Mid-Holiday Breather

We had a relaxed, if partly sick, long holiday weekend -- everyone was sick with something, but luckily not all at the same time. Now of course it is a brief work week before we do it all over again for New Year's (although without W.'s present of Friday off, I expect).

Anya got to see Santa Claus/Ded Moroz a bunch more times, perhaps most excitingly at a children's performance at Dushanbe's Russian theater, the Mayakovsky. (Just down the street is the much grander Tajik theater, the Lohuti, and in my understanding of language and cultural policy in the USSR, it's pretty typical both that the two would exist and that they would have been fairly important institutions in the capital of Tajikistan, placed prominently in the heart of downtown -- despite the Russian theater's decidedly less glamorous visual representation. I'm interested to know more about them, though -- both about their lives in Soviet times as well as the life each of these institutions has led during Tajikistan's independence. The Lohuti also happens to be one of my favorite examples of architecture downtown -- gorgeous robin's egg blue walls and pure white columns, with beautiful Orientalist detailing at the capitals and archways of what is otherwise of course a familiar Soviet neo-classical temple.)

A fellow mother from sadik invited us to see a New Year's play -- I thought it was just going to be the usual public "yolka" presentation in the theater lobby, with Father Frost and his granddaughter Snegurochka, but it turned out that was just the beginning. (That yolka link shows you some interesting photos of Soviet yolkas in decades past -- the contemporary version has to be remarkably similar to what came before.)

We had a great time at the first part. Anya was particularly fascinated by the ugly fake nose worn by the Baba Yaga character, and also liked the "boogie voogie" song we danced to (which really was a fairly literal and direct translation of "the hokey-pokey," complete with right feet in and left feet out and all the rest).

Luckily we had been tipped off that this would be followed by a full-fledged play on the actual stage. Unfortunately, since we were sitting about halfway toward the back of the orchestra, and due in part to the moaning baby in the seat next to us (who, together with his grandmother, to my surprise, actually started attracting glares and comments from adults nearby), we didn't really hear or understand very much of it. And even after the grandmother finally took the hint and stepped outside, we'd already lost too much headway to really get into the story. But it had its moments. For Anya, those included the snowstorm (represented by swirling lights on the scrim, apparently generated by an offstage disco ball), and the red Russian peasant dress the main characters chose to dress their female scarecrow in.

From what I can tell, this was actually a recent play by a living playwright, entitled "Snegurochka Dasha." I could tell we were watching something in which two regular characters were stand-ins for Father Frost, his young sidekick, and the humorous bad guy figure of Baba Yaga, complete with a dream sequence in the middle that gave them to us in their full fairy-tale likenesses (think "The Wizard of Oz" in Russian with more red-nosed old guys and fewer animal characters. And a lot less music, unfortunately for those under 3 and for those hearing- and/or linguistically-challenged!). Luckily I had enough bear crackers and baby cookies to tide us over the hour or so it lasted and all the way home.

Hopefully our next public performance, a possible trip to the Dushanbe Circus next week, will be easier to follow and more small-kid-friendly than "Dasha."

Christmas Press

Not to be all Debbie-Downer on you, but Tajikistan made it onto the front page of the New York Times today with this article. We hear about this kind of thing a lot from our friends here, the fear of how the financial crisis ultimately will affect migration to and employment in Russia, which together produce the remittances that seem to keep Tajikistan's population afloat.

In other news, the weather turned much warmer for Christmas Eve day and now on Christmas Day, too. The sun yesterday made it positively balmy, and a warm breeze wafted in as I rode the marshrutka (fixed-route taxi van) back to town after a morning of work at the Embassy. It was great, until I sat for too long and the marshrutka made an unexpected (for me) turn, and I had to backtrack to get to sadik in time to pick Anya up. (One thing Dushanbe really needs: transport maps!)

We have had a building-themed holiday week, with Legos and Intelligence Blocks (a lego-type toy that Anya received as 2nd prize in the 2-and-under coloring contest) coming our way, and the two most favored things to build are apparently: 1. towers, and 2. Christmas trees (sometimes expressed in Russian as "Yolochka!").

We (well, OK, I -- unfortunately Anya wasn't really in the mood to make cookies, just to sample them; and Dan was out doing our grocery shopping) made a big batch of oatmeal cookies for the two parties on our circuit last night. I need to get moving on whatever it is I'm making for the family Christmas dinner that some fellow expats in our neighborhood are organizing this afternoon -- I think it's going to be apple tart, for lack of much imagination or energy for anything else.

Happy Holidays!

Sad Barg

I went shopping today for some more little holiday gifts (Hanukkah? Christmas? who can say...) and left feeling just kind of fed up and depressed with local offerings. "Sadbarg" is sort of like a central department store, post-Soviet style. Meaning that in its interior halls it is filled to overflowing with a combination of little glassed-in storefronts and counters, but the goods on sale leave something to be desired.

