On August 1st, which I remember because it was National Day in Switzerland, my host mother came into my bedroom not long after dinner, just after dark as was typical during Ramadan. Her tone a combination of excited urgency, she said “Some foreigners just came by and they were speaking English and I think they needed help.” Not one to skip an adventure, I grabbed my book and set out in the direction she had pointed me. Two blocks up, sure enough, was a short young Irish woman with a rolling suitcase staring confusedly at her map in the dark. Her husband soon joined from down the street, where he was trying to get directions in his very good Russian. In what was likely one of the weirdest moments of their trip, the white guy (me) walked up to them and began speaking to them in English.
Category: Tajikistan
This collects my posts about my time in Tajikistan
The Clown Car
The other day, I was on my way to an evening at Public Pub, which is this lovely Irish pub (of which there are, unbelievably, two in downtown Dushanbe) where we like to have a beer every so often. As usual, I stood on the side of Rudaki, waiting patiently for a car (or even better, a Lada) drive up with a nice big laminated “3” in the front window. In minutes I was speeding down the road in my own private Mercedes (for the grand cost of 3 Somonis, or about 60 US cents), when we were flagged down again. I watched incredulously as three other men my age climbed in and sat on the bench next to me, two more crammed into the front seat, and three others climbed in on top of us, to put a total of what must have been 9 or 10 people in a relatively small sedan.
Cutlery on Porcelain
Another postcard has gone live over at The Harvard Crimson! Head on over and check it out!
It’s 3:10 in the morning, and in the starlight, I can make out the outline on the tablecloth of bread, teacups, a tub of Turkish Nutella, and two bowls of “shirchai,” a warm soup made from whole milk, butter, and tea leaves. I sit in the darkness with my host grandmother, and as I eat my fill of the smorgasbord, I can hear the soft clinking of forks, knives, and spoons against bowls and plates across our neighborhood and across Dushanbe, the capital of the small mountainous republic of Tajikistan.
A Lada Melons
We saw this today… A Lada full of matching melons.
That is all.
Attack of the Tajik Tummy
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I finally got sick. But the ever-discussed “Tajik Tummy,” the fear of which has been struck into us for over a month now as one by one each of us has fallen, is quite an adventure to behold here in the global capital of gastrointestinal illness. Continue reading “Attack of the Tajik Tummy”
Tales From The Trolleybuses of Tajikistan
Remember how I was waxing poetic about Dushanbe’s marshrutka system? I really glossed over a lot of the other routes of transportation. In particular, I did not do justice to Dushanbe’s beautiful rusty old trolleybus network. My love for this relic of Soviet Russia has grown many times like flower in pot. These elegant green and white and iron oxide colored buses quickly whisk people from one stop to the next, manned by a driver and a fare collector who rides in the door and tells the driver whether to stop and mercifully wait for people running for the bus or to drive by completely without stopping. In general, they are far more eager to take an extra one Somoni fare from a passenger than to maintain a “schedule,” though, so I rarely miss them like in the US. Here are some of my favorite stories about the trolleybuses so far.
Continue reading “Tales From The Trolleybuses of Tajikistan”
In Tajikistan, “It’s A Thing” Is A Thing
Many in our Tajik classes are not too thrilled to be diverting attention to the local dialect of Persian here in Tajikistan. As security studies majors, they see it as a little-needed language that will not help them outside of communicating with their host families here. When their hair falls out because they couldn’t read the label on a shampoo bottle, the rest of us will be laughing, but in all honesty, I actually really enjoy our Tajik classes, partially because most of my language practice here is actually in Tajik, not Farsi, and partially because our Tajik teacher is so hysterically funny. Continue reading “In Tajikistan, “It’s A Thing” Is A Thing”
Tajik National Unity Day
Yesterday was by far one of the most spontaneous and interesting days we have had since arriving in Tajikistan. June 27th is National Unity Day, and marks the anniversary of the signing of the peace accord that ended Tajikistan’s brutal civil war that devastated the country from 1992-1997. On that day 16 years ago, representatives from the government and the opposition met in Moscow under UN supervision to sign an accord and begin a process of reconciliation that seems to me to have brought a national pride and unity to the country. I’m sure that somewhere, people are unhappy, but that’s the way that countries work. In any case, it is an important day to Tajiks, and serves as a solemn reminder of their country’s suffering on its journey to independence. Continue reading “Tajik National Unity Day”
“An Evening in Tajikistan” Got Some Press!
Yesterday night, I was sitting with some friends at the Irish Pub here in Dushanbe (yes, it exists, yes it has Guinness, and yes it does literally look like a little hobbit hole on the side of a traditional Tajik building) when one of my friends mentioned that apparently, my post on The Harvard Crimson called “An Evening in Tajikistan” made the Google News top ten stories about Tajikistan of the last week or so! If you haven’t read it, bounce on over to the Crimson and take a look! And as always, feel free to send me questions and ideas for new things that you want to hear about on here – it’s super easy using the form below!
“Wow, this internet is faster than dial-up!”
I’m actually shocked that I’ve been able to get so many blogs up this week. When we first arrived in Tajikistan, we traveled for two days without really any internet, then had some slow internet at a hostel where we spent the first morning. From that Thursday until Monday, we did not access the internet in any form. It was some serious cold turkey quitting going on. But, when we finally did have access to the internet, actually loading a page was another issue entirely. Continue reading ““Wow, this internet is faster than dial-up!””