Hello Everyone
and
Happy Birthday Dad!
Life is getting on - I'm busy with work #2 - editing an entire book on Dialogue between the government and religious opposition. Work at the Bureau on Human Rights is also continuing, albeit slowly, and there will be little grief on my part when I leave this job. It's especially fun when the computers don't have internet for an hour or so, and everyone takes this as a reason to leave work for the day. This happened last Thursday.
This past weekend, I was a tad lazy, but I did learn to make two unusual salads - as my host sister is an expert of crazy Tajik salads, and I learned to make a cabbage dish. On Saturday, we went to the botanical garden of Dushanbe, where there was an exhibition of everything "Tajik Village" from all the regions of the country. I took many many photos, and I hope to upload them tomorrow. The highlight though was when the President arrived and I got a spot pretty close to the VIP seating area, where I could hear him give his speech. President Imomali Rahmon is far more pleasant to look at in person than on TV, where they do a closeup shot and you can see his HUGE eyebrows. It's recently been the 15th anniversary of peace, independence and constitution, and all kinds of "love tajikistan" days. On Friday, the President was speaking to the Congress which had signed the peace (I believe), and I was amazed to realize that from the podium where Rahmon was speaking, the wall facing him was draped in a huge portrait of himself. In essence, the man was speaking to himself! Later, when he took his seat, the President kept his head down, and eyes 95% closed. I joked with everyone that the President was sleeping through the ceremony, but my host mother (who loves the President very much) took offense at this joke and told me that this was simple reverence. I tried to express in Tajik that if everyone expressed their reverence for peace in this way, the whole auditorium would appear to be sleeping. She was with me at the Botanical Garden when we saw the President speaking, and besides for when she answered her cell phone (not so laudatory of the President), she would be the only woman in the crowd to say loudly "Spasibo" or Thank You and then break the silence with applause. We arrived late to the exhibition and so parts of it had already closed, but there were all kinds of animals and village labor demonstrations. There were many cows and goats and even camels, which scared the poor Tajik teenage girls. For some reason, though, and I can't understand at all, the host mother ran away from tied-up cows. She ran! I asked her if she was afraid, and she exclaimed that indeed she was! I could understand this from a city person, but she's from the villages and have lived for years with cows. I asked her to explain, and she said that these were "city cows". I don't mean to make fun, but it was really strange!
Nothing much else is very interesting. For those of you looking for updates, I will be leaving here on the 17th of December for Dubai. I will stay there for about 9 days, but I don't have a return flight yet. It's not clear when or IF I will get to Kazakhstan because I have not yet managed to acquire all the necessary documents for getting a work permit from the government of Kazakhstan. See you soon! Wish me luck getting the entire book on Religious dialogue edited in the next month!
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
day before we transported the bride...
Here's another picture of Anargul in her wedding clothes, before we brought her to the new village.
older photos (from EID) for your amusement.
Above, for Eid, you'll see a group the family, outside a house being built by Rakhmatullo, my host mother's brother-in-law.He's on the right.
Here is Idigul, my host sister. She is boiling eggs and coloring them for the Festival after the Month of Ramadhan.
On the right is me, with my "host neice".She's only eight months, but she crawls everywhere and is almost always happy. Do you like my bizarre facial expression and my Tajik gear?
Baljovon and Earthquakes
Day Number Whatever
Also: (yesterday was) CONSTITUTION DAY!!
Off from work. I was happy to know that the Bureau of Human Rights follows the constitution and gave us a day off. But what’s new?? I have been so busy, and completely troubled with insomnia for roughly the last two weeks. I normally can sleep for 15 hours, if I wish, but for some reason, I now wake up at about 4 am every single day!!- and that’s it! By 6 am, the family is busy and working – prayers are being said around 6:15 or so, and a big breakfast is ready by 7am.
This morning, I was up at that time, although lying on my kurpatchas (?) – the cushions I have to sleep on – (on the ground). At around 7:30 or so, I felt the floor sway and shake a bit. It turns out for about 15 seconds I was feeling an earthquake. It’s been awhile that I haven’t felt even a small earthquake. The whole family was awake, and nobody said or did anything (apparently nobody felt it) and so, I stayed lying down – although part of me wondered whether I should get up and go outside, in case it would happen again. I only knew it wasn’t my imagination when Clinton (this nice American guy here who has been working in Kabul the last two years) asked me later in the day if I had noticed a small earthquake. He said he was sure there had been one, because he had grown accustomed to the feeling of earthquakes from Kabul.
