Bumping to Kalai Khumb, Limping into Khorog

Well, I took a short break in real time to visit Norway, and let me tell you: visiting one of the most remote parts of the world (the Pamirs), followed by one of the most progressive parts of the world (you guess), followed by your return to the sort of semi-deprived point on the map that you now call home can give you situational and psychological whiplash. It is good to be home, but also sad to leave behind those little comforts (and friends), your fondness for which (and whom) was brought back to you in vivid color during your weekend away.

But back to our trip to the mountains, still occurring in narrative time:

Day 1 into Day 2 (Kalai-Khumb to Khorog. 240 km, ca. 9:00 am - ca. 4:00 pm, approx. 7 hours)

Midday into our first leg of the journey, we passed through Kulob and picnicked on the other side, still feeling excited for the road ahead.* At that point, another kind of bad road began: we left the slippery, fine sable-hued dust of the construction zones in the Khatlon hills and headed for the red dried mud, steeper inclines, slightly more hair-raising switchbacks, and, I can say in retrospect, medium-grade bumpy road that led between about Shurobod and Zigar. We also crossed successfully (that outcome was actually more in doubt than anyone expected setting out on our journey) the requisite iffy bridge that I think any journey in Tajikistan worth its salt must include.


Once we crossed into Darvoz proper at Zigar (recall the map), the road again included surprisingly well-paved patches. Here the Iranians, Turks, and Chinese are dividing up the road and improving it, although apparently on their own individual schedules and with their own idiosyncratic materials, methods, and plans.

We pulled into Kalai Khumb nearing dinner time and fairly quickly located our guesthouse. Since I was the passenger, it fell to me to go in and determine whether our attempt to make a reservation had really worked. It became clearer later on that it actually hadn’t, but we still got a room. The main problem when we first arrived was that my head, my neck, my shoulders – really, my whole body just felt like it had undergone some kind of human jackhammer experiment gone awry, and I was tired to boot. The synapses in my brain seemed literally to have been jostled and split, so I kind of had trouble expressing myself to the guy and explaining that we needed a room for 3 people but that it ought to be somewhere on his “reservation list.” Part of the problem was I really wasn't sure at first what language to speak, Russian or Tajik, so a bad mixture with words forgotten in each came stuttering out of my mouth. In any case, we quickly sorted it out and were shown to a double on the first floor of the small guesthouse building.

We had been unsure in any case whether we even wanted to stay in this place, since the advance report last year had steered Dan away due to bedbugs. (Dan and colleagues spent the night at the recommended Kalai Khumb alternative, only for Dan to wake up scratching his entire inflamed midsection due to – you guessed it – bedbugs. But because of that experience, we figured, we might as well try the original place.)

The guesthouse was actually very enjoyable in a Spartan kind of way, a pleasant surprise. OK, it didn’t quite merit the term “bed and breakfast,” which for Westerners is too loaded with charm and quaintness to do justice to hardly any lodging experience in Tajikistan, but the rooms were fine, the mattresses and bed linens clean, and the walls had no signs of bug squishage, which we’d been told was one way to detect a bedbug infestation. Dinner was a welcome and hearty portion of both pasta and rice with a saucy chicken and tomato kind of thing to pour over it. Large pot of green tea, a platter of dried nuts and raisins: the whole 9 yards (well, maybe 7, but in provincial Tajikistan that's a long way!). Our host even offered Dan a cold beer to start out, although it was the less savory Baltika #9 instead of a 7 or even a 3. But hardly a discomfort. We were quite happy to have a peaceful meal on the balcony overlooking the small, rough garden, and to watch the basin of the mountains rising out in front of us as they darkened into dusk.

Night unfortunately brought little sleep – Anya was hopped up, and it was hot and stuffy in the room. But we still anticipated that we’d get moving in the morning and everything would get back on track.

That was until the wee hours of morning, when at least for Dan himself that hope started to go south as he got extremely nauseous. I found out only as we rose and got ready for breakfast (which he was unable to eat) that his stomach was presenting some serious problems.

So we started out on the road to Khorog with a bit of trepidation. A few sickness stops into the ride that feeling really had not abated, although this leg of the journey was at least not terribly long. I drove a portion of the way, when Dan felt so terrible he didn’t want to drive anymore (he insisted it was at least a distraction from the stomach pain until it got very acute). But as we neared the last few kilometers before the hotel, on the outskirts of Khorog, with Dan back in the driver’s seat, we heard a wail from the backseat and turned to see projectile vomiting inside the car from passenger #2! Trepidation took a turn toward dread with that one.

