, hysterical episodes are avoided, and we safely arrive in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan (and sister city, it turns out, of Boulder, Colorado – remember the teahouse? It’s the Dushanbe teahouse!).

In Dushanbe you can’t throw a brick without hitting a white SUV with diplomatic plates. Literally every other car here is from an embassy or NGO, and the rest of the suckers are being stopped at police checkpoints every 300 meters on Rudaki (Center) Street. We spend the morning tooling around from NGO to NGO and stopping by to schmooze with the Ambassador (who was busy) and the Consular (who was out of town). [In America, in Tajikistan, in America, in Tajikistan.] We register none-the-less, and thereby become the lucky recipients of an invitation to the embassy’s Fourth of July barbeque – which we will unfortunately miss (visions of me standing at the grill while the ambassador, in a Hawaiian shirt, flips burgers), thereby narrowly avoiding me sticking my foot in my mouth after too many shots of vodka and lambasting the Bush/Rummy regional strategy (phew, says Juno).

We eat too much meat at the National Restaurant for lunch and head to our apartment to rest. Setting out again a few hours later, we head to Salsa – a MEXICAN/Italian/Ecuadorian restaurant opened by an American ex-pat and his Ecuadorian wife – to celebrate our 5-year anniversary!! The food is ridiculously good and cocktail selection impressive. We gaze into each other’s eyes to the soothing sounds of long-lost Bob Marley and Andean Pan’s pipes, sometimes drowned out by the National Trumpets of the wedding upstairs.

Juno picks up the story:

Friday we buzz around, ending the day at the National Museum where slumbers the great Sleeping Buddha – now the largest such being in Central Asia since the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The Soviets found this guy in 1966 but kept him in pieces in the basement, hiding the cultural history, and so he stayed until a few years ago when a French NGO forked up the cash to put him back together. Pretty impressive, except the room he’s in is less a grand exhibition hall, as befits a Buddha of his stature, than a conference room.

That night, after an encore trip to Salsa, we immerse ourselves in the lively ex-pat scene at Port Said, called a “disco” but really more of a bar with music. Here, in the excellent company of Christine and our friend Jana, Pete partakes happily of the National Liquor (Juno sticks with beer, fortunately for all involved). Tipsy conversations waxing rhapsodic about the USSR and its cruel ramifications accompany us on the long walk home.

Next morning we arm ourselves with assorted provisions for what we’ve been told is the hair-raising journey to Khujand by road, through the imposing and craggy Fan Mountains. A couple of friends had done the same drive, same driver a few days prior, and after their description we are nothing if not apprehensive. Inspired by Jana’s enthusiasm, however, we persevere and set out around noon.

Our steed for this epic voyage is none other than the famed Volga, Cadillac of Russian auto-engineering. More tank than car, an SUV it ain’t, but it does the job. We are soon growling up the mountain slopes, oohing and ahhing all the way. The landscape is in parts rugged and craggy with alpine meadows, in others red like the American west. The villages up here are snowed in for the long winter, and the people live in rock hovels that look like something out of the Natural History Museum diorama: “How The Indians Once Lived.” Truly, some of the most spectacular scenery we’ve ever seen…

…balanced, of course (this being Tajikistan), with one of the most poorly maintained, most spine-chillingly terrifying roads ever to link the two largest cities in a nation. Built, at Stalin’s behest, in 1937, it appears not to have been repaired since. It’s anyone’s guess whether more people died building this road or driving on it -- judging by the mangled wrecks of our forebears that quite literally litter the valley floors. In any event, it’s damn scary. Our driver insists on hugging the crumbling curves closest to the edge to avoid the potholes – to him, apparently, certain death is a better prospect than an injury to the Volga’s suspension (and he adheres to the Tajik custom of remaining on the wrong side of the road until the instant before a collision). If you are unfortunate enough to be seated on the outside of the car, you see no road below you, merely the sheer kilometer drop to the valley floor. While we consider adopting the crying and praying strategy of the lady on the Dushanbe flight, we decide to take heart in the fact that the driver quite clearly knows every bump in the road. Besides, Celine Dion is blasting on the stereo. We loose ourselves in her voice….

After the first of two 10,000 foot passes, we detour to lake Iskandarkul where we plan to spend a quiet night in what was once a fairly busy Soviet resort – now reduced to a few crumbling cottages. We’re not there 30 seconds before we discover that the place is inhabited by 30 of Jana’s Tajik (and all male) co-workers, up for the holiday weekend. They are thrilled to see all of us and insist that we join them for plof, vodka, and dancing, which we do. Next morning we head off on a little hike to a spectacular waterfall, complete with Soviet-era viewing platform made of a few bits of rusty rebar (and no other floor) projecting out over the churning, 100-foot high chasm of plunging water. Trembling upon having reached the outer railing, Juno begins to appreciate the benefits of living in a country where tort liability is a real and ever-present threat.

We pile back into the Volga and spend the next 3 hours in terror as we climb the second, and far scarier, of the two passes. Eventually we make it to the top and stop to snap some pics and give the car a rest before cruising down the last few hours to Khujand (often with the engine off). On the way we stop for meat on a stick on the National Sofa (of course). Also excellent homemade yogurt. Pete endears himself to the locals by snapping their picture and showing it to them on the digital screen. We sail home, pausing to romp in a field of poppies, pleased with our adventure and happy to be back on what are now the reassuringly smooth roads of the Ferghana Valley.

Internet Cafe, Khujand

2004-06-29T14:57:00.000+05:00

Hi all,
We've got a post and pics waiting to be published - just as soon as ABA/CEELI gets there satellite dish pointed towards their satellite instead of Al Jazeera's 24/7 Iraqi Girls Gone Wild channel. I'm hoping I also fixed the comment posting issue such that anyone can post comments again. I hope so, they make us laugh and feel good that people are actually reading this. (I haven't received a "fun" email in weeks - just EliParser, John Kerry, UNFPJ, etc. etc. Where have all my friends gone?!)
TajikiLove to you all - Pete

Money Talks

2004-06-23T16:25:00.000+05:00

Juno:

I wrote a few weeks ago about how my labor rights project was going – at that point things were moving slowly. Sadly, the project soon ground to a halt, and I ceased making any progress. Labor rights just aren’t top priority in Tajikistan, and, with all the other problems they have going here, it’s easy to see why. There is, however, some very good work being done on criminal justice reform, and faithful readers may recall the meeting I went to of a coalition of advocates the first week we were here. Even at that early date I found myself thinking that I could really help this group by publicizing the issue of pretrial detention which they are organizing around, and when my labor project wasn’t going anywhere I decided it was better to work on something that would really be helpful here, rather than insisting on my own agenda. I am now working to document cases of pretrial detention, including abuse and torture, in our part of TJ. Below is a little summary of the way justice is done, or not done, here – you all will see why I decided to join the fray.

Here in TJ, the system of justice is lacking. While we may complain in the states that our legal system is rife with troubles – and indeed it is – we have no idea how lucky we are. From what I’ve been learning, if you’re accused of a crime here, you best pay up or throw in the towel.

If you get arrested, you are presumed guilty. There’s no presumption of innocence, even among the general public – people, even knowing how corrupt the system is, figure that if you were arrested than you most likely committed whatever crime it was. As in the US, the prosecutor is holding the reins. He decides what you will be charged with and with the charge comes that old favorite of tough on crime politicians, the mandatory minimum sentence. If you haven’t managed to bribe the prosecutor into dropping the charges altogether at this point, you’re in for a rough ride.

Although accused persons are only supposed to be detained if they present a public threat or risk of flight, in practice pretrial detention here is almost universal. They are still using the Soviet-era Criminal Procedure Code, which authorizes detention for up to 15 months prior to trial. This is a convenient time for extracting confessions out of suspects by any means necessary. Threats are ubiquitous, and one advocate told me that the local militzia have become so proficient at beating people without leaving any marks (like by putting a piece of wood on their skull and then beating them with sticks through the wood - Abu Ghraib staff, take note) that it’s often impossible to prove that a confession was given under duress. Another favorite is torturing a 3rd party associate of the detainee until he implicates the first guy.

Often the people being detained are poor (the rich guys having already bribed their way out) and uneducated, and don’t know to ask for an attorney. Even if an attorney comes to their aid, they often mistake them for a guard or other prison staff and are afraid to speak. Without legal counsel, these poor people confess to anything to stop the abuse, and here, a confession is given very heavy weight in court, even in the absence of any other physical or circumstantial evidence.

Once you get to court, your only hope is to bribe the judge. This is common practice – indeed the whole culture thrives on bribery (P caught a cop on camera taking a bribe at a traffic stop yesterday; another example: instead of acing their exams through hard work, most university students here pass with flying colors by bribing their profs. Since profs only make 20 somoni – about $7 – a month, they need the bribe money to survive.). There are some really dedicated attorneys here, but no public defender service – though this is a project that CEELI may be interested in working on. Even if you have a lawyer, the system works on bribes, not solid legal argument.