But I have lots of news for all of you!! Life is definitely progressing, and I have to be honest when I say that I never want to leave this crazy city!. Yesterday was a particularly fun/interesting day. I was at work, and went to lunch at noon – as usual. After sitting in Merve (the Turkish restaurant) for 20 minutes and being overcharged by 4 somoni ($1.20), I went to Plazma, the local “expat-preferred” internet café. I needed to send a fax of my current work certification and my passport to Kazakhstan in order to get the work permit for next semester at KIMEP (which I probably won't get anyway in the end). The fax was not going through – and I am just standing there, complaining under my breath. Finally, it doesn’t work at all, and without telling me that the second page didn’t go through, they charge me. The fax confirmation was in English, though and it said, “Communication error.” In my broken farsi, I complained that it didn’t go through.
I paid some money – which I thought was for the two pages – and then they set about again trying to send the fax. Finally, they are like, OK, it went through. They then ask for more money. I said to them, But I’ve already paid. They were like no, that money was for the last time. I got annoyed, and started asking questions – like, what last time?-the last time that the fax didn’t go through? They said, yes. Finally, it comes out that their payment policy for faxes is not by the page, but by how many minutes it takes them to send something. This was complete nonsense – How can you charge for faxing by the minute? I told them that nowhere in the world have I seen such a policy – and that they could just sit there and without pressing send, and count the minutes – this policy especially makes no sense when the fax in the end never goes through. IN any case, I realized I had no patience to bicker over what would amount to a dollar – so, I stopped complaining.
Meanwhile, a man standing next to me is sort of laughing and starts sympathizing with the nonsense – and tries to console the women at the payment desk that I do in fact understand them and I am not trying to fight with them or deny them their money. My language was particularly funny because this man turned out to be Iranian – from Mashad – and he was amused by my heartfelt attempt to bicker in Farsi. Anyway, he’s an “e-commerce multi-level marketing” businessman (those were his words) who has been living in Dushanbe for two years. He decided I was interesting enough – so he introduced me to a second Iranian restaurant in Dushanbe – Restaurant Ferdovsi. It’s better than DBD – where I normally go for Iranian Koobideh. I wasn’t hungry, as I had just come from Merve, but I had a barley soup and drank tea. It was nice – but I am mildly exhausted from meeting people who speak only Farsi/Tajik. It’s amazing that I have such a small vocabulary and yet I manage to have three hour conversations with people entirely in Tajik, with a smattering of Russian words thrown in.
Anyway, yesterday I also went for my typical Arabic belly dancing class – which I attend normally about 4 times a week. But yesterday a horde of American women were there (and by horde, I mean three). I have seen these girls before – but never formally introduced myself. They are quite nice, and I believe they are all interns at various organizations. One plays volleyball for Seton hall, although from Canada, and is about 2 meters tall and blond. She is completely obvious on the streets. She told me a brilliant story about her and her friend (from the US?) . She was walking when she thought that the water that was coming from someone’s window was glass. She screamed and jumped away, tripping her friend. They went flying. Everyone on the street was laughing – when I flew/fell down the stairs, I am happy nobody laughed…
If any of you have gotten this far in reading about my recent life in Dushanbe, I should tell you that I had the most MOST MOST amazing weekend ever!! I went to Baljovon – the village where my host family is from – and for two days, I visited the sister of my host father and we followed around a new bride. This probably won’t make much sense the way I will write it, but at around eighteen to twenty years old, girls should be married. When they find a husband-to-be, they should normally accept to live with the husband’s family in his home (unless he doesn’t have one, and she does). So, this girl (Anargul, or literally: PomegranateFlower), a cousin of the friend I went with to Baljovon was to be married – but she was to be married to a man in a village – oh, only about 2 hours away in a completely different region and in the middle of nowhere! The day we arrived in Baljovon I took a nap, was offered my favorite food (Oshe-reshte, a soup with beans and wheat noodles) and then we went to the wedding. Because the bride’s brother had been killed fairly recently – hit by a car – there was no dancing and no real festivity. At about six o’clock, in the villages of Tajikistan the electricity comes on – this lasts until 9 – a sort of government imposed bed time. In the morning, the electricity comes on again at about 5 am and lasts till there’s daylight. My friend calls this the two celebrations people have every day in Tajikistan.
