The News á la Tajik

Smooth Sailing á la Tajik















Tajikistan's minister of railroads is apparently the occupant of the brand new, almost finished mansion that occupies the corner of our small street and the main road. For some reason it offends his professional and ministerial sensibilities if the mode of transport beyond his house up to the next corner is unpaved and in poor repair, so they undertook a fix-up session that lasted a few weeks.

Of course, now our road tends to be even less navigable by car than before, because everyone, especially youths on bikes, wants to play and congregate on nice smooth macadam (see photo).

(Also, see one of the only speed bumps ("lezhashchii politseiskii" in Russian, or "lying [as in reclining; not what you probably are thinking] policeman," as I learned in Vlad mere weeks ago) in town, in the foreground of the photo.)

High Finance á la Tajik

We leave Friday morning on our road trip to the Silk Route cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, historically somewhat Tajik, yet presently located in the state of Uzbekistan. In preparation, in part just to have some money for the road, and in part because it is supposed to be hard to change money there, I set out in search of Uzbek som today.

At last count, I hit 7 exchange booths in 2 different neighborhoods of town over the course of the afternoon, returning to one of them as recommended toward the end of their workday, only to come up som-less. If it's actually harder to buy som in Uzbekistan than this, then I guess we really have something to worry about!

At one exchange booth I was offered 14,000 som with a shrug -- since I didn't have the exchange rate at my mental fingertips, I had to make some calculations to realize that this amounted to less than $10. The money-changers clustered around TsUM (who usually constitute the heart of currency exchange in Dushanbe, with the best rates in town) suggested I go to the downtown booth located next door to the Central Post Office, where they explained currencies from all around town get pooled. This was where the clerk encouraged me to return today just before 5, but where they'd still come up with peanuts in som. The afternoon guy's early-evening replacements suggested that by tomorrow at the same time they might have rounded up some som totaling closer to the $100 I'd hoped to collect. We'll see.

Here's hoping that our passage is smoother than the search for som -- that the Anzob tunnel, sometimes referred to wryly as the "tunnel of death," is open, mostly dry, and as safe as it can be. Our route will take us north through the Varzob valley, over or through the mountains at Anzob, and then through Panjakent to the Uzbek border, where we hope our diplomatic plates will let us get through without too much hassle. Then onward to Samarqand, as it is properly spelled to express that gutteral "k" -ish sound in Tajik. Two nights there, and westward to Bukhara, and after 2 nights, back home.

We'll report on the trip once we've returned (hopefully) on Tuesday night!

Vladivostok Adventure

I've already been back a week and a half from my odyssey to the Russian Far East, and the question still remains: how to sum up?

The cancellation of my outbound Dushanbe-Moscow flight on Day 1 made it seem like the trip wasn't meant to be, and truthfully I was very nervous for some reason, both about the conference and about leaving Anya and Dan. (All I can say by way of explanation is that we are so far away from home that I guess it just makes even small trips seem big and dangerous in some vague way -- although of course experience has shown that they are not, so in the end this is maybe all just a product of my psychology....)

But in the end, about 24 hours later than scheduled, I took off, had a pleasant four-hour flight to Moscow (being seated in business class on Tajikistan's own Somon Air didn't hurt), and from there it was a real adventure.

Got into Vlad off of the night flight (the time difference from Moscow is a full 7 hours, don't forget), a full day later than planned. I assumed that meant I had to rush to slip into the first day of a 2-day conference that in theory had begun that morning, when in fact it was all more interesting than that. I rushed unsuccessfully to have lunch with the group, and then met up with them at the celebratory awarding of an honorary PhD from Far East State University (DVGU) to Liudmila Verbitskaia, the former rector and current president of St. Petersburg State University.

Verbitskaia was seriously feted by these people: she is not only the president of the Petersburg university but also on the board of trustees of a recently established foundation called "Russkii mir," or, in translation (in which we were assured the name was not supposed to appear) "Russian world" or "Russian peace" -- "mir" can have either meaning. Basically, it is an organization much like the Instituto Cervantes, Alliance Francaise (which, you might be surprised to know, actually has a presence in Vlad), Goethe Institute, and the good old American Corners that the US government supports. I know that especially the latter must just look like big propaganda centers to many eyes, and I should be able to see the same type of activity from Russia in a similar light (i.e., yeah, so it's propaganda, but it's fine and everyone should be able to do it if they want). But in the atmosphere of post-Putin Russia and in the Russian Far East (where it has pretty much always been necessary ever since 1858 for Russians to emphasize just a little bit more vehemently than you might expect how deep Russian political and cultural roots extend in the region), the celebration of Russian-ness took on a slightly different overtone at times for me.

They really did put on the pomp and circumstance: you can see some of the evidence that just about every DVGU student performing group (and, honestly, where do these students find time to actually study if they are spending all their time perfecting their balalaika solos and juggling?) had a short bit in the show. It was quite an experience -- you couldn't help but get swept away by the enthusiasm, even if in the back of your mind you were thinking, what exactly is the target of all of this enthusiasm, and do I feel comfortable with that?

It turned out that our humble 1-day conference was really just a more private event that followed on this big DVGU-wide shindig. (Although we too brought out the press -- some friends even said they spotted me on local TV, being filmed admiring either Verbitskaia or one of the lounge acts)

The conference itself was actually very good -- the thing that of course I was most nervous about, my presentation, went fine (and as I tried pretty much unsuccessfully to tell myself over and over, it was limited to 10 minutes, so how bad could it be?). And this was in Russian! That felt like a real accomplishment to me.

The rest of the time was unfortunately shorter than planned, but really wonderful -- I was able to reconnect with almost everyone I'd expected to, both Berkeley colleagues who'd come from their various necks of the woods and Vladivostok friends, had fabulous weather (since May in Primorye is usually misty and foggy and chilly), and left with a much more nostalgic and positive feeling about the city that we'd called home for about 2 years than I'd had setting out.

The layover I hadn't originally wanted in Moscow was also a fun (if exhausted) several hours, seeing a friend from Dushanbe who's now in the Big Village continuing her research and going shopping. Main score: avocados and limes!