It was actually just motion sickness with Anya, instead of anything she ate, but we really only determined that later on. And even that fact didn’t exactly lessen our feeling of foreboding, since for Dan car sickness is actually a pretty serious and consistent problem. The notion that the kid might be barfing all the way through days two through eight of our journey didn’t lighten our mood.

We stopped for a short clean up along the side of the road, with the requisite wide-eyed Tajik kid staring at us the entire time, and headed the final half hour or so to the 4-star Serena Inn. (Dan very wisely planned our itinerary with variation, between splurging on the very comfortable Serena and staying at places more lacking in the mod cons before and after.)

Once checked in, we had a quick but serious bath for everyone, sick and healthy. Dan headed for bed, and Anya had a quick snack (very enthusiastically eating the very same thing she’d upchucked all over the car – homemade granola – lending more evidence that she was not seriously ill, thankfully). Then Anya and I went out to explore the Serena’s very extensive and quite beautiful terraced riverside garden, while Dan slept through his fever.


Next report: our fearless leader rallies from the sickbed to show us the fine city of Khorog on our first evening in town.

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* Side note on the security happenings that forced us to travel the southern route: a very good overview of what is happening in Tajikistan following the jailbreak and other events, and their larger significance, can be found at Stratfor.

Summer in Dushanbe Is...

• A month-long break from sadik.
• (In connection with the former:) Visits to the many new indoor play centers that have opened recently in our fair city, replete with those pools filled with small plastic balls, jungle gyms, climbing apparatuses, rides, little huts to play peekaboo in, etc.
• Rides in just about the only elevator in town -- and humorously quaint views out the window. (Elevator conveniently located in the same shopping center as one of our favorite play centers.)

• New nightgowns -- we love Hello Kitty.
• Hot sun. And a new bit of shade in our formerly burning hot, shadeless yard (see below -- the white canopy, just a corner of which is visible).
  
• Pools, small and large. With and without views of the mountains. At home and away.

• Watermelons!
• Qurutob* (I'm ashamed to admit that this summer I have had only my first taste of this salad, despite its widespread popularity here. I've been very tempted to order it out, but both years we've lived here, by the time I've gotten around to really wanting it, the warm season has already arrived and with it a serious increased danger of getting food poisoning from something like that. This taste was much better: homemade by our housekeeper in a home-based Tajik cooking lesson.)
  

* Qurutob, a south Tajik bread salad
serves 4

3 medium ripe tomatoes
3 medium cucumbers
4 small onions
5 green onions
2 bunches of cilantro
1/2 liter of plain yogurt
1 loaf of fatir (crispy Central Asian flatbread made with oil -- fairly different from Middle Eastern or Arabian fatir, as far as I can tell)
1/4 - 1/2 cup of vegetable oil or butter

1. Seed and finely chop tomatoes and cucumbers, and mix in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Cut onions into small, thin moon-shaped slices, or simple half-circle slices. Divide in half. Set aside.
   
3. Chop the green onions and cilantro finely, mix, and set aside.
4. Warm the fatir in the oven on low heat, if it isn't already warm from having been homemade. (Yeah, right. Although where exactly are you going to get the fatir in the US if you don't make it at home?) Remove from the oven and rip into bite sized pieces, placing the pieces into a large bowl. (If you have a flat-ish wooden turned bowl made out of walnut from the mountains of Tajikistan, all the better.)
5. Pour the yogurt (it works best if it has a moderately liquid consistency; if the yogurt is pretty thick, add some water and stir well) over the fatir pieces and mix so that all the bread gets some yogurt and soaks in a bit of liquid.
6. Arrange in layers on top of the fatir-yogurt mixture: first the cucumber-tomato mixture, then the onions, then the greens/green-onion mixture.
7. Put about 1/2 cup of butter or vegetable oil in a small skillet, and warm on medium-high heat. Add onions when oil or butter is fully warmed and/or melted, and stir and fry for about 5 minutes, until translucent. (At this point you can add salt and pepper to taste.) Pour the onions and the oil all together over the salad mixture, so that the oil can evenly trickle down throughout as a kind of warm dressing, and so that the fried onion is evenly distributed on top.
8. Serve immediately -- especially when made with butter or butter-like ghee, the oil will congeal and make it less appealing if you don't. (If you really want to get Tajik, eat out of the common large bowl in the middle of the table, using your hands to take a little bit from your edge, mixing the layers together, and lifting up carefully to your mouth. Repeat until you're full of qurutob!)