Then, if you get convicted, it’s off to one of the 3 levels of prisons – the worst ones have cells, the lower-level ones are called colonies and have no cells – the prisoners sleep in dorms. I know this from a woman from the International Committee of the Red Cross that I met with. The ICRC are the only people in the world who have access to Tajik prisons, and the only way they have access is by agreement with the government that they will not reveal the conditions there to anyone. So she was able to tell me what the system was but not what the conditions are like inside – which leads me to believe that they are probably horrific.

The only glimmer of hope in this grim tale (ok, getting a bit dramatic I admit) is the posse of lawyers and advocates who are working really hard for reform. These people can barely get inside the prisons to see their clients – they have to literally fight their way in – and one woman told me that she and her husband have both been threatened because they make a fuss about the corruption of the system. Yet they still insist on working together and trying to change the way things work here.

I’ve been doing some research on the kind of work that NGOs like CEELI (who I’m working with) do – it’s called “Rule of Law Development” and is pretty interesting stuff. I think initially it was thought that systems like the one here could be reformed by pouring money into training judges and prosecutors on western legal standards, but that didn’t work – these people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo (not to mention the problems with forcing a foreign legal system on an entirely different culture) and the programs were rarely effective. The new idea, and what CEELI seems to be doing, is to empower local advocates to fight more effectively for change. The woman I mentioned above – the one who has been threatened – couldn’t say enough good things about all the trainings CEELI has done for local lawyers – they do trainings on lobbying, coalition building, public relations, filing human rights complaints, etc – and how it’s helped them to achieve change. It’s pretty awesome.

Anyway all this is why I decided to change my project. I am now working with a couple of different networks of attorneys to contact clients to interview. Sadly, many of the clients are now incarcerated – whether or not they committed any crime – so in many cases I’ll be interviewing their families or attorneys to get their stories. If I find a particularly egregious case I’m going to try and help the lawyer prepare a complaint to the UN Human Rights Commission – a daunting process that will be a great learning experience. Then, I’ll write a report on my findings which will be translated into Russian so that the local coalitions can use it in their lobbying. I’ll try and drum up some publicity for them back in the states as well. Hopefully whatever I end up doing will help a little bit in remedying this atrocious state of affairs.

2004-06-23T10:19:00.000+05:00

A couple of pics from our trip to Istaravshan last week: here, a man offers a snake for sale outside the bazaar. Your'e supposed to eat it and it will cure you of any ailments (or, as Abdurachmon would say, "disasters").

2004-06-23T10:16:00.000+05:00

On the road outside Istaravshan, ladies make bricks by hand in the blazing sun. What a life.

2004-06-23T10:11:00.000+05:00

This is a view from inside the great mosque. The blue domes on the other side belong to the medrassa that faces the mosque. Also in the same square is the minaret that made Ghengis Khan bow. The blue domes are typical of Bukhara and were part of the style developed by the legendary Emir Timur and his grandson who were responsible for much of the architecture of the region. There are tons of blue domes all around Bukhara, complemented by mosaic tilework in blue and white. It's really breathtaking.

The joys of Bukhara

2004-06-22T18:45:00.000+05:00

[Note to our loyal readership: due to continuing technical difficulties photos remain un-bloggable. We have a nice collection and will get them up for you ASAP. Until then you'll just have to be satisfied with reading! love to all, J&P]

Peter:

Spending the day in Tashkent, the model 20th century city (theoretically -- it was devastated in the ‘60’s and rebuilt to be the height of urban planning), was uneventful - aside from the bastard kid who poured water on Juno’s head after we refused to give him money. I made myself feel better by taunting him in English with hopes that his dictator throws him in a gulag to rot. I don’t really wish this upon him, though he ought to learn some manners. And that not all westerners are made of money.

But I do think the cool water was nice for Juno as summer has descended upon Central Asia. By the time we reached Bukhara it was after 8 PM, around sundown, and the air was still hot. They’ve got this crazy temperature scale over here where 45 is hot?! But that’s how warm they said it was during the day. Getting used to this, I have to admit, 45 is really hot. And this is just the beginning.

Bukhara is one old timey town - the oldest building being over 1000 years old (I think, I forget exactly but trust me, it’s old). The roads are new though, at least the ones the president needed to use on Friday. The past month was full of paving projects and other improvements to prepare for his visit. Hilariously, the Lonely Planet says some people call Bukhara “Ye Olde Bukhara”. Give it a decade or two and you’ve got the eastern Colonial Williamsburg. Nowadays, though, you still easily get an authentic sense of the town’s place in history.

As an important stop on the Silk Road, Bukhara became both a center of religion and education. Certainly the center of Islam in Central Asia (for a time it could even be considered the most important city in the Muslim world), Bukhara was also the destination for many young scholars hoping to continue their education after completing their studies in their home villages (usually at the age of 12). The reputation of the madrassas was equal to that of Cambridge or Harvard today.

Aside from the damage incurred during the bloody Soviet siege of the city in the late-teens /early-twenties of the last century, many of the ancient buildings survive today. One madrassa was even allowed to continue functioning during the Soviet era, the only madrassa (officially) in the entire USSR with an enrollment of 25 (previously there were over 1000 students). After UNESCO designated Bukhara a world heritage site, more money has flowed in for restoration and maintenance projects. Now most of the buildings are spectacular with the huge Old City more or less intact.

The population of Bukhara speaks Tajik and even includes a few hundred Tajik Jews, though many of the Jewish population emigrated to Israel or America (Queens in fact) upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. [I hope to seek out the New Yorkers when I get home] The Bukhara region, along with Samarkand (another historic Muslim city and region), ought to be part of Tajikistan rather than Uzbekistan. Those brainiac Soviets and their borders. The Tajiks in Tajikistan still speak proudly of Bukhara as a city of their own.

Bukhara also still functions as a trading center of sorts with sellers and tradesmen filling the 3 “trading domes” sprinkled throughout the city, as well as offering their wares in the mosques and madrassas that are no longer used for religious purposes. Bukharans are beginning to recognize their place in the world – they are quickly learning how to cater to and target tourists. We hired a guide to give us a tour of the sites – when our friends came it was $5, now it’s up to $5/hour (worth it, though). Komil, dressed in a Red Bones shirt (yes, as in Davis Square, Somerville, post-Marcus’s graduation BBQed ribs), led us on a sweaty tour through the city. The trading domes were designed to offer shade and provide a kind of natural air-conditioning against the oppressive heat. Testing it, we discovered they still work. In the mud-brick buildings and under the pointed arches of the domes the air was quite tolerable. [Juno says: We saw many, many madrassas, each more fabulous than the last, a vast, peaceful mosque that is still used on Fridays and holidays, and a very tall minaret that was spared from the general destruction of Ghengis Kahn. Great story: when old Ghengis was sacking the city, he came across the minaret and couldn’t find the entrance. He looked left, right, and up, and still couldn’t find it. Eventually he bent down to see if the entrance was close to the ground, and his hat fell off. As he stood up, he realized that this minaret was the only thing that had ever made the great Ghengis bow and take off his hat. This minaret was deserving of respect, he concluded, and ordered his men to leave it standing.]

All around everyone sells the crafts of the city – beautiful silk carpets (cheap by American standards, expensive by Pete and Juno standards) silk scarves, large embroideries called susanis, ceramics and metalwork. Pretty much every stop on the tour, every historic building in the city, has someone peddling something inside. It’s not annoying touristy chintz, though. Most of the items are handmade and most of the sellers are extremely poor; tourism is fast becoming the foundation of the Bukharan economy. [Juno: It’s interesting – much of the tourism is done with the help of UNICEF and other international organizations – without their help, much of the old city would probably be razed and lost by now.]

The center of the Old Town is an area called Lauby Hauz, pronounced Lobby House, a huge rectangular pool of water surrounded by mosques, madrassas and trading centers. Vaguely reminiscent of the central squares of cities in Italy and Spain -- we ate our schashlig (BBQ meat on skewers) there 2 nights in a row – variety is lacking here in CA. Bukhara was once full of such pools – which by conflicting accounts were either central to a first-rate irrigation system or cesspools of disease – but the Soviets filled them in.

On our evening flight down to Bukhara we met a young American woman about our age with a 4-month-old baby. Joy (along with her husband Jason and son Jacob) has lived in Bukhara for a year and a half with no plans to leave. They thought about the Peace Corps and other such programs but didn’t think the commitment was enough to make a real difference!! Working with an organization called Global Source Net, providing education and consulting services to the locals, they are in Bukhara to stay. We gratefully accepted their invitation to dinner at their house on Sunday and had an enjoyable meal of stir-fry, including sauce packet imported from the US.

