Another Slow Boat Docks

We recently received the painting we bought of the Golden Horn harbor in Vladivostok, the last little bit of our household belongings that had yet to arrive in Dushanbe. It had been kept out of the main shipment because of customs formalities, but was sent UPS to us by the company that packed and initiated our shipments from Vlad.

If it seemed like our main shipment took the long way around, going first to the US State Department's transport hub in Belgium, and then down to Central Asia, check out the (actually much quicker) route the UPS box took:


For those of you keeping score at home, that's

• Vladivostok
• Seoul
• Shanghai
• Philippines
• Dubai
• Hong Kong
• Mumbai
• Cologne
• Malmo, Sweden
• Moscow
• Dushanbe

Why it took all those stops in between Vlad and Moscow I really cannot say.

We're working on getting the painting hung now (concrete walls have nearly ruined a drill bit or two, so we need to order up some picture-hanging time from the embassy's facilities management section...).

A February Update

Some recent video:
http://www.youtube.com/lkwalker71

Other recent Anya activities:

• watching water in the ariq go "up and over" a rock and a leaf
• going 75 paces away and watching the neighborhood kids playing streetball, coming back, going away again to watch the kids, etc.
• progress on the temper tantrum front: a new ability to relent, stop crying, and ask nicely and calmly for what she wants
• words & phrases: iagodki (strawberry hair bands); bear says "salaam"; "Anya's running-Anya's running-Anya's running-Anya's running!" (while, of course, running); "A-B-C-D-Elmo-Judy"

What we're listening to/watching:
Sigur ros
I'm on a boat
Finally, the last bits of Scrubs, season 6

What we're eating:
spinach and greens quiche (first time! not bad)
coffee cake muffins a la Bittman (surprisingly quick and not overly sweet)
tasty mantu (boiled dumplings) with chakka (creamy fresh cheese) at the teahouse

A Week Down

The second week of February wasn't the best for Dushanbe.

Already many in the capital have been limited to 15 hours of electricity per day, thanks to power cuts introduced in January. (The bulk of the country's population, living outside Dushanbe, has gotten as little as 3 hours per day since the rations went into effect.)

On Tuesday, the 10th, it was announced that Dushanbe's 15 hours of power per day would be reduced to 11 hours in most large residential neighborhoods. We of course are lucky enough to have a generator, which makes the frequent switching on and off an annoyance that's barely worth mentioning. The poor electricity grid and variation in how the power cuts are actually carried out means that not all locals or non-official foreigners experience the troubles in the same way, though. Some neighborhoods have damage that causes power to go out for days at a time; other apartment buildings are either geographically well-placed or have a patron from some ministry among their residents and can escape some of the hardship that way.

But in the midst of all of this, transportation in the city was thrown for a major loop when the minibus marshrutki, the primary mode of getting around town for the majority of people (including Dan, who commutes this way now), were banned from the most important major thoroughfares in town. People woke up and started on their way to work on Monday unprepared for a complicated and confusing journey, unable to predict what alternative route their usual minibus would take or how they'd make any connections that are required to get to their end destination. (Unfortunately for those taking the buses to the US embassy, it's located waaaay at the end of one of those now-forbidden major thoroughfares, so the changes present a particular problem.)

The official announcement from the Dushanbe mayor's office says the bus-taxis can still operate as long as they register with one of the "legit" fixed-route taxi companies in town (I think this is pretty-speak for "as long as you get in bed with (and grease the palm of) the mayor and/or his associates"). And of course even then, truly effective "operation" is off the table, since they still have to avoid those major boulevards.

On Monday afternoon, Dan and I left the embassy together and got in a "tangem," as the buses are called in Tajik (something about the name of a nurse in a Chinese soap opera -- the thousands of little buses that tootle along the streets of the capital are virtually identical white models of a Chinese made minivan), and we heard firsthand from the driver about the havoc it was wreaking. Not only are passengers confused and frustrated, but the drivers have risked a lot in buying their vans and now are worried about losing their investments. The number of drivers has jumped with the return of many migrants from Russia, where work has slowed thanks to the economic crisis. As our driver complained, the government seems to just be toying with its people, when it ought to be behaving responsibly and looking out for their welfare. They turn off the power and watch the financial crisis and add this on top of it? 'What do they expect us to do, how are we supposed to feed our families,' the driver asked, shaking his head in bafflement, but still trying to figure out how to get us to the connection we told him we needed to make in order to get home.

One has to wonder how much Tajikistan's citizens can endure before they can't endure no more. Oh, wait, the International Crisis Group is already spinning out that scenario in its loving little Friday the 13th Valentine to President Rakhmon and his administration, entitled "Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure," complete with tender sweet-nothings such as "failed state" and (probably hyperbolic) analogies to the country's neighbor to the south, Afghanistan.