Anyway, so we got to the wedding, and it was mostly just the old women sitting in one room, and the men sitting outside (it was fairly chilly). We were offered the typical fare, we ate, then we put on a video of a past wedding with dancing where they were actually outdoors with an announcer and a band (which is typical). I was forced to display my Tajik dance skills – and when I initially refused, everyone told me that the whole room of women was waiting for their foreign guest to dance for them. I felt obliged and gave a two-minute presentation. haha.
Eventually I was allowed to leave that room – and go to the other room where the bride was getting dressed for the evening. That night, in that room, she had all of her classmates join her and they had a meal together. Classmates at weddings are particularly important here – usually taking center stage in the dancing and meals. This might be partly because the couples getting married are pretty young and usually have just finished school. Unlike our classes in the US, almost every single person in a class at school here will go to the wedding if someone is getting married – and the students have far less dislike of each other than we do in the US. I danced in the room where the bride was dressing herself, to PMC – the Persian Music Channel – this greatly amused PomegranateFlower (the bride, that is). When her classmates came I had to return to the old woman’s room, haha – until the electricity went off at 9pm. We all walked home in the dark night to the other house. I had my flashlight with me, Thankfully! I wish I could tell you how amazing the night was – within a few minutes I was crying – the number of stars visible in Baljovon, the air – the moon – everything!! I stayed outside for about half an hour just looking at the stars. I might have stayed for two hours or more (it was about 50 degrees!) if the family there hadn’t pulled me inside to eat again!-! I had some pomegranate seeds…
The next morning, we decided I should call Dushanbe to let everyone know I was OK. My phone was completely without signal in that village (or anywhere on the trip for that matter), so I was told that I could go to the top of the hill where I thought they said there was a phone. I took my money with me, and was prepared to pay someone to use their phone. Actually, I had misunderstood and was supposed to bring with me my cell phone simply to see if at the top of the hill there would be reception. Haha. I didn’t bring my phone with me up to the top, but I knew that outside Dushanbe my phone just wasn’t going to work anyway!! In any case, I walked around the town – and then when we got back, I got a second portion of oshe-reshte and then we went back to the house where Pomegranateflower was preparing to be taken to her new home…When they pinned the bride’s hat on her, she broke down – and starting sobbing for about an hour. The men who had prepared the car kept coming in and saying, "what??-Tell her to get ready!!" – But she’s just in a ball, crying hysterically on the ground. The women in the room are laughing and trying to console her – but that just wasn’t happening. About twenty women and men got into two large vehicles – the whole village practically seemed to be transporting the bride to the new home. After two hours of an amazing ride through mountains we reached a village in the middle of nowhere which seemed to be only 10 houses or so, and Pomegranateflower was put into a room with the women where she sat behind a gold-colored drape. She would sit behind the curtain for a day, and then the next day her work would begin. The next day she would have to serve everyone and prove herself worthy as a new bride. Just before leaving, I went to greet her, and although it was only the third time in her life to see me, she was soo happy and wanted a picture with me. We stayed for a few hours in that village – where I sat mostly with the men (to the dismay of the women) and answered questions about the price of bread and cars in the US.
--I am tired of typing for now, and I have to get ready to meet Fred (my old classmate from Geneva) who is working here and has decided to hire me as an editor for a book on Dialogue between the Government and Islamic parties in Tajikistan. I don’t need a second job, but I’ve always got a full plate.
Also: (yesterday was) CONSTITUTION DAY!!
Off from work. I was happy to know that the Bureau of Human Rights follows the constitution and gave us a day off. But what’s new?? I have been so busy, and completely troubled with insomnia for roughly the last two weeks. I normally can sleep for 15 hours, if I wish, but for some reason, I now wake up at about 4 am every single day!!- and that’s it! By 6 am, the family is busy and working – prayers are being said around 6:15 or so, and a big breakfast is ready by 7am.