They are OK -- I have kind of followed a strange trajectory on them. In the beginning everything just looked like cheap trash. Then I started to distinguish the super cheap from the sorta cheap and the things that were made with some degree of quality. The turtleneck sweater that I bought for Anya, to go together with a little pink sweater dress, for the kids' New Year's party at the Embassy this afternoon, both of Chinese manufacture, actually seems to be better than expected. Others have even commented that they're surprised I found it at Sadbarg. I'm tempted to go back and get another from Dilshod, the friendly proprietor of the glassed-in shop "Fashion Kids."

But I guess today I was on the downturn again, and everything just looked like shoddy crap to me. I think the way everything is crammed together, with very little rhyme and reason (OK, yes, clothing is generally separate, and there are other sections where drugstore-type items and cleaning supplies are sold, but there is still a sense that you might find the category of thing you're looking for or you might not -- I am a little tired of that insecurity and the subsequent need to traipse all over town if I really want to find a particular thing). And no wrapping paper in sight, just little Christmas bags.

*Sigh* Luckily I have a few things bought locally, and a few things bought online, and I think I'll be OK. And I am telling myself to buy some supplies for the future online, as they come on post-Christmas discount, and (as always) to think about this earlier in the year next time around!

Beautiful, Clear Sunday Morning

The view out our window, onto the snowy, cold mountains to the west of us, at about 9:30 this morning.

Apparently the reading at the Dushanbe airport is currently 25F. I swear the reading in our unheated bathroom has to be 40F, although surely that is not realistic.

The Loooong Walk Home

Today we took an unnecessarily long walk home from sadik. I got there early enough to have to ring the bell (the guard doesn't unlock the gate until 12:30), but it took so long to get Anya suited up for the chilly, slushy walk and then the journey itself took enough time that we got home and ready for nap only by 2:15, about an hour later than usual.

I'm trying to make Anya walk on her own two legs more these days, rather than carrying her the majority of the time. She seems to agree to this more readily more for her dad than for me, and I'm not exactly sure what the trick is. From my perspective, I'm putting my (her) foot down partly because she is so darn heavy and partly because I often have other stuff to carry, like today with two medium-weight bags of holiday items from a shopping trip in town.

Anya really doesn't care for this walking thing, and I constantly have to stop and cajole and convince and distract, with much whining and rather fake crying in the mix. As other parents of toddlers will surely attest, it takes forever to get anywhere, since I really don't want to give in and teach her that she can have her way that way. I try to get her to meet me halfway, and I tell her 'if you walk to such-and-such a landmark, I'll carry you until this-other-landmark, but you gotta help me out because Mommy has all these heavy bags!'

Our trip takes us from near the corner of former Karl Marx Street and Tursunzode Avenue, a bit less than a kilometer west to Rudaki Boulevard; an unfortunate 200 meters more along Rudaki whether north or south to get to the bus stop, since we are poorly placed in the middle; and after about 3 stops on the bus, about a half kilometer walk again west to our house, which is roughly here. (The links spit out the wiki map with the location I'm talking about at the center of the screen, right underneath the small crossmark, in case you are interested enough to follow along with my description with cartographic aid.)

Luckily we don't have to do this all that often. All 9 of the other rides we need between sadik and home during the week we have been getting from our sometime driver, but on Fridays he can't work after 12 noon. And our car is in an undisclosed location somewhere between here and Antwerp (and even when it does arrive, we expect a harried bureaucratic battle over registering the vehicle with its illegally tinted windows). So, at least for the next month, maybe two, we have some decisions to make about how we make the trip on our own steam.

In principle, we don't have to do the trip this way -- we could take a cab, which would cost $3 maximum. And I guess that probably sounds cheap, and I seem like a crazy person to go on foot. There seems to be some part of me (the part that believes in public transportation, I guess?) that thinks: we are able-bodied people, and there is a public bus that runs most of the way between this location and our destination, so why would we take a taxi all the time for this routine trip that we make? I don't know, I guess I'm kind of still figuring out what our habits ought to be. And I think it's just the principle of the thing -- for trips I make that are not routine, I will readily hail a cab, but for something like this it seems like we ought to be able to do it on the bus (an 18 cent ride; 15 cents if you get a trolleybus).

I mean, what would we do in an American city? I got a small sense of the stroller culture in NYC when I was there in November, although mainly I was just relishing the chance not to have to pay attention to kid-related things. There have been a few times here where I've used the stroller for this trip, leaving it in the courtyard at sadik while I go about my business and Anya's inside, but it still is not the most obvious solution. (We of course never quite got into any consistent habit of using a stroller to get around over Anya's first two years while we lived in hilly Vladivostok, where sidewalks and stretches of even, stairless pavement were both rarities.)