Summer Camping Trip

Photos from our goodbye camping trip with 2 families that will leave us soon -- one for a few months and the other permanently -- are here.

Sadik Graduation: A Bit of Cultural Context

I posted a video clip and some photos today from Anya's preschool year-end pageant. There were a whole lot of dance numbers and a wonderful spread of food, with the landlord's plov as the centerpiece. The evening was a lot of fun, not least for us personally because of how Anya showed to what extent she has come out of her reserved shell in the last several months, capping this year in preschool with a dance "solo."

I guess I feel the need to explain a bit, though. There was one number that made us feel a bit uncomfortable for the way race played a role, and although I loved Anya's own Eastern dance number, it occurs to me that it's possible someone unfamiliar with the cultural context might wonder what was happening with her short routine.

First, race. The kids did a group routine to the tune of "Chunga-Changa," a song from the Soviet-era cartoon "Katerok (Little Boat)." You can see the original 1970 animated version here. When we saw Anya come out together with her classmate O. to dance in costume amid their peers, we were a little surprised that the one child with an African parent was cast in a piece with that name, in outfits made to look like classically imagined "native dress."

The song is a little paean to a simple life of plenty on the desert isle to which the Little Boat in the cartoon gets blown off-course in a storm: the lyrics celebrate the "miraculous island's" blue skies, year-round summer climate, and the diet of coconuts and bananas that one apparently adopts once one is grounded there. On that level, one can probably read the song and the cartoon scenes as a simple daydream about escaping the life of shortages and difficulty in the Soviet Union. The trouble for a person born in the post-Civil Rights United States comes in where the somewhat stylized figures of black children enter (which is almost immediately), complete with curly heads of hair and what look like grass skirts. To me this looks like the product of a centuries-long distance from African and Afro-Caribbean colonialism, and the twentieth-century relationship of the Soviet state to the Third World and Africa and the Caribbean, with a dash of Russian old-school Romantically informed views about the immutable and inherent qualities of race (and, for that matter, gender).

Obviously, cultural relativism in this situation could be seen as no different from agreement and support. I'm still honestly not sure what to think of the way the teachers staged this piece, but I guess for now I think it's best to assume that this is primarily about a fondly remembered Soviet-era cultural artifact and that the bit was being staged with all the best intentions, and basically to leave it at that. (After all, so much of what the kids in our sadik do, especially at their pageants, comes from exactly the same nostalgic place: witness fondness for the Soviet incarnation of the Ded Moroz-Baba Yaga story that people in the post-Soviet world are truly loathe to part with.)

(I should mention too that this dance number at the preschool was preceded by an intro about how delightfully international our particular group of kids is, and more generally praising in broad strokes the multitude of difference kinds of people and nations in the world, complete with each kid waving the flag of his or her parents home country. Never mind that that becomes complicated with so many of our preschool's families in dual national households: the point was just to do one of those simple celebrations of the "thousand flowers" blooming together, to praise the "friendship of the peoples." More Soviet-era concepts re-imagined in the post-Soviet (re-)developing world, where expat NGO and diplomatic families and some locals can afford to pay for a better quality private day-care/preschool than what is offered officially on the local market.)

True, after seeing the dance number, there may be a place for commenting to the teachers about the role they chose for O. (I will note that O.'s European mother didn't seem to mind a bit that her son was cast in the piece, although she could have simply been keeping her reaction inside. When I talked to some of our fellow parents about it later, we all agreed that she and her family have to be used to the very different views about race that people hold in the former Soviet Union. Whether that makes it OK is a different question, but I wouldn't be surprised if in fact she wasn't phased by it.) But are our own American views and cultural associations with race so perfect that we can go around lecturing to Tajiks or Russians about their assumptions?

It might also be appropriate for us to engage our kids in conversation about race after the performance, but I tend to think that 3 and a half is young to have a talk about these things. I think my view is that here, as in other aspects of our social relations, it's probably better just to model tolerance and openness to our kids, rather than to have overt discussions about how the world works (and ought to work), to show by doing rather than to instruct by talking. (Part of that I hope is the way we interact with O., and I do think that part of the reason it took me a split second to notice the weirdness of the casting in the dance number precisely because I don't notice O.'s race. It's only because of the dance number that I'm even thinking about his skin color, really.)