I was happy to have the opportunity to see how a couple of Americans my age could live comfortably over here. Buying a house (bigger than any first house I could dream of having in America) and a car, only slight modifications are necessary to reach western standards. They’ve installed a huge water-tank ensure a constant supply along with a pump for water pressure, an electricity regulator to protect against the surges common with an unreliable electrical service, a small propane tank as back-up for the also unreliable gas supply, a cute guard dog, and a few other small things. Otherwise they live quite simply as the locals do (kind of like living off the grid in the States, except they live on a few crappily constructed, antiquated Soviet grids)

Jason drove us back to the airport (on the way explaining that the Islam practiced in Bukhara (and in Tajikistan I think) is heavily influenced by Animism – can someone please describe animism to me? The Internet’s too slow for me research on my own! From the description Jason gave, it seems to be a keen observation. I’m interested in delving deeper.) Our flight was not postponed for anyone this time. Aside from the violent shaking of the aircraft when they retracted the landing gear and the stifling heat until they pressurized the cabin, Uzbek air came through satisfactorily. We slept Sunday night in Tashkent, then paid the 100% foreigner mark-up for a car to the border. After providing ourselves with a scare by looking too closely at our visas and thinking they wouldn’t be valid for re-entrance, we happily crossed back into Tajikistan - where we can live like kings in the land of 66% off.

Crushed by the Iron Fist: Brutal Dictator Commandeers Aircraft

2004-06-18T09:33:00.000+05:00

Appreciating life in a democracy more than ever: we arrived in Tashkent last night en route to the ancient city of Bukhara. Passed a lovely evening in the (reminiscent of) 21st century city, speaking English, eating fine food, staying in a posh hotel, watching the European Cup on a big screen (a la Steve and Alaina's apartment).

After much hullabaloo getting the tickets to Bukhara, including $20 bribes for "seats", everything seemed to be going fine aside from the numerous stops on the way to the Tajik/Uzbek border for our Tajik driver to bathe his engine in water. Everything on schedule and running like clockwork, we thought to ourselves "wow, things sure do go smoothly under a dictatorship. Maybe this isn't so bad after all." That is until your flight gets cancelled because the brutal dictator and his cronies decide to commandeer the aircraft for a nice little show-and-tell of Bukhara.

Various regional leaders from Russia, China, and the Stans are here in Uzbekistan this week for the Shanghai Cooperative Organization's summit, a new political and economic body attempting to make its name on the world stage - and certainly making a poor first impression with us. Arriving for our 9:25 flight at 8:00 am this morning, we quickly discover a delay, some words mumbled about the president and no flights until tonight. It seems the heads of state had taken a break from their negotiations to do a little sightseeing. We consider driving, about an 8 hour trip, but are told the city is closed. Since Bukhara is still a traditional walled city, we figure the security would be pretty tight.

Taking a taxi from the airport back to our hotel, we are stopped in our tracks by 2 enormous dump trucks barricading the exit from the airport. Buses line up and cars turn off, we prepare to settle in after being told walking was not an option. It seems the presidential motorcade needed to pass before we could leave, though we are nowhere close enough to see. Since everyone else is taking it in stride (and no one can explain to us what is happening in English), we decide not to worry. Just another Central Asian idiosyncrasy. Suddenly a whistle blows, and it's off to the races - trucks move, cars fly, and we are on our way back to the hotel!

Now we are going to kick around Tashkent for the day with the hopes of making the 6:30 flight, so long as the President doesn't decide to have dinner in Bukhara. Wish us luck...GO DEMOCRACY (where the president can't do whatever he wants?!?)!!

NOTE: Due to unreliable and extremely slow internet speeds lately (as well as nights spent watching the European Cup instead of blogging) the Tajikiblog hasn't been updated as often as we intend. This is only temporary. The multimedia extravaganza will begin again upon our return to Khujand on Monday - so long as the satellites stay in their projected orbits and birds don't tilt the parabola antenna. Love to all, P&J

Istaravshan: Hot, Dusty, 2500 Years Old

2004-06-14T17:09:00.000+05:00

Juno:

This weekend we went with our friend Abdurahmon to his hometown of Istaravashan. It is about a hour away by minibus, and we set out bright and early Saturday morning, accompanied by Abdurahmon, his nephew, and a friend. As we headed south on a gradual climb into the foothills, Khujand’s dusty streets gave way to endless farmlands – rice paddies, orchards, and row upon row of various crops, all being steadily tilled in the burning sun by brightly-clad peasants. As we went south the great snowy peaks emerged from their distant haze and began to be a part of the nearby landscape, hovering over us and reminding us where we were (if you’re not careful, you might think you’re in the California hills!). The drive was pretty quiet, though occasionally peppered by Abdurahmon’s questions (“How much is a kilo of wheat in America?” Confronted by blank looks from us city slickers, he changed tactics: “How about a kilo of gold?”)

We arrived at the dusty and hectic Istaravshan bus station and were quickly herded into a cab (standard issue: doors and windows don’t work/have no handles, local techno pumping, funny looks from the driver, total fare 30 cents). Within moments we pulled up to the bazaar, billed by our friend as the largest in Central Asia (this fact could not be independently verified). Unlike the locals in Khujand, who see foreigners rarely but certainly see them, the locals here were transfixed, frozen in their tracks at the sight of us. Not only did they stare openly, they called out to Abdurahmon (who knows everyone) to ask where we were from. It was a little unnerving, but, having no choice, we soon got used to it and passed into the bazaar.

The place was enormous. Unlike the Khujand bazaar, which operates out of a vast cavernous hall, this market wandered through a maze of rickety stalls, open rooms, outdoor areas, and adjoining alleyways – it took us almost 2 hours to wander through it all. It was like the Wal-Mart of Tajikistan, selling absolutely everything and anything (especially if you’re after some cheap, badly made, Chinese-imported junk – this is your Shangri-La!). There were stalls like little drug stores (I bought sunscreen), stalls selling dry goods, the standard fruits and vegetables, a whole section of butchers (cow stomachs stretched thin so you can see the light through them!), sickles and hoes and shovels (all gleaming sharp), car parts, light bulbs, sandals, religious texts (with the requisite funny hats), ice cream, weird green juice, and, most amazingly, actual blacksmiths, pulling hot metal out of fires and pounding it into useful shapes – this ain’t the Miller-Corey House!

When we first entered the bazaar, we were accosted by a very excited dude named Khurshed. He grilled Abdurahmon about where we were from and responded: “America! New York?! George Bush! [we cringed inwardly]” before grabbing us and ushering us upstairs (babbling excitedly in broken English the whole time and yelling to all his friends in the bazaar) to have our photo taken in front of a fake palm-tree backdrop. We blinked dazedly through it all.

After the bazaar Abdurahmon took us on a tour of the town – he was a wonderful and fun tour guide, telling us about the town’s history and about his family, while simultaneously fending off the crowds of curious locals. Over the next 7 hours, we plodded like so many camels or donkeys or some other beast of burden all over the historic city as the quite literally blazing sun beat down. We went first to a lovely mosque – couldn’t go in because someone was praying, but the outside was incredible, all carved wood and colorful abstract paintings and designs. The entrance is a vast archway with fancy mosaics, complemented by a towering minaret. It was a couple thousand years old – Istaravshan having recently celebrated its 2500th anniversary. Then we climbed a big mountain to a castle (recently erected on the site of an ancient castle destroyed by the Soviets, those philistines) from which we could see the whole city. This was where Alexander the Great had his mettle tested by the soldiers of Istaravshan back in the day. (On the way to the castle we were randomly invited on a tour of the new medical center – just by being foreign, we two silly American kids were transformed into Goodwill Ambassadors. It was far and away the nicest building we’ve seen since arriving in TJ.)

Our favorite part of the day was when we visited a madrassah, or Muslim school. This was a friendly and peaceful oasis inhabited by a few kids and a very jolly old man, who welcomed us, picked me a bouquet of roses from his garden, and who was deeply interested in what sort of fruit we have in America. We sat for an hour chatting with him about the building’s history – it, too, was over a thousand years old, and was used as a mosque until the Soviet invasion, when it became a storehouse until it was recently transformed into a place of learning. This mosque was lucky – it survived – many Islamic monuments and holy sites were torched by the Soviets in an attempt to make people forget their heritage and their religion and replace them with the communist belief system – the worst part is that it didn’t even work – inequality prevails, no one has enough to eat, AND all the pretty buildings got razed!

The friendly welcome we enjoyed at the madrassah was in sharp contrast to the treatment we received from the Imam at the next mosque – he did not seem at all pleased to see us, was very aloof, and had an Osama-esque quality that was very unsettling. He looked down at us from the steps of the mosque with a sneering smile and we got out of there as fast as we could. Even Abdurahmon was uncomfortable. The mosque itself was gorgeous – though we weren’t allowed inside, it was like many buildings here in that it consisted of a cluster of structures within an outer wall. There were heavy, carved doors leading to a quiet oasis with a raised platform (a sort of giant National Sofa) next to a rose garden in the center. Around the outside of the space was the mosque itself on one side (women downstairs, men upstairs) and several small rooms for students. While the Imam was giving us the once-over, an entourage of small children accumulated at the gates – when we left they followed us in a merry band. Pete delighted them by taking their photos, and their antics took our minds off the unpleasantness at the mosque.