Using the stroller for this trip has its own challenges. The pavement isn't all that much more even in Dushanbe than it was in Vlad (although you might be surprised -- the capital of the poorest former Soviet republic does generally beat the Pacific port city on sidewalks and walkability, hands down). Our neighborhood does happen to have pretty rutted road surfaces, but that is still manageable.

I think it's more the street-to-bus transition that is the problem for me. The ironically good thing about riding the bus in Tajikistan is of course that here people (OK, men) are very ready to help a woman with a stroller lift it up onto the bus. Not to mention the readiness with which people on public transportation give up seats for even young women with a heavy load of kid or inanimate luggage. Basically I stand at the back door to the bus and start to heave the load upwards, and the money-taker guy who stands in the center of the bus himself and whatever men are standing toward the rear swoop in quickly and help me lift it all the way in. (I have tried this trip with the stroller folded up, holding both it and Anya, but it is a lot to manage with just two arms, and the problem of the dirty, muddy wheels also distracts from the theoretical beauty of this approach. They brush up against my own coat and pants or, worse, someone else's. So in more recent trips I've started just hoisting stroller plus kid into the bus -- with help, of course -- without separating the two or folding either of them up.)

As long as the bus isn't too crowded (unfortunately not a situation you can totally count on), the stroller seems to me to be the best option, and although you have a few seconds of pain getting everyone both on and off, I think it may pay for itself in time not spent listening to whining or carrying a heavy toddler in my aching arms.

Seen Today in Dushanbe

• Snow: big, fat, wet flakes falling in a beautiful mess, and still falling steadily now, at 3 in the afternoon (and forecast to last into a chilly weekend!)

• Turkeys: 30 somoni (a little less than $10) per kilo, labeled for some reason in Greek, in the supermarket

• A Russian guy buying only hot sauce, and nothing else, at the same supermarket (I guess stereotypes are made to be broken)

• Historically inaccurate bright orange bell-bottoms in the 1976 Soviet film version of Firdausi's Shahnameh, "Skazanie o Siyavushe" (this afternoon's offering on TV Safina, one of the 3 local channels we get at home)

Library Day

We finally got our passports back on Friday, after the lengthy process of extending our initial visas, so I decided today was the day I needed to get registered at the library. Eventually I have a suspicion that the library of the Tajikistan Academy of Sciences will be more useful to me, but since right now I am still getting my feet wet, I began with the Firdausi National Library.

I had an experience that is not really all that exceptional to a foreign researcher in the former Soviet Union, but even in that context it was a slightly bewildering and humorous episode (if it had taken up any more time it would have been annoying, but it was ultimately too quick to be worth anything more than a chuckle and a shrug). Still perhaps it merits a remark here, for those who've not had the pleasure.

I went to the front desk and asked "how do I register?". I figured the answer would be pretty simple -- even though I still need to summon up some amount of energy and chutzpah to face the challenge of these places, the registration part really isn't what's daunting for me anymore. The process can vary a bit: sometimes you go inside and fill out your forms at some fancy old wooden desk (like at St. Petersburg's National Library), sometimes it's all done out in the area outside the "turnstiles" or their equivalent, through which you enter the venerable institution (like it happened in Khabarovsk last summer). But by now I guess this is the part of it all -- especially at what is basically the public library, where any Jamshed with an address ought to be able to get a card -- that I expect to go smoothly.

The guy sitting at the entrance and coatcheck with his two female colleagues -- who look fairly typical for local women with their loose headscarves and the constant stream of sunflower seeds that enters one of their mouths, although I don't think I've seen anyone knitting such expert booties in public yet -- tells me quickly that it costs 2 somoni.

I rummage through my wallet to present him the roughly 60 cents together with my passport. He glances at my documents and quickly says "Oh, for you [I can only assume it was because I was foreign; maybe because I hold a diplomatic foreign passport] to register, you'll need to get a spravka [memorandum of permission] from the Ministry of Culture." I say, "OK..., I know that's located just down on the corner." So far I can handle this one, I'm thinking. "Can you tell me what section I go to?" He can't quite come up with a name -- he discusses it briefly in Tajik with his colleagues and another man trying to enter, and I catch only about 20% of what is said, but they come up empty-handed anyway. I say, "OK, rahmat [thank you in Tajik]," and his face lights up -- "You know Tajik?" And I quickly say, "oh, no -- kam-kam mifahmam," which I think in itself is a slightly wrong way of trying to say "I only understand very little," and ought to have solidified the fact that I was really just giving it my best college try.

I head out and down to the corner, and the Ministry really is literally only a 2 minute walk away, so, so far, so good. I ask at the little window with the administrative checker where I need to go for my spravka, and the first sign that this is going to take a good old Kafkaesque turn is the puzzled look she returns through the little square. She shakes her head and tells me I need to go to the library itself to get registered. I explain that, noooo, they just told me to go here. She asks the man working the inside of the Ministry entrance, and both of them seem to be encountering this supposed rule for the first time in their careers; they can't come up with what department would distribute such spravki.