Incidentally, if you want to know more about how race is discussed in Russia and in the former Soviet Union's cultural sphere, this Russian-language article on Wikipedia is actually quite insightfully written. There are a few spots where I start to wonder what the author's own biases are, but for the most part I think it explains really well the differences I've noticed in over 20 years of direct contact with Homo sovieticus and visiting his (and her) habitat.

OK, with all of that as prelude, just take a look at the photos and videos for yourself. I will try to explain my position on 3-year-olds doing something that resembles belly dancing next time, but in the meantime I'll just say that I look at the whole belly dancing thing as an art form, and one whose moves and shiny costumes truly fascinate kids. I'm really glad that Anya, whose dancing always has an Eastern flair to it, probably because she's spent these formative years in Central Asia, did this particular dance for her little year-end solo.

Historic Khujand

We took a trip to the north of Tajikistan for the first part of last week, to the city of Khujand. Dan and his colleague were going for work, and it seemed like a good (who knows, maybe already the last?) chance to tag along under such circumstances (hotel room paid for, ground transportation already planned and covered, etc.) and see something new.

So Anya and I got up early on Monday morning and went to the domestic terminal with the guys, sat in the chilly waiting hall, let ourselves be bussed out to the plane -- a frighteningly ancient (1970s vintage?) prop plane, an An-24 I guess. But the flight took only 50 minutes, so we didn't have too long to sit there and wonder how it was that this plane was flying so successfully.

The trip as a whole was a lot of fun, but it does make me marvel at the difference between traveling with a pre-schooler and either traveling alone or with someone older than about 8. It's just funny how slow you move, how much less you do each day (especially when a handful of prime hours are spent inside for napping!), but also what a different perspective you get on everything you see and experience on a trip where your main companion is 3.

As we've done in other provincial cities in the former Soviet Union, we stayed in the hotel's luxury suite -- not exactly the Four Seasons, but not too shabby nonetheless. Two rooms, one of which had a crazy contemporary sofa set with accessory pillows -- 1 round, 1 star-shaped -- that entertained Anya half of the time we were there. About a 100-degree curve of plate glass windows in the corner of the room, covered with curtains that entertained Anya for the other half of the time we were there. A jacuzzi tub that leaked and didn't have the water pressure to fill it in our lifetime. (Similar to another provincial hotel experience in Khabarovsk, Russia.) No honor bar, but a plates of dried apricots and a plate of pistachios left in the fridge (undoubtedly by another guest, but who's to say, really?). A big screen plasma TV that got Russian music videos and BBC World. What more could you really want?

The first day was cloudy but no precipitation. We checked in after our midmorning arrival and headed in our separate directions: Dan and colleague to work meetings, Anya and I to explore the town. Hotel Vatan was located really centrally, just a 5 minute walk to Khujandi Theater and the Sugd regional history museum. We used the clear weather to explore outside, since we'd heard the next 2 days would bring rain and/or snow. We forced ourselves to stop after a snack of several "healthy cookies" and get outside, walking past the theater and north along the "alley" park leading up to the Syr Darya river. Stopped at a park bench to have a mandarin orange and pick up some leaves. Strolled up to the river while singing several verses of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

Turned to admire the defunct Leninobod hotel building and what is billed as the largest Lenin statue in Central Asia (from afar). Turned along the river and up Lenin Boulevard to look for a cafe for lunch. Found a cafe in the Youth Palace (Dvorets molodezhi or Qasri javonon) where we had noodle soup, a breaded cutlet, and green tea. Got along famously with the friendly waitress, who addressed us in Russian but with the funny addition of a markedly northern Tajik question suffix tacked onto her sentences. This was also the lunch where Anya learned to love green tea out of Central Asian piyola teacups (the ones that are just like little bowls, without handles).

Then headed back to the hotel for a little bit of play and a nap!

And essentially that is where the sightseeing ends on any particular day, since Anya generally sleeps from 2-4:30, and by that time the sun is going down already. We went out for dinner with a friend from Dushanbe who was also in town and, as they say in the Madeline book, "that's all there is, there isn't any more."

On Day 2 we were planning to go with Dan and colleague an hour's drive away to the nearby city of Istaravshan, another city with over two thousand years of history behind it and reportedly a really interesting place to see, but since it was raining and we move so slow (and it wasn't clear how we'd get back midday for the nap), we decided to take it easy and remain in Khujand proper.