We finally made it back to Abdurahmon’s family’s house and collapsed in a cool room full of pillows and cushions (we are considering redoing our living room in Brooklyn in Tajik style – no couch, no armchair, just pillows and a low table!). Soon the standard spread of apricots, cherries, candies, pyoshka (bread) and tea appeared. We didn’t really meet Abdurahmon’s family per se – his father passed away recently, and his mother was very friendly but they seemed to keep the sexes quite separate, and few of his brothers were around. The women of the house – his mother and his brothers’ wives – were running around cleaning, taking care of the rabble of children, and preparing our meal. As a guest, I was accorded man-like status in that I sat with the men and lounged while the women prepared food for us. It was very strange to be served by so many women and to know that if I had been born in this part of the world, I too would be relegated to a life of serving men.

At one point, Abdurahmon waxed eloquent on his views on gender – a decidedly mixed bag. Although he disagrees with his friends who think that women should not be educated (a wife should never know more than her husband), nor should they learn languages other than Tajik (they could watch TV and then – gasp! – might learn something!), his theories on the modernization of gender roles and his reasons for wanting an educated wife betrayed all the inequality of this society. Two examples should suffice:

Much has changed in Tajik society, he informed us: Abdurahmon’s father never allowed his mother to wear makeup, but his brother permits his wife to do so. The irony of this statement was apparently lost on our host.

Then, Abdurahmon gave an example of why a man needs a wife who is educated (as in literate): he gestured at two bottles of soda on the table, each with a different name. “If I say to my wife, bring me XYZ soda, and she can’t read, then she might bring me ABC soda instead!” Indeed. I thought about trying to explain all the things wrong with this statement, but the cultural chasm (not to mention the language gap) was just too wide. But it is strikingly clear to both of us how many obstacles women here have to overcome to even begin a dialogue about equality.

In the morning, I was thrilled to see that one of Abdurahmon’s sisters-in-law was baking bread. The bread here – pyoshka (nan in Tajik but I love the sound of the Russian word) - is round and flat – about 8 inches across and one inch thick, thinner in the middle – and pretty tasty when fresh, but achieving a rocklike quality after about 6 hours. I went over to the kitchen to watch, much to the delight of the women. They bake the pyoshka in a tandoor oven, made of special clay that retains heat well and that is brought from a special place outside of town. A big, hot, fire is built in the oven and allowed to burn down, but the oven walls retain the heat. The sister-in-law I was watching covered her hair in an old scarf and donned a man’s jacket as well as a sort of oven mitt the length of her arm. Then she wet the bottom of each flat piece of dough and stuck it right to the wall of the oven! To do this, she had to put most of her upper body inside the tandoor, and at one point she got an ember caught in her scarf and had to jump out. She proceeded to wallpaper the oven in bread, then splashed it with water (I know from my own baking that the resulting steam creates a crunchy crust). They sat in there for about half an hour at which point I was presented with a hot crusty pyoshka all my own. The women were very interested in how we make bread in America, so I told them we mostly buy it but then explained the process of making western bread as best I could. My 2-day rise “peasant breads” seemed absurd next to their industrial-strength production.

After a breakfast of fresh eggs and tea, we headed off for some more sightseeing. First stop, the biggest Lenin statute yet, towering atop a hill a few miles outside of town. We are treated to a close-up of the great man’s head and shoulders, left arm outstretched pointing to the far countryside (a paradise of collective toil), right hand clutching his worker’s cap. The thing was about twice the size of my parents’ house in Westfield, and behind the earth wall on which it sat was a huge blue reservoir, backed by the now very close peaks of the ranges between here and Dushanbe (we will be driving the seven ranges between here and there in 2 weeks – should be pretty amazing!). Although it was only about 10:00, it was already stinking hot, and there was a welcome breeze at the top of the 365 steps to Lenin’s shoulders.

Then we went back into town, where we were joined by a couple of English speaking friends we had met the night before (forgot to mention we watched a game of the European cup – hooray! Again we are in a place that cares about soccer!). We lazed around a park for a while and I watched a little girl, about 10, sidle past us too shy to say hello. Soon after, however, she came back accompanied by a pretty older woman who was a neighbor of Faruk, one of Abdurahmon’s friends. She said the little girl wanted to meet us, so we obliged, chatted, and took some pictures, and before you know it we were being invited back to their house – some of the famous Tajik hospitality. They quickly laid out a spread (including the “National Sweet” – marshmallow fluff! They use it to break fast at Ramadan!!) despite our appeals that they not go to any trouble. The living room soon filled up with neighbors and children – all women! I really enjoyed this part of the day, as the women were not shy about asking questions or about answering them, and they were a welcome contrast to the slightly depressing domesticity of the women at Abdurahmon’s house. Maybe this was because they were all either divorced or never married. From what I hear, even for women who marry seemingly progressive men, marriage is a death to their independence – as the wedding approaches, their husbands’ modern views disappear and they start telling their brides not to wear pants, not to wear their hair down, not to work outside the home. It’s very hard to contain my hostility at toward this ingrained sexism, but I am happy to see that organizations like OSCE and CEELI are working to change people’s perceptions. The process, sadly, is maddeningly slow.

[I forgot to mention that we went to a Tajik wedding on Friday. It was just the reception – the ceremony happens in private – but it was pretty amazing to see. The bride and groom are heralded by the National Trumpet (a huge horn about 8 feet long) and then sit on a platform, not speaking to each other, while everyone else dances and has a good time. Periodically, the bride has to stand and bow 3 times. She must keep her eyes downcast the entire time. Prudes and young readers, beware, explicit details follow: I asked our Tajik friends if people here have premarital sex, and they said absolutely not, never – and that after the marriage is consummated, two women come and check the sheets to make sure that the bride was a virgin!! Of course, there’s no way to check if the groom is similarly pure. And I thought the dark ages ended 800 years ago…]

Anyway, back to Isfaravshan. We ended the day by returning to the bazaar and stopping by an old teahouse that was under renovation. Although this is another place where women usually are not permitted, again I was welcomed because I’m a foreigner. Though they weren’t open for business, we were treated to tea and allowed to check the place out. It was very peaceful, with a delicately painted ceiling and a main room full of National Sofas. Around the outer walls were individual rooms glowing with late afternoon sunlight. The proprietor requested that P take a photo of him with the bust of the founder of the teahouse, some distant relation. He was very happy to see us and was most welcoming. We should get some of these teahouses in the States, they are far superior to Starbucks.

Eventually, after buying a few souvenirs and seeing the school where Abdurahmon and his friends went (it was in a pretty serious state of disrepair, and the entrance was plastered with propaganda slogans), we headed home. Abdurahmon convinced a distant relative to take us in his taxi for the price of the mini-bus, so we cruised home in style at hair-raising speed. On the way, we stopped to get gas. The usual TJ “gas station” is a couple of jars of petroleum and a funnel on a table at the side of the road, but this was the natural gas station used by taxi drivers and other long-haulers because it’s cheaper. It’s pretty scary filling up – everyone has to get out because the gas is highly combustible – and they fill up a cylindrical tank in the car’s trunk until the pressure is sufficient. God help you if you get rear-ended! Fortunately no such calamity befell us, and we made it home in one piece, desperate for a shower to wash of the 2500-year-old dust of Istaravshan.

2004-06-11T12:00:00.000+05:00

The National Sofa in full effect

2004-06-11T11:56:00.000+05:00

Tajikistan Gothic

2004-06-11T11:48:00.000+05:00

A spread fit for a king. Or, a scruffy American kid with no clean clothes (actually the bag arrived safely in Khujand on Monday, no thanks to British Airways, and all thanks due to Hans, a shadowy German who brought the bag from Tashkent).

Bustin it to Byston

2004-06-11T11:35:00.000+05:00

Peter:

On Tuesday I traveled to the district New Mastchoh north of Khujand with 2 friends from my English Conversation Club to see life in a rural Tajik village. Mahmud lives in Byston, the central town in the region. Ma’mur lives in the 2nd Uchaska (District/Field) about 15 minutes outside of Byston by microbus. Here I was treated to the unending hospitality of the Tajik people and was introduced to many of the national items and activities of Tajikistan.

After traveling to the outskirts of Khujand by microbus, we reach the dilapidated bus depot where anything official has been vacated and easier but less efficient practices rule. The old Lithuanian buses are held together by rubber bands and are crammed as tightly as physically possible while the temperature steadily increases to just below intolerable. Once again I bring a great deal of excitement and joy to the people by taking their photographs as we bump along – and there are many bumps. (Today I saw how they repair streets – with rollers not more than 10 times larger than a rolling pin pushed over a fresh patch of asphalt a few times).