She tries to tell me using sign language together with Russian, which I clearly speak well although I think the request has her so dumbfounded that she assumes I need the extra dimwit-help, that I should go back to the library to register. (In all of these conversations, I already kind of instinctively don't even bother to try or provide introductions in Tajik, or to apologize for using Russian, since it's been no problem -- except when some don't speak enough Russian -- to use Russian for everyday business in the private sphere. But this experience as a whole makes me think that using a few words in Tajik as an opener may well smooth the way a little in government institutions.) I know it isn't going to work to just return to the library, so I press on, and even as she continues to wave her arms in a signal for me to go back down the street to the library itslef, I half-act, half-am confused enough to bumble my way through the entrance with a puzzled look on my face and pleadingly try my luck again with her colleague just inside. The guy posted at the door still has no idea, but together they finally come up with a name: Jahongir! Let her see him.

So I'm led about 5 doors down the hallway to an office, and after trying one door which is locked, Mr. Entryway knocks and opens the door across the way and we are greeted by a pleasant if slightly puzzled young man in a blue suit and tie. I open with a "Salom aleykum" and explain again in Russian what I've been told I need. He has me sit, looks at my passport, asks me a very few questions, which he tries to do in English, which works fine -- the main thing he asks me is how long I've been in Tajikistan (which ought to be clear from my passport, of course) and what I'm going to look at at the library (I say historical journals and the history of Tajikistan. Why, he asks? Because it's interesting to me, and new, I say with a stupid smile.). And he folds a piece of A4 paper in half, carefully rips it along the fold, and handwrites a "spravka" that I ought to be able to register at the library. He wishes me good luck and I'm on my amused way.

The library guy of course barely even looks at the spravka, helps me fill out the brief Tajik registration form and sends me over to the cashier and library card office, which is surprisingly modern compared to the rest of the place: my 80 cents buys me a card with my picture, taken by digital camera, and slated to be ready and laminated for me tomorrow. And I then spent a rather chilly (though it didn't hold a sputtering, icy candle to my sojourn at Tbilisi's national library in January 2005) but fruitful morning working with the card catalog and figuring out what sources I'll consult first on the modern history of medicine in Tajikistan.

Like I said, by no means a very unique experience for those who frequent these kinds of institutions in the former socialist world, but just a taste of what happens when you try to go about this business. I guess for me it is only remarkable in 2 respects: one, as I said initially, for the pleasantly short time it took to do the little bureaucratic dance, and, two, also for the sheer lack of logic or understanding on the part of my various partners. Usually, at least in my experience, even if there is little in the way of rules laid down to lead us in the dance, the participants put on a good show of everything needing to follow a set process, which maybe I don't know but of course they can recite backwards and forwards in their heads. Clearly (as I've already had chance to see and hear from others), Tajikistan plies its own particular brand of post-Soviet crazy, so now I'll go about trying to learn this one and see if anything I learned most recently in the Russian Far East will apply here...

What IS That Smell?

I think I have only really described this to one other person on email before. In fact, here is a quote, one of the first times I took the opportunity to sit and express to someone back home my impressions of our new home in Dushanbe:

"The house is big and weird and has stinky bathrooms (something about the plumbing: they are nice, in principle, just looking at the fixtures, but when you flush it seems like you disturb some vast collection of turds right under the little vent in the floor. I guess on the bright side, you don't have to be embarrassed when you stink the place up yourself due to a bout of Somoni's revenge...). OK, probably more than you wanted to know..."

Yeah, well, again, probably more than anyone needs to know, but in the last 48 hours it seems like maybe that vast collection has morphed into an angry army. What's the deal down there? Our bathrooms are the stinkiest places.

Here is a link to the smell.

(Ha, fooled you. Too bad that, with all of the technological advances that Google has introduced, you can't go to GoogleSmell and download a sample sniff of something. Or maybe, as you are probably thinking, thank god that isn't [yet] possible...)

Actually, wonder of wonders, it turns out someone else already had that very same thought.

Yeah, I guess by now chances are, if you think of it, someone else out there has probably already blogged about it. Isn't that about the size of it?

A Similarly-themed What We're Saying:
Our latest little game with Anya is to ask how you say something in Russian. Wouldn't you know it, she can tell us correctly that "diarrhea" is "ponosik" in Russian. (And the thing that kills me about this is that, more often than not, when we play this little game, the translation she comes up with is a diminutive form of the correct word (e.g., ponosik, not ponos). Why? Because that's the way people talk to little kids in Russian -- they are always using the diminutive, and apparently that applies to diarrhea, too. For some reason that is just hilarious to me.)

There are much cuter things I can report from other exchanges, but I'll leave the topic for now and won't tarnish their cuteness by mentioning them in the same post as that one.