The highlight of the day was the regional history museum. This is a prime example of what I mean by the amazingly different perspective you get when your traveling companion is a 3-year-old. Anya's favorite part was the section where the floor was made of plexiglass and in the 3 or 4 inch space beneath it was basically a model of an archeological dig: sand and shards of pottery, pieces of wooden beams, gold coins, metal vessels and old shoes, etc. We spent a long time there trying to guess what the various artifacts were. So much time that I couldn't drag her away to look at anything else and finally got bored of it myself. So with some difficulty I bundled us out the door and across the square to another cafe for some homemade pelmeni (tushbera in Tajik; basically meat-filled dumplings), more green tea, and the very tasty Khujandi kulcha (small round flatbread bread loaves made with a touch more oil than regular Tajik naan).

Day 3 it did snow -- wet and sloppy. After much cajoling I talked Anya into going out of the hotel for a shopping trip to find the teapot that she claimed Bear needed to have for a birthday present. We stopped in all the toy stores between Hotel Vatan and the main market square of the city, admiring all the fun things on offer.

It seemed to me like there was more mid-level consumer-oriented commerce in Khujand, and these stores were a good example. I guess we don't spend a lot of time seeking this stuff out in Dushanbe, when we're not on vacation, but it still seems to me like in Dushanbe you either have bazaar-based commerce and items that are pretty cheaply made and sold, or you have super-fancy storefronts where you wonder who on earth really shops there. In Khujand I saw a lot more middle-of-the-road shops (and even well made commercial signs all over the place, very consumer-oriented) that seemed to hold things that people really want and can afford to buy.

We had a lot of fun looking at a flock of birds in the bazaar square and then tramped around the inside of the bazaar for a bit, me trying to surreptitiously buy a small collection of trinkets to serve as the small gifts in a makeshift Advent calendar once we got home. Along the way we finally found the child's umbrella that Anya has actually been suggesting that we buy her for over a month now -- the first thing she has so specifically asked for in her life -- and the plastic tea set for Bear. Then we hopped in a taxi and made it back to one of the more famous restaurants in town (Zaituna) in time to share Khujandi rice plov (raisins and dried currants seemed to me to be the difference in the north) and more green tea with Dan and his colleague.

A nap and some packing later and we were on the road to the airport. By the time we got through check-in it was driving snow outside, and I was somewhat concerned about the flight, despite the fact that we could see from the airport waiting hall that we would be flying in a newer and more substantial Boeing this time. But I guess they make this flight several times a day and often in snow, so it actually turned out very smoothly, thanks to Tajik Air's pilot. Made it back home to Dushanbe in time for a book and bedtime!

It Speaks! It's Alive!

Whew, what a breather!

Yes, I know -- I actually was reminded that someone reads this blog when a couple of people asked what the story was, why I hadn't updated in a long while.

I guess real life got in the way.

Update since the end of September:

• Finally unloaded the many tasks associated with being sole organizer of Anya's preschool onto a small collective of my fellow parents. (This is where it started to feel again like I actually had a real life, I think.)

• Took time to walk. As in, walking Anya to sadik almost every day, instead of driving. (The location we moved to at the start of September is much closer to home than the previous location.) She sits in her stroller and I do a fast walk for about a half hour to get a bit of exercise -- and after dropping her off I often walk back on my own, with or without the arm weights of groceries or produce from the bazaar.
  
  We started out walking on city streets, meandering eastward and then south. We were having a nice time coming into more contact with neighbors and other people around the broader neighborhood who we were starting to encounter every day. But then I was reminded of how close we are to the Botanical Gardens, which allows us to flip that L and walk straight south, through the northern gate, admire a few yolochkas (fir trees, or Christmas trees, in 3-year-old parlance) and say a few salaams to the ladies sweeping up the leaves. Then we hang a left just past the old beat-up orangerie and head eastward, out the main gate, past the medical complex and over toward sadik. It takes us just over 25 minutes with the smooth paths and no traffic to avoid in the BG, and it's such a peaceful, beautiful walk, especially with all of the improvements they've made in the past 6-9 months (lots of beautifully carved wooden pavilions like the one below).

• Started reading and writing again, felt a creative surge and got some recognition from the outside (accepted to write a chapter in an edited volume). Got back into the library, found some good material and am finally beginning to write about Tajikistan -- malaria in the 1930s-50s.

• Had a birthday. Realized that 2 years shy of 40 feels kind of old.

• Took a vacation to South Africa with Anya and Dan -- had a great time, seeing old friends, making stews, riding trains, eating and imbibing all the good things we can't find in Dushanbe. (And pledged to take my morning walks to the next level when I started to feel like a pig after all that eating.)