After an hour or so we reach Byston and transfer to another microbus for the 2nd Uchaska. The village is across an aqueduct built during the Soviet days allowing this town to sprout out of the desert. The whole New Mastchoh region is only 50 years old. Created when the Soviets decided to move families from Mountain Mastchoh to farm in the valleys, Germans assisted in building many of the houses and other structures. I asked when the Germans left, and was told it was when Khrushchev let them go back to Germany. What a nice fella. The generation of people who moved here as children and their children (like my friends Mahmud and Ma’mur) all love their town and have a great deal of pride in it. At the same time, they always speak in hushed tones of the most beautiful Shangri-La that is Mountain Mastchoh, this lost village far in the hills from which their families once came. (I’d really like to visit here to see if it lives up to the hype.)

I ask if the older people who were forced to move from the mountain town were happy to leave. I’m told they were sad, but by now the years have passed and the feeling forgotten, a nice strategy often employed by the benevolent communist leaders.

It’s interesting how on the one hand I read David Remnick’s Lenin’s Tomb and discover the most horrible times in Soviet history were under Stalin and Brezhnev. But when I ask the 77-year-old peasant Yusof, Ma’mur’s Grandfather, how life was different under the various Soviet leaders, he replies that the Stalin and Brezhnev years were the greatest times in Soviet history when the nation was it’s strongest. One view – the wide-reaching international perspective of a western liberal intellectual – and the other – the narrow first-hand view of a propaganda-fed lifetime farmer – both give me pause. The gulf is wide. Though I think both would agree the high point in the 60some years of Soviet history was the triumphal end to World War II. Pretty much downhill from there, I’d say.

Of course, this relationship to the former Soviet Union is a complex riddle I’m always trying to decode. Don’t expect any quick answers; it is the essence of Tajikistan today. One thing I can say for sure – we all owe it to the world to try to learn a subtler version of Soviet history. The cold war rhetoric we were fed in grade school leaves many details (both positive and negative) out of the story. And I think Tajikistan’s relationship to Russia, being the furthest republic from Moscow, was and is unique. I will communicate my discoveries to this puzzle as they are discovered.

Enough politics, on to the National Sofa:

After reaching the 2nd Field, a sprawling grid of development inhabited by 100,000 people! We walk to Ma’mur home. His house is in the traditional style of the region – the street front is entirely walled with windows from the home and a car-sized door with a people sized sub-door. Entering I find myself in a self-contained farm – vegetable garden, flowers, enormous grape arbor, Bossy the cow, outhouse, outdoor kitchen, clay ovens, and the doors to 2 homes – 1 for the grandparents, 1 for the family.

We wander into the sitting room, wall-to-wall with patterned rugs, the only furniture a table filled with copious local delicacies – apricots, nuts, candies, apples, cookies, crepes, cherries, bread – and 3 chairs (though often the table would be low and we’d sit on the floor. They thought I’d want to sit in a chair). I’m instructed to eat so I start to fill my small belly. I try to pace myself but feel rude since all they want me to do is eat. I think all the food’s here, but then there’s the bowls of sour bitter yoghurt, the onion and chickpea salad – and, of course, the National Dish – pilov. (Pilov (Tajik spelling of Plof) – rice hydrated with grease, then fried with onions, carrots, garlic, and meat (usually sheep or beef including wads of fat)). I do my best, but I think I offend them with my pitiful consumption.

Time to retire to the National Sofa – a raised platform out in “my nature” (the garden) – for tea. Damn is it sweet chillin’ under the grape arbor on pillows and carpets with chocolates and tea – crickets, barking dogs, gurgling water pumped into gutters, TV murmurs – the sounds of developing-country countryside.

After waking from a nightmare of Ma’mur’s sickly cat biting me in my bed, I can’t sleep on account of the crowing cocks and fears of needing to find my way back to the outhouse to take a piss at 3:30 in the morning. Putting the anxiety aside, I sleep until 7. Making my way back to the sitting room, the table is already filled with snacks and the tv is proudly playing Mrs. Doubtfire in English for my edification. I actually enjoy the reminder of the west (San Francisco actually) when suddenly I find sitting in front of me the 2nd National Dish of Tajikistan Churbo – basically potatoes, carrots, and meat in a salty broth. Just what I wanted!

Satiated, we make our way through the village past the school Ma’mur terrorized as a youth, photographing his former teachers in their classrooms, to the microbus and Byston. In Byston we head to Mahmud’s house, greeting his many relatives on the way. Leaving our bags and meeting a continual line of family, we further explore the city (stopping for photos of the Lenin statue in front of the former KGB building!).

In the hills we come to an orchard – cared for by relatives of Ma’mur (everyone’s related here, though even they don’t know how). We decide to rest on the National Sofa under the apricot trees thinking we’ll be here for only a moment when suddenly a cloth appears filled with the National Bread. Then come the sweets, the nuts, the fruit, the meat – and a 2nd helping of the 2nd National Dish in 2 hours. Whew, too much Churbo for one Peter to handle.

After this gastronomical struggle we head back to Mahmud’s house as he partakes in the National Nas (or the National Smoking – stinky balls of dried tobacco leaf mixed with white-wall paint (some kind of natural substance used on walls (CaCO2 I’m told))). At Mahmud’s we sit on the floor at his delight covered low-table again while a continuous stream of (male) relatives and friends drop in to say hello. It’s only a matter of time before the National Dish arrives – another heaping bowl of steaming Pilov. Digging my way through my 4th National Meal in under 12 hours, I dream of bottled water and my toilet at home.

On the way to the bus we see a boy playing the National Game – a stick pushing a small rubber inner tube. What isn’t National here in Tajikistan? Tomorrow we go to a wedding where we hope to see the bride in the National Wedding dress and group of musicians playing the National Drum and the National Trumpet. Unfortunatelly, though, this is usually the second wedding. Instead, I think we’ll see lines of Mercedes pull up with a western clothed wedding party, huge old video cameras, and the thumping bassline of the Punjabi MC smashed with Eminem, the National Soundtrack of Tajikistan – And the biggest bowl of Pilov you’ve ever seen, enough to feed 1,000. Good Times, Good Times.

2004-06-11T10:42:00.000+05:00

Juno and the Aussies dig in at the ex-pat BBQ

Life as an Ex-pat

2004-06-08T15:55:00.000+05:00

Juno:

So this weekend we got our first real taste of the ex-pat scene. Friday night we went out for dinner with a few friends, a couple of whom were dashing back to the states for a few days. One of the first things I’ve noticed is that people here country-hop like crazy – between here, Dushanbe (the capital of TJ), Tashkent, Osh (in Kyrgystan), Almaty (in Khazakstan) – and everyone knows each other, even though they live miles away. There are that few foreigners here.

Next morning, Kathleen called early to see if we wanted to stroll down to the bazaar. We emerged from our apartment to discover we were to be chauffeured there by Ben, a crazy Aussie with a sweet Mercedes. Ben figures he’ll never be able to afford a Mercedes except in TJ, so why not? He bought it used from Lithuania (where I suspect it belonged to an Eastern European Mafioso!). He and Kathleen were on a quest for a meat grinder. (For what? Hamburgers, of course! We’re here 5 days, and already off to a barbeque! Life is great.) We arrived at the bazaar and within minutes bumped into Yana, an intense German woman born in Russia, who, upon being confronted with the meat grinder request, strode off purposefully to find one and, as it turned out, knew exactly which of the million tiny stores piled high with junk would have one. Once she had bargained the guy selling them down to a reasonable price, we headed inside to pick up ingredients for what was quickly becoming a major enterprise. We even got a watermelon, which are now coming into season. Buns presented a slight problem, but we managed to find some rolls at the Turkish pizza place (where else?!).

We decided to have the BBQ in the evening, and in the meantime to head down to the river for a swim. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and not too hot. Yana, Kathleen, and I turned some heads as we paraded down to the water, which was lovely, but the horde of Tajik teenagers showing off for us got old fast. Back on the blanket, Ben told us how someone was building a boat for him, and that in 4 weeks time we’ll all be wakeboarding downriver! Gotta love the Australians, they’re always up to something. He also told us that you can rent kayaks and canoes at a place upstream. Sounds good, though the current is fast and getting home would be a bitch!

When we rolled up at Ben’s house later, I was amazed – he and his uncle (another crazy Aussie named John who owns a cotton factory outside Khujand – go figure!) live in this SWEET house on the other side of the river. The place is big, several bedrooms, guest house, living room, dining room, central courtyard (with a BBQ and a spit – apparently we just missed the pig roast!) and a pool table! Amazingly enough, Ben told me he came to TJ for the money!!! He works with a division of the World Bank doing microcredit for farmers, and apparently makes more doing that here than he would in Australia. Amazing. It is incredibly cheap here, so people being paid Western style salaries can afford to live large. Once rent is paid, you can’t spend your money no matter how hard you try. (For example, I changed $100 when we first arrived, and it’s still not gone, despite having eaten out every day and bought my lunch for a month!)