An Early New Year's

Tomorrow they are organizing a New Year's party at sadik -- so many kids will be leaving for the holidays that they decided this was the best way to include everyone. They have been getting the kids ready for the past few days by bringing out the Santa (Ded Moroz/Father Frost in Soviet tradition) costume and putting it on.

Apparently Anya is the only one of the 10 or so kids there who was afraid (or maybe just didn't like so much) when the teachers and kids tried on the fake white beard. (Despite my having dutifully taken her to her first post-Sov "yolka" New Year's party last year in Vlad.) The suggestion was that we talk up Santa a little bit at home, so she won't be scared at the party, but have fun with the rest of the kids instead.

Since part of getting ready for the Embassy Christmas-New Year's party in several days is to color in a picture of Santa and some presents, I figured why not use that as the occasion to talk about Santa (as if she won't have her whole childhood to hear about St. Nick and the presents he brings to good boys and girls...). I showed her the drawing, asked her who that is, and she promptly told me: "Is it Nargis [sadik teacher] wearing a beard?" Smart kid.

Market Rounds, Part 2

(Hey, I'm an American, shopping is what we do, right?)

Seems like this is the norm for me: getting to know a new place is apparently tied pretty closely with figuring out where to buy stuff. I suppose that isn't very strange, after all. You appear in a new place, and you need to eat. You need your daily stuff, like soap, shampoo, etc. You need a few comforts that you may not have brought with you. You may have the benefit of a whole container-load of your existing stuff being sent behind you, but while you're waiting you probably need some things that, at packing time, didn't seem essential enough to stuff in the suitcase. DVDs to watch. A toy or two for the kid when the ones you've got are getting old or when she seems to be reaching a new stage. Warmer shoes when it starts to get colder and rain a bit. A hat or a scarf. Tupperware, or what passes for it in Tajikistan. Spices! You get my drift. So where do you find all this stuff?

Actually, it's sort of appropriate too that I'm thinking so much about shopping and "marketing" -- and not because we're in some ancient, bustling node on the Silk Road. Apparently Dushanbe ("Monday" in Persian/Tajik) was the site of a little settlement whose market day was Monday. The modern city, though, is pretty much a Soviet creation, and it dates to the 1920s, when the Red Guards rolled in, put down local resistance to Soviet-Russian rule, and took over the emirate of Bukhara. That was when they started to reshape this area into the republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The central, older part of Dushanbe is kind of laid out along a roughly north-south axis, along the river Varzob. (If you look at the link, you've got the river pretty clearly cutting through the center of your view; the main downtown of Dushanbe is laid out to the northwest of the hippodrome -- the easily identifiable oval to the east of the river. And all of that sprawl on the river's west bank is comprised of much more recent neighborhoods and prefab construction -- "novostroiki" -- built more after 1970.) We don't tend to venture out too far beyond that basic center of town, but we still seem to do a fair amount of traveling here and there.

In the beginning, it seemed like TsUM and the Green Market summed up our most frequent shopping experiences. TsUM was an obvious place for us to go, working as we were on the post-Soviet model, when we needed basic household things after we moved in, like plastics or kitchenware (we got the interim Minnie Mouse potty chair there, and some random plastic tubs for laundry and other stuff, those sorry excuses for Tupperware, that sort of thing).

Most of the expats or American diplomatic folks we met from the start tended to do their fresh food shopping at the central "Green Market." That place is impressive! And luckily I have already gotten fairly used to the dirty, loud, chaotic market experience and now can do it better than I could at one time. If in Vladivostok it just seemed like the wisest choice, where you ought to go for good quality produce at the right price, here in Dushanbe it seems to me that the Western style supermarkets really are almost not an option for produce. They carry some basics and some things that bazaar sellers just don't apparently bring in (although I'm still learning -- maybe oyster mushrooms really are available at the bazaar), but if you need a good range of basic fresh staples and root vegetables, you've got to just hit a regular open market and save the supermarket for what it's good at.

Without a car, the Green Market -- in the very center of town -- really isn't that great an option for me, so now I tend to go to our local bazaar, up at the north end of our neighborhood (and almost at the north end of town). It's much smaller than the Green Market (which really is defined at its main corner by a funny greenish building in that kitschy Orientalist style -- imagine a built style to match the cheesy "Sindbad" type lettering on the railroad station and the airport, and I think you get the picture). Ironically the Green Market is actually looking a little grey and sooty ever since about the time we arrived. Apparently warring bandits who were vying for control of the selling there set fire to the main building literally on the morning that I was first shown the market. When I walked past it the other day, it wasn't smoldering any more, but it still kind of just looked like charred heap of greenish metal. That doesn't mean the selling in the other parts of the bazaar doesn't continue unabated, though -- the market is really a sprawling entity that sort of starts at that green corner, but encompasses larger structures, smaller structures, outdoor territory, etc.