This morning, I was up at that time, although lying on my kurpatchas (?) – the cushions I have to sleep on – (on the ground). At around 7:30 or so, I felt the floor sway and shake a bit. It turns out for about 15 seconds I was feeling an earthquake. It’s been awhile that I haven’t felt even a small earthquake. The whole family was awake, and nobody said or did anything (apparently nobody felt it) and so, I stayed lying down – although part of me wondered whether I should get up and go outside, in case it would happen again. I only knew it wasn’t my imagination when Clinton (this nice American guy here who has been working in Kabul the last two years) asked me later in the day if I had noticed a small earthquake. He said he was sure there had been one, because he had grown accustomed to the feeling of earthquakes from Kabul.
But I have lots of news for all of you!! Life is definitely progressing, and I have to be honest when I say that I never want to leave this crazy city!. Yesterday was a particularly fun/interesting day. I was at work, and went to lunch at noon – as usual. After sitting in Merve (the Turkish restaurant) for 20 minutes and being overcharged by 4 somoni ($1.20), I went to Plazma, the local “expat-preferred” internet café. I needed to send a fax of my current work certification and my passport to Kazakhstan in order to get the work permit for next semester at KIMEP (which I probably won't get anyway in the end). The fax was not going through – and I am just standing there, complaining under my breath. Finally, it doesn’t work at all, and without telling me that the second page didn’t go through, they charge me. The fax confirmation was in English, though and it said, “Communication error.” In my broken farsi, I complained that it didn’t go through.
I paid some money – which I thought was for the two pages – and then they set about again trying to send the fax. Finally, they are like, OK, it went through. They then ask for more money. I said to them, But I’ve already paid. They were like no, that money was for the last time. I got annoyed, and started asking questions – like, what last time?-the last time that the fax didn’t go through? They said, yes. Finally, it comes out that their payment policy for faxes is not by the page, but by how many minutes it takes them to send something. This was complete nonsense – How can you charge for faxing by the minute? I told them that nowhere in the world have I seen such a policy – and that they could just sit there and without pressing send, and count the minutes – this policy especially makes no sense when the fax in the end never goes through. IN any case, I realized I had no patience to bicker over what would amount to a dollar – so, I stopped complaining.
Meanwhile, a man standing next to me is sort of laughing and starts sympathizing with the nonsense – and tries to console the women at the payment desk that I do in fact understand them and I am not trying to fight with them or deny them their money. My language was particularly funny because this man turned out to be Iranian – from Mashad – and he was amused by my heartfelt attempt to bicker in Farsi. Anyway, he’s an “e-commerce multi-level marketing” businessman (those were his words) who has been living in Dushanbe for two years. He decided I was interesting enough – so he introduced me to a second Iranian restaurant in Dushanbe – Restaurant Ferdovsi. It’s better than DBD – where I normally go for Iranian Koobideh. I wasn’t hungry, as I had just come from Merve, but I had a barley soup and drank tea. It was nice – but I am mildly exhausted from meeting people who speak only Farsi/Tajik. It’s amazing that I have such a small vocabulary and yet I manage to have three hour conversations with people entirely in Tajik, with a smattering of Russian words thrown in.
Anyway, yesterday I also went for my typical Arabic belly dancing class – which I attend normally about 4 times a week. But yesterday a horde of American women were there (and by horde, I mean three). I have seen these girls before – but never formally introduced myself. They are quite nice, and I believe they are all interns at various organizations. One plays volleyball for Seton hall, although from Canada, and is about 2 meters tall and blond. She is completely obvious on the streets. She told me a brilliant story about her and her friend (from the US?) . She was walking when she thought that the water that was coming from someone’s window was glass. She screamed and jumped away, tripping her friend. They went flying. Everyone on the street was laughing – when I flew/fell down the stairs, I am happy nobody laughed…
If any of you have gotten this far in reading about my recent life in Dushanbe, I should tell you that I had the most MOST MOST amazing weekend ever!! I went to Baljovon – the village where my host family is from – and for two days, I visited the sister of my host father and we followed around a new bride. This probably won’t make much sense the way I will write it, but at around eighteen to twenty years old, girls should be married. When they find a husband-to-be, they should normally accept to live with the husband’s family in his home (unless he doesn’t have one, and she does). So, this girl (Anargul, or literally: PomegranateFlower), a cousin of the friend I went with to Baljovon was to be married – but she was to be married to a man in a village – oh, only about 2 hours away in a completely different region and in the middle of nowhere! The day we arrived in Baljovon I took a nap, was offered my favorite food (Oshe-reshte, a soup with beans and wheat noodles) and then we went to the wedding. Because the bride’s brother had been killed fairly recently – hit by a car – there was no dancing and no real festivity. At about six o’clock, in the villages of Tajikistan the electricity comes on – this lasts until 9 – a sort of government imposed bed time. In the morning, the electricity comes on again at about 5 am and lasts till there’s daylight. My friend calls this the two celebrations people have every day in Tajikistan.