Aside from the people I described above, also present were some “corporate types” – guys related to a mine outside of town who were definitely coming from a different perspective. They were still interesting to talk to, although once one of them told me he wanted W reelected because his policies are good for the gold industry I steered clear of him in order to prevent myself from launching a tirade. A Peruvian named Oscar rolled up and we had a lovely chat in Spanish (still got it!). We all pitched in and soon the grill was sputtering away with burgers and steaks. They were absolutely mouthwatering! We had a very jolly evening talking, lying around on bolster-type things under the stars, drinking local beer and a little vodka (much better here), and stumbled home around 1. There are so many different kinds of people who end up here – the Aussies call themselves farm boys, then there are the corporate guys who just end up here, and the NGO types like us. What’s nice is that at home, our paths would never cross, but here, since there are so few of us, we are all friends. Everyone is very kind and seem happy to have new faces.

It’s funny hanging out with all these ex-pats. They totally have their own scene, sometimes like they aren’t in TJ at all. I don’t think they are trying to avoid the locals or the culture – I think the only way you can deal with living here, especially during the fabled brutal winter, is by creating a social scene separate from your day to day life, and filling it with people who know where you’re coming from. People stick together because it really can be an intimidating and frustrating place, and it’s easier to face when there are more of you sharing the same frustrations. Plus, someone will always speak Russian, making it easier for those of us who don’t!

Next day we headed off to the “Tajik Sea,” about 40 minutes away. The drive out there was pretty incredible, through the fertile farmlands of the Ferghana Valley. Stu, one of the Aussies, had told me that the soil here is incredibly fertile, and judging from the abundance in the bazaar and the verdant farmlands, I believe him. On both sides were huge fields planted in orderly rows, with the inevitable solitary and bent woman hoeing one row out of hundreds. This Sisyphean task takes up much of the time of rural peasants, and during cotton harvest the big farms commandeer the university students and force them to pick cotton instead of study. We thought this very barbaric until the guys in Pete’s English club told him they love it because they are free at night to go meet girls at the disco! Just goes to show, it’s all a matter of perspective.

I had envisioned the Tajik Sea as an idyllic oasis of water in the countryside. Not so – it was absolutely teeming with people, loud music, kids leaping off rocks, and people bumbling about in absurd paddleboats. There were little platforms with thick carpets for relaxing on, and people cooking plof for picnics (you would think they would make something that doesn’t require a 5 gallon cast iron pot full of boiling oil, but I guess it is the national dish!). Despite the lack of rural charm, it was pretty spectacular – the thing is immense, they say 7 km long and 5 wide (this is a subject of heated debate in our office!), and a deep aquamarine color. It’s used as a reservoir for hydroelectric power.

As is getting to be a pattern, our diverse crew of foreigners elicited a number of stares. As I dipped a toe into the surprisingly chilly water, I was accosted in Tajik by a young man. My new communication strategy is to just start talking in English (another new strategy: when buying something on the street and they tell me how much it is, I just hand them 5 somonis because it can’t possibly be more) – which is what I did, and to my surprise he knew a few words. We had a nice chat about the sea, he encouraged me to go in, and I declined.

A little later, though, I found myself out on a rock precipice about 15 feet high with the Aussie boys, being encouraged to jump into the churning waters below. I totally chickened out much to the disappointment of the locals (and recalling my early attempts on the high dive at Westfield Memorial Pool), but soon returned for a second attempt. By this point a sizeable crowd had gathered so I felt pretty compelled to take the plunge, especially with all the Tajik teenagers helpfully showing me where the best place to jump was. When I finally jumped, it was great but scary, and the water was actually quite rough since it was very windy. Still it was pretty awesome to be floating in this huge body of water, surrounded by greeny-brown mountains and blue sky. It was almost like Lake Powell, but less red.

We eventually dragged ourselves out and lay around until it got cloudy, when we headed home. Meanwhile we enjoyed talking to Jean, a friend of Kathleen’s who works training local journalists. It was really interesting talking to her and hearing about the problems she has – people here just haven’t been trained in proper reporting, and they the lack critical thinking skills to question sources, etc. Jean has been living in this part of the world – first Russia and the Balkans, now here – for about 20 years, and is now pining to go to Iran. She was a pretty amazing lady, very inspiring (what I am really inspired to do at this point is learn Russian, but the damn alphabet is so confusing! Still planning on giving it the old college try though.).

The only bad thing about my leaping into the sea was that I swallowed some water, which I suspect may be the culprit for the pretty major stomach sickness I’ve had for the last 2 days. More or less recovered now, but it was fairly awful. I have a feeling, though, that I got off easy -- from the stories I’ve heard, it could have been a lot worse. Hopefully I built up some antibodies or something so that next time it will be less intense. Sigh, such are the perils of third world travel. I’m not complaining.

2004-06-07T11:55:00.000+05:00

The Islam and the law class in Isfara. Note P's new girlfriend in the front, giving him coy looks. Note also the woman in the upper right, hiding her face. The mullah is the one standing in the funny hat.

Isfara is-far-a-way

2004-06-07T11:38:00.000+05:00

Hey all, just want to say thanks so much for reading and for all your comments - keep 'em coming! It's wonderful to know that you are all taking time out of your busy days to read about our adventures. Really means a lot to us and inspires us to keep writing. James, turns out the US candy market has achieved world domination - yesterday we had Snickers for lunch! And Jane, fear not, bazaar pics will be posted soon as part of the upcoming virtual tour of Khujand.

I fear the new food may at last be affecting what I had thought was an iron stomach. Feeling VERY queasy today, though no fireworks yet. Will be sure to keep you all posted :)

In the meantime, enjoy P's post. I'll be posting later today or tomorrow about our weekend on the expat scene.
Love J

Peter:

It would appear that a sweet arrangement has been made between myself and the XXX (An international diplomatic organization).

I’ve been walking around this town thinking about what the hell I’m doing here and trying to be productive (whatever that means) and the new XXX Khujand Field office needs a bit of PR to help show that this region is not only in need of assistance but absolutely vital in the struggle to create stability between eastern and western history and desires. So now we are working together.

Yesterday (Friday) I set off towards a small village outside the remote town of Isfara, a 90 minute drive through Utahian landscapes from Khujand.

XXX has been conducting 3-day seminars throughout Tajikistan on women’s rights and Islam and one such seminar was beginning in the conservative Isfara area. They had received permission from the Mullah leading the class for me to photograph, so we headed out around 2 PM to make the end of first day of the seminar.

The drive to Isfara traces the Kyrgyz-Tajik border – Tajik collective farms on one side of the road, Kyrgyz on the other (one can tell from the various assortment of funny hats worn on each side). The road continues past the Tajik Sea, an immense reservoir that provides the region with much of its electricity, though apparently not enough as power outages seem to occur every other day. I’ve been told that if the dam were to fail, the entire city of Khujand would be flooded. Please pray for no earthquakes.

After awhile we reach a very small, dusty village a few kms beyond Isfara. The car stops (actually a sweet Pathfinder with lots of antennae and Diplomat tags making one feel exceedingly important and official) and I was told we were here. Here we were, but here seemed pretty fucking desolate and nowhere.

A man emerged from the building we were in front of inviting us inside. Tachmina, the elegantly beautiful XXX employee overseeing the program (whom I was accompanying) speaks wonderful English and leads me inside, placating my fears and lending me some confidence.

We wander into a room full of weathered Tajik women (& a few men) whose faces were wrinkled deeper than the delicious raisins I eat on my yogurt each morning. Oh such a stir.

“Who is this strange man with the dirty underwear coming to our class?” they ask.

Rarely have they been photographed. And probably more rarely have they seen a westerner - much less a silly earringed, unshaven boy straight off the boat busting a digital camera in their faces. It seems any progress that has been made teaching these women about their rights under Islamic law has been tossed out the already open window.

Tahmina and the administrator explain to everyone what the hell I’m doing here and my new friend the Mullah goes on teaching the class as if McFly never busted his Delorean through the doors of the barn.

Immediately I see a few women, veiled, who turn from my gaze (and camera) and man do I feel like an asshole. “Why should I be here making these women feel uncomfortable?” But since I’m here only because I’m trying to help XXX make their efforts known, I know I should persevere. Besdies that, the light and the people are both amazing. Soon enough all the nerves evaporate.

Human nature is such a fabulous thing. Boy are we such silly creatures. How quickly do I stop being the attraction when suddenly all these innocent beautiful women want to become my star models.

Wide, gold toothed smiles, they pawn off melted coffee candy to me, hiding my wrapper under the carpet when I look for a place to put it only so I will capture their images on my digi-sensor for whomever to see whenever again.

It’s so touching (and humorous for everyone) when at then end of class they list the positive things they’ve gathered from the day and my #1 hottie says “The guest we had today.” Bashfully, I duck under the table and try to pretend I was never there --- but I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

After class and the group portrait, the 3 veiled women linger.