The Varzob neighborhood bazaar is more my speed, although of course it doesn't have the selection and variety (or the kind of rich-feeling Central Asian-y experience) you get at the Green Market. It's kind of just a plainish corner market -- it has a rectangular permanent building with sellers set up inside, food, housewares, clothes, etc. all piled up on glass-front display cases; several semi-permanent metal kiosk or trailer types of storefronts, each divided up into little cells and each of those with a seller inside; open produce areas, where people set up their wares on old dusty blue metal countertops; and then there are the butcher section, the hardware section, and the cooked food sections.

And while we're on the subject of fresh produce and where to find it (before I take a break and continue my shopping descriptions at a later time), I have to comment on the excellent dinner we had for the second time this week at the restaurant Yangtse Tian (I hope I'm spelling that correctly), complete with green and just a tad crunchy stir-fried bok choi. I don't know how they do it, but these people evidently truck the veg in from China! Some of our friends have named this place as their top restaurant in Dushanbe, and I think I'm close to placing it at the top of the personal favorites I've accumulated so far, too. And apparently a hall full of Chinese people whom I have yet to see on the streets of Dushanbe agree.

Market Rounds

Where do we go when we need to buy?

Shahmansur Market, or "The Green Bazaar" -- produce and foodstuffs, also all kinds of manufactured household goods and hardware, right in the center of Dushanbe

neighborhood bazaar "Varzob" -- small produce market (with plenty of other food and other stuff) within walking distance of our house

supermarkets Orima and Paikar, a couple of blocks west of Dushanbe's Opera and Ballet theater -- more imported and higher quality foodstuffs, more reliable freshness, more comfortable shopping experience for the Western expat, more likely to come closer to one-stop shopping, and all of it costing more money

Sultoni Kabir -- a pretty amazing Central Asian open-air Home Depot

TsUM, or the Central Universal Store -- state-run department store conveniently located right in the center of town, a reliable option for plastics, toys, larger manufactured household items, some souvenirs

Sadbarg -- clothes, shoes, toys, toiletries/personal care, stationery goods

the wholesale shops next to the railroad station -- all kinds of food and drink at wholesale prices. We mostly go for the juice, milk, and beer, for the chance to buy a "blok" of 12-20 units all at once and get a ride home, rather than lugging the tetrapaks on foot, piecemeal.

(Where are we? We live in the neighborhood that lies just to the north of the Botanical Gardens.)

The Day the Nanny Quit

Perhaps that title offers a nutshell explanation of why the blog is still sporadic in nature. True, even in Vladivostok I never got myself together enough to post as often as I'd have liked, but establishing a routine for myself in Dushanbe is proving even harder for me (or maybe my memory is just fading).

My trip to the US was great -- an amazing break and weeklong opportunity to sort of go back in time and experience independence for an extended period of time, reconnect with friends, family, colleagues, professional networks, etc. Probably even Dan has not really ever had an equivalent experience since Anya was born, despite his more frequent short trips for work. (And added culinary and shopping benefits on two continents: several hours wandering in Istanbul in addition to three east coast US cities.) No complaints there.

Highlights (yes, I admit again, a culinary theme):
* a series of visits at home and out on the town, with friends and family, all up and down the East Coast, starting with a cozy burger and beers with Auntie and Uncle on a cold fall night in Bethesda
* gourmet-street-fare-inspired Mexican -- including grasshopper tacos, which I admit I didn't try, and spicy chocolate cake, which of course I did -- at DC's Oyamel
* the whirlwind experience of the Slavic conference for the first time in 4 years
* Chungking Garden restaurant, Philadelphia's Chinatown -- cheap and excellent (and the company wasn't bad, either)
* Reading Terminal food market in Philly, for an eye-popping shopping browse -- through baked goods, fancy cheeses, cured meats, and the entire gamut of takeout foods -- especially fun for someone visiting from the former Soviet Union
* the pierna adobada (spicy pork) platter at Viva el Mariachi, in Astoria, Queens -- alone, but thus with all senses alert!
* hot-hot-hot Thai dry spice paste tofu and green beans in midtown Manhattan while catching up on 12 (12?!) years gone by with a dear old friend
* walking through Beyoglu, the area southeast of Taksim in Istanbul, for cafes, people watching, browsing through the boutiques and sellers, admiring nineteenth century Euro-influenced architecture

My 2 new addictions, thanks to Turkish Airlines:
* hazelnuts
* sour cherry juice

But then I got back home to Dushanbe, and while it was wonderful to be reunited with Dan and Anya, I've found the transition back, even though (or because?) we've only lived here a little under 2 months, a little bit harder than expected.

The nanny lent indispensable help during my absence, but already there were signs that our communication with her wasn't great, that her expectations were different from ours and that despite our attempts to clarify, certain information wasn't totally making it through. When we spoke about things the first Monday after my return and she was ready to leave, I wasn't inclined to protest or make it worth her while to stay. Luckily, Dushanbe is more of an employer's market than what we experienced in Vladivostok, and we already have 4 potential candidates in mind for Round 2 of The Nanny Hire.

