The Anya Report

I realized I haven't given an update on local toddler progress in a while.

What we're interested in:

• airplanes (toy airplanes, the sound of real airplanes, the idea of and pretending to take a trip on an airplane, recalling our recent airplane trips...)
  
• any small household or mundane item (e.g. cheap satin Chinese purses, empty plastic wet-wipe bottles, trial sized tubes of lotion, earplugs and their cases, plastic eggs that were given on the Easter egg hunt, sunglasses -- Anya can develop a fetishistic interest in playing with these things from the moment she sees them)
• trucks (esp. cement trucks, the yellow-with-red-striped vans that I think are connected to the Dushanbe city gas department and sit parked outside its offices on the route we take to sadik [see photo], marshrutka vans, and really any other type of civilian or military truck you might see on a Dushanbe street)

• the turtle in our yard
• Steve from "Blue's Clues" (esp. when he draws the clue in his "handy-dandy notebook." When he sits in his red "thinking chair" registers a close second.)
• the tiny toy watering can that came with the cheapo and too small beach/sand toys I bought last week
  
• real pens (esp. push-button ones), and using them to draw caterpillars (short or medium or long squiggly lines)
  

What we're doing:

• staying dry (fingers crossed. It took about 2 and a half weeks, but all of a sudden this potty training thing kind of took hold, and she is pretty much choosing -- mostly correctly -- when to use the toilet!)
  
• telling complex stories (for instance -- although this one is already a few weeks old -- about how she got locked in the bathroom and couldn't unlock it, "and Anya was crying. And Surayo said 'ne plach' [don't cry].' And Surayo was looking at you through the window. And mommy was telling you to turn the silver knobby thing. And the guys came and opened the door (...)." Quite an experience. All turned out OK when the person we called for help figured out that in fact the keys to the upstairs bathroom [which we had tried already] did open the downstairs bathroom door. You just have to put the key in only part way.)
• actually, not confusing "you" and "I" as much as the slightly outdated story above would have you believe
• nodding and shaking our heads (instead of saying "yes" and "no" -- it's so much more fun!)

What we're saying:

• "Anya's a big girl when Anya has a really big bite!"
• Friday = "French Fry Day"
• "When the doggies bark they say 'hewoh! hewoh! hewoh!" (Daddy's explanation for a phenomenon that has begun to loom very large for Anya just as she is going to bed. I personally get more annoyed with our neighborly rooster that seems to crow constantly, but I guess you can't choose your pet peeves.)
• "Anya has human hands. Bear has bear paws. Doggies have doggy paws." (Inspired by a new bedtime favorite: Dan's rendition of Elvis Costello's "Human Hands." Especially pleasing: the line where he says "whenever I put my foot in my mouth and you begin to doubt...")
  

Walkenfeld Taxi Service -- Accepting Payments in Rhubarb

We took a drive into the mountains in a new direction today -- traveling out of town headed west, towards the fortress town of Hisor and the aluminum mining town of Tursunzode, but turning north at Shahri Nav (New Town), into to the Dairo river valley.


It was quite a day: we took the road beyond where it deserved that name; passed many young men either hiking, gathering various plants, herding cows, or driving groups of donkeys through the valley; and stopped for a short walk when we judged that the water we'd have to ford was too high. (You can see pictures mostly from this part of the day starting here.)

This valley was truly beautiful -- the most impressive thing was the great gushing volume of water in the river and all the creeks, streams, waterfalls, rivulets, and other flows feeding it, thanks to our unbelievably rainy spring. There were few people, beautiful deep green hills and valleys, and, throughout, the sound of the rushing water.



After our mini-hike (which Anya and we really enjoyed), Dan decided to have another look at the water and found that, while it was truly freezing, as I suppose spring mountain runoff ought to be, it wasn't in fact too deep for us to ford. So we went further.

Then we encountered an old Tajik guy walking, which tends to happen. As we passed him, he yelled something at us, so we decided to see if he wanted a ride. So we picked him up, and he was going to the village at the end of the road, so we kept driving, probably for about 30 minutes or so. He took us a bit further, so we could see how the passable road ended, and then we took him to where he needed to go. He brought us out some rhubarb (it is one of the plentiful things this season -- people say it grows in the mountains, and although it is sold in the markets in great volume, Tajiks I've asked say they don't actually cook it in anything, just eat it raw with salt) , and he said the next time we come we should spend the night and save time for hiking around the area. We met one of his many sons and exchanged phone numbers.

Then someone who I assume was another son, but might just have been another of the residents of Hakimi village, asked if we would take passengers back down, and we felt a bit unable to say no. So we took him and presumably his wife and daughter back pretty much all the way to Shahri Nav, and although these folks were probably perfectly nice, we didn't have much to say to one another as we sped down the valley, unlike on our shorter ride with Mr. Hajji. We definitely felt a little more like a taxi service at this point, but what are you going to do...

The main downside, which actually was not as bad as it's going to sound here, was when the daughter (maybe 8 or 9 years old?) segued from a consumptive cough into barfing -- luckily, apparently that was the commentary going on in Tajik with her mother seconds before the full transition, and the father asked us to stop and the mom got the door open in time. Not early enough to avoid the upchuck getting all over the lower door (plastic, yes, but also home to the rear speakers -- ouch).

Oh well, we mopped up what the mother hadn't and traveled on homeward, figuring we had done our Tajik mitzvah for the day, and certainly earned the rhubarb, which we have just sampled in the form of a rhubarb (with a little bit of strawberry) crisp. Mmmmm.

Oh, the postscript to the journey came when we turned into our neighborhood and noticed what looked like the last bits of unmelted snow lying around on the ground. We puzzled over it for a few seconds, until we realized that another huge hailstorm must have hit not long before. It must have been quite a downpour -- the trees and plants (including the poor, already undertended rosebushes) really took a beating!