• Celebrated Halloween with a small platypus. Three seems to be the year of really understanding and fully participating in experiences like birthdays and long distance trips and holidays. Complete with the understanding of what a candy bag is and how smooth those chocolate-peanut butter Halloween "eyeballs" go down.

• Got bitten by the football bug. (OK, loosely defined; see below.) The parents of the older expat kids who go to one of the international primary schools here organized a family sports day on Tajikistan's Constitution Day, in early November. We all had the day off from work and school, so they rented a football field at the main sports complex in town and invited nearly everyone we've ever caught a glimpse of in the international community. It was a classic autumn day, great for chasing a ball or a kite and taking a break now and then for a snack on the bleachers. Kicking and throwing a ball around is apparently another activity we don't do often enough, but after this Anya's been talking a lot about playing football and even trying to recreate the fun (unfortunately, more often than not, in the house).

• Met the start of fall with a shiver. The only downside to a vacation from Dushanbe to the southern hemisphere in mid- to late fall is that you miss some of the best weather of the year in Tajikistan. And then you leave the summery weather down under and return to a house that has been empty for 2 weeks, right at the point when it starts to get downright chilly. It took a few days for our heat to come on and take root -- and of course by then the weather had warmed up again. Now we are decidedly into sweater and boots and tights weather. The house is warm, but there is often frost on the Botanical Garden plants, and on sunny mornings a steam rises off of those plants that are getting the direct rays. And yet again the electricity has started to get sketchy -- one thing to be thankful for is our generator.

All in all, maybe a break was what I needed -- I figure anyone who cares enough to read this has faith that I'll come back. And here I am.

Change in the Air

I fear the change of seasons is near! Already we have cooler mornings and evenings (very comfortable now), and cloudy skies in the dark evening (beautiful with the moon, a "ghostly galleon" on the waves of fluff up there, which has given us some enjoyable chances to admire the night sky and try to explain the moon to Anya). This morning we woke up to an already-drying rain-spattered courtyard. Only the second rain we have witnessed since sometime in June, when it stopped.

My own personal yardstick for the end of summer is the anticipated End of the Melons. I don't know when this is going to come, but I'm bracing myself. The sweet torpedo-shaped yellow Persian melons have been my absolute favorite part of summer in Dushanbe, and the way they laze about in huge piles on the roadside or in entire sections of every bazaar is such an amusing part of the season for me. It was during the last week of June that they appeared, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, and although they are still plentiful, I am dreading their disappearance. The only potential silver lining to this loss is the arrival of the persimmons, which I missed last year because of our October arrival and my general lack of experience with this fruit.

Fruit and veg was generally the highlight of the season, from my point of view: soft-ripe, deep red tomatoes and bright green hot peppers that made a delicious version of Mexican salsa fresca together with the ubiquitous cilantro, regular onions and lemon juice instead of lime. Fuzzy peaches. Anya's new favorite: green grapes, although it is my deep disappointment that Central Asia has not discovered the seedless variety. (I have been advised that if you seek out the especially small grapes at the bazaar, that these are essentially and accidentally seedless. Will have to try it out, although I'm already used to halving them, scooping out the 3-4 seeds inside, and giving them to Anya, who gobbles them up quicker than I can complete each step on the assembly line.) Sweet little apricots, both orange and yellow. Those long-passed cherries of the late spring. There was honestly so much that I didn't even take advantage of the berries, which generally are only sold in the central Green Market here, and I can't manage to go there unless there is a very essential need, because parking there is a terror and when you go to that market there is a documented change in the space-time continuum that requires that you lose 2 hours of your life and never get it back.

Luckily the fall will still bring us good things, and cooler temps, so that we can get back into the yard more. And right about now is when those ziploc bags and tupperware containers need to come out -- I still have not learned to can, but we need to use the modern equivalent shortcuts to make sure we can enjoy some of the fruits of the warm season throughout the winter!

Back to School, Back to Work

Sadik began on Monday; today was the end of week 1 following summer vacation 2009. And they went back not a day too soon.

Not that I'm really seriously complaining, and I realize that surviving a 1 month break is nothing compared to steering an older, more bore-able kid through a typical American summer. (Although, on the plus side, I imagine there are all sorts of interesting activities to keep one busy through the summer in US school districts that we are lacking here.)