But, in another wrinkle: Anya began pre-preschool on Monday! This is a major step for us. It's a little daycare/preschool run by expat parents in Dushanbe, with space for about a dozen kids between 2 and 4. A spot opened and we decided to give Anya the chance for some social interaction. It's held on weekday mornings in part of the house of another expat family here in town, has two Russian-speaking Tajik teachers, and apparently includes some lessons or activities in music and crafts with teachers who come in during the course of the week.

We're still in the getting-used-to-it stage, of course, and this morning yielded the comment "Want an English sadik [preschool]?!" (which was then followed by commentary on a "lady in an orange shirt" that made me realize it might not be the language so much that she is protesting, so much as that Anya thinks it would be more fun to be at the house of one of her peers than with him amid all the hubbub of sadik -- when we first met him, we spent the morning together at home and his mom was wearing an orange sweater). Anya had a lower level of enthusiasm for the hour that I stayed at school this morning, but I'm hoping that we'll gradually get on track and learn to like the new regime.

What we're reading:
* just finished "March," another very good historical novel by Geraldine Brooks
* haven't decided what's next for the nightstand, but now will dig in to several non-fiction books on Central Asia as soon as they arrive in the mail

What we're saying:
* "[you] want me to help you" -- quickly followed by the requested correction: "*I* want you to help *me*.... pweeez!"
* "Bear's a good-girl"
* "I'm a girl"/"Ia devochka"
* bioo-ful (as in "Anya's bioo-full hair" or "Mommy's bioo-full hair")

What we're eating:
* tunafish and bear[-shaped] crackers
* homemade yogurt (even without the yogurt maker! the old-fashioned way, setting the milk in a jar close to the radiator overnight, yielded surprisingly positive results!)
* Dushanbe burritos (more authentic than you'd expect, between the contents of my suitcase and consumables borrowed against future shipments from our colleagues)

We Have Landed

Yes, we arrived in Dushanbe as planned, safely but extremely tired, and everything here is pretty much fine. The hectic schedule of our home leave in the US -- and now the lack of internet connection within convenient reach for me -- have made for a pretty long hiatus from the blog, and I will try to fill in the blanks.

One thing that has impressed me this second time arriving at an overseas post with Dan is how much our processes of getting settled and establishing a routine differ. For better or worse, as the one with the job that brought us here, of course, Dan is off to work pretty much as soon as we arrive in our new home. And, as he may or may not want to report, that comes with its own problems and intricacies.

For me, it seems like getting all the pieces to line up and getting the freedom to move about and work or at least become active at all in a professional way is slower. Even getting myself and Anya organized to go out to the store to get as many groceries as I can carry home can seem like a big undertaking when the logistics are new and we're still sort of operating on the few supplies and clothes that have trickled in to us so far. I know there are pluses and minuses to this side of things -- I'm sure, for instance, that Dan would love to have the freedom to hang around the house with no real schedule and explore the city more than he can from the office -- but for me these beginning weeks can be a little frustrating.

But these beginning steps are also exciting and fun in turns, too, and I think there must be a graph formation, something like a bell curve, that represents the general trajectory of one's emotions during a transition like this. I think the first few days are truly exhilarating: everything is new and interesting, and whatever aspects might soon turn out to be a bit of a drag haven't yet gotten on your nerves. Our initial impression, which hasn't changed in 2+ weeks, is that Dushanbe easily seems like it will be better overall than Vlad was. Yes, some of the material conditions are harder, and you might say we've "traded down" in that regard. But the human situation is much better, with enough more people (expats) and enough of an existing social buoyancy among them that by our first full week in town (after our arrival at 3am Thursday on the twice-weekly Istanbul flight) I already had been included in a "girls' night" viewing of the Sex and the City movie on DVD (OK, so it wasn't a film buff's gathering, but it fit the occasion, and it was a lot of fun); Dan had learned of the existing weekly poker night; and we'd been invited out or in to meals on 4 different occasions with 3 different couples or families. Locals are more friendly, too -- mainly so far that has come in the form of less stressful interactions with taxi drivers and store clerks, but we hope soon to have a chance to do something with a few colleagues and people we've met.

We've been here 2 full weeks now, from start to finish, and we've enjoyed 3 weekends in Dushanbe. At the start of the first full work week (after Columbus Day), I got to work calling and interviewing in order to hire a few people to help us out. Mainly what we need is a nanny, but we also can use (and afford) to hire someone to help keep this rather big house clean by coming in a couple of days per week. We're considering hiring a part-time driver to help us get around in these weeks (months?) until our car gets here. (The news on the bulk of our shipment, the stuff that was not flown in but went "slow boat to Dushanbe," as Anya heard me say many times and now chirps on her own, is slated to arrive in late November... in Antwerp. From there, hey, who knows, but we hope they may be able to get it on a Central-Asia-bound train for arrival by New Year's. Big thanks to the head of General Services in Vladivostok at the time we left, who felt it wasn't necessary to think even anywhere close to the edge of the box on expediting the transport of our stuff. And big prayers that the alcoholic purchases in our consumables, coming according to about the same schedule from the US, will not freeze and/or burst over the wintertime crossing.)