They have some concerns to air, and they’d like for me to hear them. Turns out they face a great deal of problems trying to practice their religion as they wish even here in a country that we all think of as Muslim. They are not allowed to attend school veiled. They cannot stand veiled for passport photographs, as in Russia, and because they are unwilling to remove the veil for the photo, they have no passports and are effectively trapped in Tajikistan. Between their religious devotion and their desire to be part of the modern world, these women are stuck.

It’s crazy to be in the position where somehow they think I can offer hope only because I come from the west. But it seems that I actually could. All they want is for their town to have what they call an “information center”. They want access to the internet.

Why? Because they say “we know there are many kinds of Muslims out there and we want to know who they all are.” If they only knew all that they will find! They must have some idea.

For them to access the internet they must otherwise travel all the way back here to Khujand, an easy trip when traveling in a phatty pathfinder, not so easy when your making $1 a month if you’re lucky picking cotton on a “collective farm.” (More probably you’re paid in rice and wheat or nothing at all).

Hopefully with my photos and the story we intend to feature on XXX's website we might be able to help make this happen for these ladies… but it highlights all of the simple, ground level problems that need to be solved before we can hope to achieve any semblance of balance between east and west.

TJ daily grind

2004-06-04T10:41:00.000+05:00

Juno:

While Peter gallivants about Khujand with his posse, I am working away in the CEELI office, trying to get started on the project that got us here in the first place. The project investigates labor rights in the Sughd area of Tajikistan (the Sughd is the province in which Khujand sits). Originally, the project was designed to complement an ongoing project by OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – a fairly major player in the local NGO scene); their project aims to educate workers primarily about their free association and collective bargaining rights.

However, after a rather terrifying meeting the other day, I’m not so sure I’ll be working as closely with them as planned. Picture me groggy and jetlagged, so tired I was nearly falling out of my chair, clutching a cup of Nescafe (which seems to be the only coffee-type beverage available here, quite a shock to my body which, after finals hell, is used to practically having an IV drip of caffeine straight into my veins) at a meeting with some OSCE important types, getting the 3rd degree from this Dutch dude about a project I wrote up months ago. It was my first true taste of 3rd world NGO bureaucracy, I think, with a fair bit of sputtering about how what I want to do is “outside the project.” After I got done trying not to cry, and after Christine jumped into the fray to save me (this is a bit exaggerated, fear not!), we hightailed it outta there and agreed that we don’t necessarily need to do the project under the OSCE banner, as it were.

This is ok as I think it will free me up a lot, since I won’t need to be quite so worried about stepping on other people’s toes. I will still work with OSCE on some aspects, for instance next week I am planning on attending one of their factory trainings (translator in tow – I hope to hire this wonderfully clever young woman who puts all us slacker American young people to shame) and hopefully getting a factory tour – cool! No worries, everyone I spoke to before coming told me about how you design your project only to have it completely revised once you arrive. I’m sure it will pan out just fine, and there’s even talk of designing a second project proposal so that CEELI can get more funding to do labor rights work – always good for the old resume.

Meantime, I’ve been getting to know the other work that CEELI does here. Their main role seems to be facilitating action by local NGOs and training these groups so that they can be self-sufficient and effective without the guiding hand of CEELI. One project is a citizens’ action network across the Ferghana Valley, with groups here in TJ, as well as in Uzbekistan and Kyrgystan. They also do a lot of work with local young people, including the Student Bar Association and a street law project that teaches high school students about civil rights, as well as advocating for reform in the criminal courts, which sound barbaric at best. A main goal of most of the NGOs around here seems to be generalized democracy building – teaching young people about civil rights and public discourse, to encourage a more open society.

Today I went to a meeting at OSCE of the local human rights alliance, a newly forming group of NGOs who want to come together to fight pretrial detention and torture, a big problem here. Even though the meeting was all in Russian, I was able to understand a fair bit thanks to Rano, the program assistant, who whispered translations in my ear. Even without translation it was obvious that a heated discussion was taking place, the gist of it being that everyone thought they knew what was best and didn’t want to hear what anybody else thought. It was interesting to see how impossible it seemed for them to come to any sort of agreement, since to me it was obvious – each faction had a good idea, and if they could work things out so that all three ideas (legislative reform, monitoring of detention practices, and publicity) could occur simultaneously, they would likely be very effective. The participants, however, didn’t seem to see that potential at all, and just kept scrapping it out. (The following sounds like I’m tooting my own horn but that’s not how I mean it) I think my ability to take a step back from the situation and evaluate it is something learned, and an aspect of our education that we take for granted. The people here are only just beginning to work for social change, and the channels and processes have not yet been defined. It’s both frustrating and inspiring to watch.

Other things I’ll be doing in the next couple of weeks include meeting with other groups doing labor rights work in the area, attending a training on the right to organize and collective bargaining at a local factory (hopefully), sitting in on a sort of walk-in legal clinic, teaching local NGOs about advocacy, helping our Tajik staff design project proposals, and conversing with an English class taught by our landlady. All very exciting and quite makes up for not being able to wander the streets of Khujand with P and his posse (well, almost – but I’ll get to do a fair bit of that this weekend).

More details about the office – there are 2 North American staff – Christine, my main contact, who is awesome and who has just returned to the States for a few days, and Kathleen, a very friendly and hardworking Canadian who has been here for a few years and who heads up the project facilitating connections between different local NGOs. There are 5 Tajik staff – 3 lawyers, a program assistant, and a cook/housekeeper lady who makes us all delicious lunch every day. They are all lovely – we all went out for Turkish pizza the other night, and it was my first chance to talk to the Tajiks about themselves. One, a young woman named Farengis who I talked to for a while, is really impressive – very clever and tremendously accomplished. (I’m sure the others are too, just haven’t talked to them as much!) She made a toast to us having a happy and fun visit to Tajikistan, which was very sweet. They are all so bent on making TJ a democratic and just society, and so involved in their work, it is very inspiring – Farengis told me that the older generations are too set in a pattern of corruption to really care about reform, so it’s up to the young people, and all the young people I’ve met so far are certainly up to the challenge. Tonight we all went out for dinner (Pete was knocking back vodka with the boys!), and there’s talk of heading to the “Tajik Sea” (I think it’s a manmade reservoir) at the weekend. Will be sure to post details and pics.

As for the expat scene, we’ve met a few very nice folks (including the guy who grilled me at OSCE – as one of few foreigners in town he is of course friends with everyone, so gotta play it cool! Hopefully he’s a little less intense socially!). There are only about 20 or so (maybe less) “internationals” in town, so it’s a pretty small scene. Those we have met seem psyched to have new faces, and I’m guessing we’ll meet more friends this weekend. Last night we ate at what seems to be the nucleus of expat life here, the fabled Indian restaurant. Must say, it was very good, better even than much of what we get in NYC because they aren’t afraid to make it spicy! Considering it’s in the same building as our apartment, I have a feeling we will be eating there a fair bit.

2004-06-03T09:40:00.000+05:00

Lenin continues to watch over the city - from about 25 meters up! Note strange and questionably inhabited apartment buildings in the background.

2004-06-03T09:35:00.000+05:00

The pied piper and his posse.

The Pied Piper of Khujand

2004-06-03T09:32:00.000+05:00

Peter:

I keep waking up at 5 am. It doesn’t bother me because it’s not like I have to do anything. I wish it were that easy back at home.

I watch Juno for a while until I know she’s awake too. Then I sing some silly songs and we get up and eat some breakfast. We discovered relatives of our good friends from New York (the Cucaracha family) in our kitchen so we put all our food in our refrigerator (that doesn’t stay cool because there is no outlet to plug it into.)

After a breakfast of warm yogurt, Ecuadorian bananas, pistachios and bread (that tastes amazingly similar to bagels) I download my photos from the previous day and otherwise digi-MacNerd out for a bit while Juno reads and gets mad at me for continuing to sing silly songs and distracting her. Then she heads to work (a five minute walk from the apartment) and I give in to my returned tiredness and sleep for 2 more hours (this is a habit I hope to break soon enough, I’d much rather just sleep straight through until 7 am).

When I do finally wake up for good I generally then do battle with our Tajiki toilet with shitty Chinese-plastic innards. The damn thing just runs and runs and runs and is so weak, but at least we’ve got a toilet. I fill the tank with the shower and then give it a good flush. Then I take a shower – in metallic smelling brown water. Since I still haven’t my bags, I’m without deodorant and clean clothes, so the shower is absolutely necessary, brown water or not.

I practice learning the Russian alphabet before heading over to Juno’s office for noontime lunch. The office employs a cook and I’ve paid into the deal so will be taking lunch at CEELI’s office for at least the next month. So far, then, after lunch I check my email (yet another struggle with slow satellite speeds and Juno’s antique machine – btw: haven’t been able to access any Verizon email to now, send messages via hotmail please!) before heading out on aimless wanders around town.