It was fun to spend a bunch more time with Anya, apart from the fact that during the latter three weeks of July she apparently lost all interest in the potty training we had done so well on from March to June. (Amazing! In June she makes it through multiple long road trip days in the car without an accident, and by late July we are struggling to keep our wet-undie count under 5 per day?!)

And apart from the fact that Anya somehow found her inner whiner, and that some little (yes, truly little, but feisty!) protest demon sprouted inside of her, too.

I don't know whether it was "just a stage" that happened to coincide with summer vacation, but remarkably all of that protest crying and angry refusal to go to bed on time really seem to have vanished just in this first week back. She starts each morning saying "it's not time for sadik," but she clearly is having a ball back with her friends and some new kids who've joined our little group this season.

For me, though, the fact that I've gained time to direct my attention elsewhere hasn't yet really translated into getting much of what I want to get done done. Unfortunately the organizer of our little informal preschool decided spontaneously (and partially due to a grave misunderstanding that I was unable, despite strenuous attempts, to disabuse her of) to give up her role as Dear Leader, which meant that I, as her helper and the mother of what appears to have been the only sadik family remaining in Dushanbe at the time, was left holding the bag.

I'm hoping that my time spent this week on sadik bookkeeping, new student recruitment, and house-hunting (on top of everything, preschool's homeless as of Aug. 30) won't repeat itself anytime soon -- that this is just me on the up-slope of the learning curve and investing some time up front in solving problems that, once out of the way, shouldn't deserve attention again for a while. And I damn well intend to gather all my fellow parents very soon to let them know that I'm not going to be the sole organizer -- that's not what I bargained for! Recalling how ready parents were last year to even attend a meeting, let alone take on small administrative tasks, I know this is going to be an uphill battle. But I'm hoping we can come to some sort of solution that takes the full burden off of me, since putting Anya in daycare only to have all of my "me" time sucked up by volunteer work to keep that daycare running isn't my idea of a fair trade!

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...")
  

From Russia With Puppets

This past Tuesday we made a return to the Dushanbe puppet theater, together with all of our friends from sadik.


There was a troupe from Russia in town, and that was all I knew setting out. It turned out to be the actors from the Kemerovo Provincial Puppet Theater named for Arkadii Gaidar, who had come on a springtime tour to Dushanbe.

The last time we went, I complained about the lack of puppets, but this time the puppets and the staging were great -- very clever and interesting. The production was "Bear Cub Rim-Tim-Ti," the story of a boy/bearcub home alone with his dad while his mom is away on a trip. The kid is lonely and his dad is loving but a bit aloof and doesn't quite get what his little boy needs or is capable of. When Rim-Tim-Ti convinces his dad he's a big enough boy to go to the market and get the last egg to complete his dad's recipe for a "five-egg omelet," he meets a puppy. He wants to bring the puppy home, but dad will have none of it. Whatever Rim-Tim-Ti finds lovable in his "pyosik" (pup), the dad can't see -- all he thinks is this is a dirty "sobaka" (dog), and he refuses to let him in the house.


When Pyosik thwarts a fox/robber (who was surprisingly charming -- I thoroughly enjoyed the interlude where he is introduced and sings about how he's a "khooligan" to a crazy combination of a Russian bard's outcast song set to the tune and rhythm of a tango), and returns Dad's stolen pants, the father relents and lets Rim-Tim-Ti keep his friend.

Whether she is just a bit older, or the story was more engaging, or because we were seated right in the front row (or a combination of all three), Anya actually sat in pretty much rapt attention the entire hour-long performance.

The actors were all visible behind and above their puppets -- it was the kind of production where they make no effort to hide (you can kind of see what I mean in the large picture above, with the woman in the yellow hat manipulating Rim-Tim-Ti). The funny thing was, the actress bringing Pyosik to life looked really familiar to me, and I couldn't stop trying to figure out where I'd seen her before. All I could think is this was some famous actress (puppeteer?) from Russia, when finally in the last few minutes of the play I realized where I'd seen her: she had played Mashenka to Baba-Yaga in the New Year's production! (B.Y. made an appearance in "Rim-Tim-Ti," too, playing the brash & busty chicken/market-egg-saleswoman who sells Rim the 5th egg.) Once I realized that, I was starting to wonder whether this was truly the visiting troupe we'd been promised, but our sadik teachers reassured me that it was indeed the visiting company with a few local actors added into the mix.

A Day in the Garden

Poppy In the Breeze
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71

After an unexpectedly vodka-soaked evening spent guesting with our nanny's family, an unexpectedly beautiful Saturday spent on hobbies and relaxing in the yard.