The nanny market here, or at least the flow of market information, is also much better than in Vladivostok. I don't know whether that will ultimately mean our caregiver will be better than in Vlad -- I would be hard-pressed to find someone better than Marina. But after spending a week on the phone, using the Embassy recommendations, and the ads and recommendations published over the last several months in the weekly Dushanbe newsletter that caters to international community, I winnowed down 8 people to 2 good candidates, and we are now in the process of trying them out. Anya got along well with both ladies during the brief initial meetings we had, and in principle I think that either one would be a fine nanny. At this point we just need to work out the smaller details and figure out who seems like the overall choice that will work the best. We're starting out with a similar schedule to the one we had in Vlad, with a nanny in the mornings, a nap and then afternoons with me. If all goes as planned, Anya is likely to start in December at a small informal preschool/daycare that a couple of expats have organized, and at that point we will actually be very well covered for childcare (I even fear too well-covered: part of me can't really imagine spending so little time with Anya over the course of the week and wonders what I'd do to fill the time!).

But filling that time is the very next thing on the agenda. Of course, one thing that can easily fill time freed up from childcare is the domestic organization and errands that concern us as we continue to settle into the new abode and even after we feel settled. A few sessions of washing thoroughly the fruits and veg that I bought at the local market in order to make them usable easily impressed on me how, even more than in Vladivostok, domestic tasks can eat up a hell of a lot of your time here. We're partway through all of those initial errands that need to be run: buying all the cleaning supplies for the household was actually a big one: getting everything from cleansers and various wipes and rags to a mop and a bucket and brooms to sweep the courtyard took a few trips around town. The major thing we still want to find is a few pieces of plastic furniture for the patio area just outside our kitchen window, where we had a lovely breakfast on Sunday, while the sun was out and the generator off, making it really perfect. We may not have too many more mornings like that one, since it has gotten wet and chilly quickly this week, but as long as there are sunny days the 3 of us can still put on a few sweaters and pairs of socks and have a coffee and warm milk out on the deck.

We still need some smaller organizational things like shelving and organizers in the bathrooms and near the front door -- we still lack even some kind of coat rack or hooks for our coats, which are draped over the many dining room chairs (that may be the only good reason for us to have so many!). For some reason here the houses really are not equipped with these kinds of things, and as much as we read about it in the material we received before our move, there still wasn't much we could do about it until we arrived and saw what it was we needed. We haven't seen much on the local market, and it might be easiest and cheapest to order some stuff online.

But ultimately I aim not to be so preoccupied with the domestic and to turn my attention outward: first up is getting my presentation in shape for the annual Aaaasss convention (OK, normally "triple-A-double-S," but some people just can't resist the alternative pronunciation). I am (crazily) going to board that same early morning flight on its return to Istanbul -- after it stops over in Dushanbe it seems just long enough to refuel and tidy up -- and then traveling onward to JFK as soon as the third week of November, all for the Advancement of Slavic (and Eurasian!) Studies. I'll be in Philly for the conference, and truly do expect to have a good time seeing old colleagues and meeting new ones, and have a few days before and afterward to kill and enjoy "real civilization" before I return. Next up after the conference is getting my bearings in the basic historical background and current historiography on Central Asia and Tajikistan, and doing a little more poking around to see what diseases and pestilences might make a fitting comparative case to pair with tick-borne encephalitis in the 1930s-50s in the Russian Far East. I plan to spend some time in the library/ies and will also try to get into the archives (although the paper chase recounted to me by a young colleague here on fieldwork gave me some pause and tells me I need to gird my loins for a possible bureaucratic battle of my own before I can actually sit down with documents). Ultimately I also need to figure out how precisely I'm going to spend the grant money I was awarded in the spring and whether I can really take any more long-distance travel away from family (probably only to Tashkent or Moscow, but still), and I still have to work on getting a few publications! All of that will be plenty to fill my plate from now until it warms up, I think.

Up next (and sorry for all of the mundane reporting this time): a better description of our house and neighborhood, and maybe even the main north-south boulevard in town, Rudaki, which we travel up and down the most.

What We're Saying:
inna BIIIIG Dushanbe -- exclaimed from our first entry into the courtyard, and used to mean just our house, but now there seems to be an understanding that Dushanbe is the broader place where we live

What We're Listening To:
Franco's hits from the 50s and 60s

What We're Watching:
can't get enough of the election updates from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert! Thank god AFN still carries it.

P.S.: VOTE!