It may seem like a minor factor, but the weather last week -- constant grey, chilly rain for 5 days out of 6, until Sunday burst forth with sunshine -- didn't help anyone's mood, either. For me personally some new trouble with my laptop and an overheating screen was kind of the icing on the cake.

Not a pretty week in Market-Monday town. Here's hoping this one will be a bit better!

My Stub

I sat looking at a little strip of paper for a while the other day and chuckled to myself.

The guy who always stands at the middle set of doors on the trolleybus (or the bus) to take people's money as they board gave me a ticket stub in return for my 50 diram -- the first time that has happened in my experience since we arrived here almost 4 months ago. (100 diram to the somoni; I guess at the current exchange rate that makes the bus fare about 13 cents per ride.)

I guess it just struck me as really funny that, while apparently it's OK just to run the transportation system informally and take people's change and not give out tickets, which never bothers anyone, for some reason it is actually important enough to print up some tickets and go to the trouble to rend them with a little tear and give them out for just one single afternoon. (I ride the city bus system on average at least once a day, and I've only gotten the one stub -- it's not like they continued to give them out all month, or even all week, after starting on that particular day.)

Of course, this amusingly small sign of the poor reach and function of the government here is nothing next to the electric situation in Tajikistan this late winter. Power cuts have been ongoing throughout the country all winter (in the south and in the north, from what I hear, it is typical that communities receive 2 hours of power in the daytime and 2 hours at night). But the government recently was forced to extend them to Dushanbe, too, due to Uzbekistan's policy of blocking the electricity Tajikistan purchased from Turkmenistan from crossing via the Uzbek grid.

Different sources apparently give different prognoses for how the remainder of the cold season (which, thankfully, reportedly only lasts until mid-March) will play out in electrical terms, but some have recently said there are only 2 weeks left of water in Tajikistan's main reservoir, which produces the electricity. What will happen after those weeks are past? It's a good question that I don't have the answer to. Since we are fortunate enough to be equipped with a generator, I certainly can't complain about the current or future situation, but I can sit on the sidelines and shake my head in bafflement at how Tajikistan got into this mess and just how it will find its way out...

Heard Recently Inna Biiig Dushanbe

Anya is in a phase where she likes to associate things with people. And the funny thing is that when she is wearing or using these things, she also likes to say "Anya's named [insert associated name]."

Hence:

Steve shirt = for some reason this stripey long-sleeved waffle-knit number I bought on Old Navy (Steve is the main human character on "Blue's Clues," a show that Anya has really only seen a handful of times, and the last time was probably in about December, but evidently he makes a big impression), and, when she's wearing it: "Anya's named Steve!"

Barno shirt = anything that has a turtleneck, because Barno from sadik wears turtlenecks, obviously.... And, when she's wearing them: "Anya's named Barno!" (etc.)

Azizullo hat = the pink knit hat with earflaps and pom-poms that our nanny gave A. for New Year's. I was amused to see, when we were huddled in the cold puppet theater with all of our coats and hats etc. still on, earlier in January, that it really is true that her classmate named "God is dear" in Tajik has the very same model, only in light blue (he's a boy)

Sodal bib = the yellow-green (its full name for Anya is in fact "yellow-green Sodal' bib") rigid plastic bib with the little lip for catching food, which A. refused to wear in Vlad, but now that it apparently resembles something that Sodal has -- well, all bets are off. (S. is one of the older little boys at playschool who, at about 4 years old, kind of rules the roost. He likes to help Anya take off her shoes and put on her slippers when she comes in in the morning.)

Daddy undies = white underpants. We've been back in diapers pretty much full time now for a few weeks, until the weather warms up, since we just weren't able to hit the pot much of the time. But apparently, nevertheless, white briefs are very much a Daddy thing. (And, yes, at the right time: "Anya's named Daddy!")

And, for those who have asked, the phrase "inna biiiiig Dushanbe" was coined when we arrived for the first time at our house at roughly 4:30am off the early morning flight in from Istanbul. We were dropped off at our courtyard, and we sort of stumbled in to discover the huge facade and house that is the main place where we live, situated across the courtyard from a smaller little outbuilding. Anya's understanding of the situation, given all the talk about this thing called "Dushanbe," was that we had arrived at said Dushanbe, and that this one here was the "biiiiig Dushanbe," while the other one across the way was the "li'l Dushanbe." She has gradually come to understand better the breadth of the term, but the phrase has stuck, and will probably never get unstuck.