Anyway, so we got to the wedding, and it was mostly just the old women sitting in one room, and the men sitting outside (it was fairly chilly). We were offered the typical fare, we ate, then we put on a video of a past wedding with dancing where they were actually outdoors with an announcer and a band (which is typical). I was forced to display my Tajik dance skills – and when I initially refused, everyone told me that the whole room of women was waiting for their foreign guest to dance for them. I felt obliged and gave a two-minute presentation. haha.
Eventually I was allowed to leave that room – and go to the other room where the bride was getting dressed for the evening. That night, in that room, she had all of her classmates join her and they had a meal together. Classmates at weddings are particularly important here – usually taking center stage in the dancing and meals. This might be partly because the couples getting married are pretty young and usually have just finished school. Unlike our classes in the US, almost every single person in a class at school here will go to the wedding if someone is getting married – and the students have far less dislike of each other than we do in the US. I danced in the room where the bride was dressing herself, to PMC – the Persian Music Channel – this greatly amused PomegranateFlower (the bride, that is). When her classmates came I had to return to the old woman’s room, haha – until the electricity went off at 9pm. We all walked home in the dark night to the other house. I had my flashlight with me, Thankfully! I wish I could tell you how amazing the night was – within a few minutes I was crying – the number of stars visible in Baljovon, the air – the moon – everything!! I stayed outside for about half an hour just looking at the stars. I might have stayed for two hours or more (it was about 50 degrees!) if the family there hadn’t pulled me inside to eat again!-! I had some pomegranate seeds…
The next morning, we decided I should call Dushanbe to let everyone know I was OK. My phone was completely without signal in that village (or anywhere on the trip for that matter), so I was told that I could go to the top of the hill where I thought they said there was a phone. I took my money with me, and was prepared to pay someone to use their phone. Actually, I had misunderstood and was supposed to bring with me my cell phone simply to see if at the top of the hill there would be reception. Haha. I didn’t bring my phone with me up to the top, but I knew that outside Dushanbe my phone just wasn’t going to work anyway!! In any case, I walked around the town – and then when we got back, I got a second portion of oshe-reshte and then we went back to the house where Pomegranateflower was preparing to be taken to her new home…When they pinned the bride’s hat on her, she broke down – and starting sobbing for about an hour. The men who had prepared the car kept coming in and saying, "what??-Tell her to get ready!!" – But she’s just in a ball, crying hysterically on the ground. The women in the room are laughing and trying to console her – but that just wasn’t happening. About twenty women and men got into two large vehicles – the whole village practically seemed to be transporting the bride to the new home. After two hours of an amazing ride through mountains we reached a village in the middle of nowhere which seemed to be only 10 houses or so, and Pomegranateflower was put into a room with the women where she sat behind a gold-colored drape. She would sit behind the curtain for a day, and then the next day her work would begin. The next day she would have to serve everyone and prove herself worthy as a new bride. Just before leaving, I went to greet her, and although it was only the third time in her life to see me, she was soo happy and wanted a picture with me. We stayed for a few hours in that village – where I sat mostly with the men (to the dismay of the women) and answered questions about the price of bread and cars in the US.
--I am tired of typing for now, and I have to get ready to meet Fred (my old classmate from Geneva) who is working here and has decided to hire me as an editor for a book on Dialogue between the Government and Islamic parties in Tajikistan. I don’t need a second job, but I’ve always got a full plate.
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