Khujand is dusty – almost BurningMan dusty. In fact, the whole place has this kind of anything goes BuringMan feel to it. It also has the BurningMan heat, or will have. Today was a teaser, I expect worse. It also always smells like smoke (burning trash) and weirdly exhausty (the cars run on Benzene? I think – sold from the side of the road in multi-gallon glass containers, like water bottles at home).

I walked past the fountain on one of the main squares today and all these boys were jumping in the water in their underwear. I’m still not comfortable openly shooting on the street. Whether people have a defensive reflex carried over from the old commie days or they simply aren’t used to having westerners throw cameras in their faces, I’m extremely cautious and sensitive with my photography. These kids in the fountain were unassuming enough, though, so I set out to photograph them. Little did I know I would immediately become the center of attention with 20 kids jumping, circling, waving, laughing and smiling at me. So I photographed them and moved on my merry way.

After walking in the park 50 yards or so, I discovered a friendly young man tagging along with me. He was a real character who knew about 20 words in English so we became friends. Soon I realized there were 6 more kids following a few more paces behind so we decided to form a posse. Me and my pals proceeded to aimlessly wander across the whole town of Khujand for the next 3 hours.

It was really quite jolly, over the river to the Lenin statue, up the hill to the Somoni statue (the great 13th c.? poet for whom the money is named) and further up the hill past the communist-era apartment blocks (inhabited or not, it’s hard to tell) to one of the universities overlooking the city. From here one can see across the whole side of the valley to the snow capped peaks that separate this small northern bit Tajikistan from the capital and the rest of the country.

Heading back to the center of town, my friends and I went over my Cyrillic flash cards as I attempt to learn the alphabet, my first step towards learning Tajiki. I amuse them for a bit with my iPod, a hilarious episode involving little Tajik boys bobbing their heads and quoting Barry White.

Finally, dusty and beat, I return to Juno’s office to pick her up and walk home stopping for dinner at the Indian restaurant around the corner (Long Live Indo Tajik Friendship).

2004-06-01T14:25:00.000+05:00

Sheeps and high tension power lines between the Uzbek/Tajik border and Khujand.

Welcome to Khujand

2004-06-01T13:23:00.000+05:00

Juno:
Ah, the joy of jet lag. It’s 5:15 a.m., I’ve been awake since 3:30, can’t sleep, so I thought I’d take a few minutes and get this blog up and running.

We have arrived. It took us more than 24 hours to get here, and with the time change (9 hours ahead of NYC time) we lost a full day, so we left Brooklyn late Saturday night and arrived here, bleary but in one piece at 4:00 Monday morning. The trip was fine. We spent a few hours kicking around Heathrow, buying things with our credit cards, and then got on the flight to Tashkent. In the waiting area at Heathrow we met a middle aged American guy who lives is Tashkent – talking to him made us really excited to arrive.
Turned out the flight stopped in Yerevan, a place neither of us had ever heard of but which turns out the be the capital of Armenia. Who knew?

The first and only snag thus far occurred when we arrived in Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) and discovered that Pete’s bag had not arrived. We had heard this was a possibility but it was still rather a bummer. Fortunately all important and valuable things were in the carry on, so it’s not that big a deal. British Airways tells us it will arrive Thursday, and Pete has been very stoic and has decided he doesn’t really need any of that stuff anyway (a thought the frequently crosses my mind as I look at the absurd amount of crap we have with us).

After the bag snafu we wandered out into the Tashkent morning. Various guys hassled us for cabs, but XXX (the org I’m working with) had sent their driver. He had no trouble recognizing us and we were soon rocketing through the outskirts of Tashkent towards the Tajik border. Even though it was only 5:00 or so, people were up and heading to work. All the cars are either Loskas (I think – some Russian make) or these funny Daewoo minivans. Mixed in were lots of people walking as well as horses and donkeys pulling drays. The women in both countries wear brightly colored housedresses and kerchiefs, and the men wear fairly plain shirts and pants, some of them wearing round, pill-box shaped hats (very reminiscent of the hats featured in Homebody/Kabul, a play we saw two days before leaving).

We soon left the city (through a big gate thing with a checkpoint, but the guards seemed uninterested in us) and made our way through the countryside, going southeast. To the east were some fairly hefty mountains, which bent around to the south as we got closer. The landscape was very flat at first – lots of farms and orchards – and broken intermittently by lines of what appear to be cypresses. As we got closer to the border it became more hilly and less dry. The farms generally had a sort of compound, with the main house a low, square building with few windows and a corrugated roof, surrounded by mud walls.

When we arrived at the border we bid the Uzbek driver goodbye – very nice fellow, didn’t speak a word of English – and headed toward the immigration control building. A herd of cows and the boys accompanying them regarded us with speculation. The border guys said a lot of things to us in Russian, and we smiled and shook our heads (a gesture rapidly becoming our main means of communication). There was a birds’ nest full of baby birds in their office. We thought we were ready to leave when one of the guys beckoned Peter over to him and asked him in a gravelly voice what we had in our bags. After assuring him we had no weapons or narcotics, we were waved on. We trudged to the Tajik side, where the immigration office was decidedly less impressive, really less an office than a shack. The guys there seemed to find us pretty funny, especially when Peter began unpacking one of the bags in the shack, looking for our Russian phrasebook. Once he fished it out it was promptly commandeered by one of the guards who flipped through the pages then beamed “Have a nice trip!” I thanked them in Russian (spasiba!), they indicated that all was in order, and we were on our way. We plonked ourselves down in the dirt at the side of the highway (where we were subjected to some funny looks by the locals) to wait for our ride, which arrived mercifully quickly. Christine (my contact at XXX) and Khurshed (the XXX driver) drove us on the pothole-ridden road back to Khujand.

As we got closer to Khujand, the mountains got bigger and we could see several ranges, the ones in the back craggy and covered with snow (the front ones are similar to the front range in Colorado). Dushanbe, the capital, is on the southern side of the range. Khujand itself seems like a nice town, a bit bigger than I expected but no skyscrapers or anything. Loads of people walking around, and driving is quite an adventure. They don’t yield to pedestrians like we do. We arrived at our apartment which is vastly superior than what I anticipated: it’s 2 bedrooms (come and visit!) with a little kitchen with fridge and burners, a bathroom with a sit-down toilet (thank heavens, the ones in the airport were squatters!) and, most important, an air conditioner. We even have a TV, and there’s talk of getting satellite, so we can watch BBC World!! Along with the AC, that makes two luxuries we have here that we don’t have in Brooklyn.

We crashed for a while, then went over to the XXX office for lunch. We met all the XXX staff, who are mostly Tajik though there is another Westerner, a Canadian woman named Kathleen. All very nice and friendly. For lunch we had “plof,” the Tajik national dish, which is basically fried rice and very tasty. Some guys came by who want Pete to join their English conversation club – recently formed, and P is clearly the main attraction! He’s pretty psyched. Then we hung around the office for a while until Khurshed took us on a quick tour of the town. We went to the bazaar, which was awesome – tons of ladies selling fruits (apricots, cherries, raspberries, strawberries) and veggies (garlic, scallions, cucumbers, tomatoes), and guys selling nuts and dried fruit. [Either from lack of sleep or dehydration, I started to get extremely dizzy in the crazy bazaar with the thumping beats of pop songs and toothless squatting ladies selling eggs – like an extended headrush – only adding to the Twin Peaks experience. P] We got a bunch of stuff, including some adventuresome purchases of a dried sausage thing and some very tangy yogurt cheese. Everything was really cheap, we spent about $12. After the bazaar, Khurshed bought us ice cream (thereby cementing our friendship) and took us to this old fort which is now an archeological museum; very interesting – Khujand is more than 2500 years old with a great history. We fumbled our way through the tour, which was in Russian, and between the little English Khurshed and the tour guide had between them, and the way that lots of words in Russian sound like their English equivalents (“Macedonski”) we made out ok.

Then we went out for dinner on the river with Christine and Kathleen – a very nice place where we dined on fresh salads (tomato, onion, pistachio – yum!) and beef skewers [beef, mushroom, tomato, and fat rings – double yum! P]. The restaurant was very big with a bunch of cabana-type things on the side that you can sit in to have dinner – like the rooms in sushi restaurants we thought. We ate outside, accompanied by the vocal stylings of a middle-aged Tajik crooner and his keyboardist. We had a couple of beers and a bug attack until, thankfully, they turned off the fluorescent lights. It was great. When we arrived back at our apartment we discovered that Pete had left his bag (with camera) at the restaurant. He ended up leaping in a cab, and with excited gesturing found his way back (the ride cost 30 cents!), relieved to find his bag right where he’d left it. After all that drama we were ready to hit the sack, which, though rather narrow and hard, suits us fine.

Tajiki-blog coming soon

2004-05-26T18:23:00.000+05:00

The tajikifest begins memorial day weekend!