The Day In Pictures

Yesterday: The view out the window at the Morningstar Cafe, during a rare workday lunch (and on a rare warm, sunny April day) with Dan.


Today: Anya and I take a break on the way to sadik to admire the "guest" in our yard, whose origins we haven't yet guessed. Must have something to do with either a lot of digging or a painful toss over our high compound walls.

Keeping Tajiks Baffled, One Day at a Time

Anya and I went to the neighborhood open market on Sunday, before Dan got home from Kathmandu (via Delhi and Almaty), to get him some pickled mushroom salad. We sidled up to the sellers who deal in things marinated -- there is a little row of them, a few Tajiks who are off to the side (one a brother and sister pair, as far as I can tell, with the brother speaking only Tajik and the sister who can speak Russian), and then the three middle-aged ladies: one Tajik, one by all appearances Russian (but seems to jabber away in Tajik, so maybe the child of a mixed marriage?), one Korean.

The ladies were clearly talking about us and laughing good-naturedly, but too quickly in Tajik for me to really tell what they were saying. Then, when I heard "pampers," I remembered what they were chuckling about. I acknowledged it, and we all laughed together, and they switched into Russian for more commentary.

Anya had made sure that Bear was wearing a diaper for our outing (although ironically she herself opted for undies). The ladies thought that was pretty hilarious. And, honestly, it kind of was.

Tuesday we garnered stares and chuckles from the schoolkids on the avenue, too, as we pushed Bear along the street in the stroller. I guess being in a place where I so obviously do not blend in, together with a toddler -- who, even if you are able to pass, pretty much at any moment can blow your cover by blurting out a foreign word -- has all just made me relax into my role as crazy foreigner here in Tajikistan.

----

Meanwhile, in other news:

Today I drove on the streets of Dushanbe -- taking Anya to sadik -- for the first time ever. Our car was finally issued license plates, and we are now toodling around town in "Our Car," as Anya calls it. Pretty amazing that it is now in our possession and driveable -- we have been here so long already without our own wheels that we've gotten used to getting around without it, but we are so glad to have the convenience now.

And, in something pretty much unrelated to the Dushanblog, I will be doing a couple of guest posts for a friend's blog devoted to global health issues this month -- who knew? Check out the Other March Madness here.

Diary of a Long Weekend in Kolkata

("Impressionistic" still seems to fit for describing a 4-day whirlwind tour of Kolkata.)

Thursday:
Arrive from Dubai in the evening, proceed through passport control so slowly that it seems not so much due to the famed Indian bureaucracy but maybe that it's his first time doing this? Luggage takes forever to arrive, amid the many boxes and home-wrapped misshapen packages that workers from Emirates apparently take home. (Aside from the fact that Tajiks don't go to and fro UAE so much for work per se, the arrival experience in Dushanbe and Calcutta via Dubai is surprisingly similar in this regard... Also striking that both airports seem a bit forgotten and long in need of a renovation.)
Mosquitoes begin to nibble even as we await the bags, and of course the one with the repellent is last to appear!
Met by L and driver outside, and then head into the city and gather our first impressions of India in the dim light of evening.

Friday:
D takes the day off to show us around. We begin at Mullik Ghat flower market and plunge into the human mass and sensory overload that is Calcutta. Flowers, flowers, garlands, and more flowers. The brown, soupy river and people actually bathing in it -- somehow it's a shock, even though I was aware of it already.
Zip up to North Calcutta and take a stroll through some back streets lined with vegetable and food sellers. Stop into old Tagore home. Circle back to Flury's on Park Street for lunch. Our introduction to fresh lime soda (salty or sweet?). Anya enjoys watching some stripey fishies in the aquarium before we head out again: Asiatic Society. We get a personal tour for the manuscript section, with its interesting old Persian and other texts. And the original wing of the AS, with its airy vaulted ceiling.
Home for a rest/nap and our exploration of the city continues in our conversations with our hosts.

Saturday:
Morning starts out again in the human crush: Kalighat and Kali temple. First a stroll through a nearby neighborhood to admire some old Art Deco buildings. We end up at the temple dedicated to the deity that some say gave Calcutta its name: the fierce goddess Kali. Saturday and Tuesday are the special worship days, the height of crowds. People line our approach -- sellers of various devotional items, priests or guides eager to lead us in for a fee, pilgrims from near and far. A quick stop in Mother Teresa's Missionaries hospice and then into the temple territory.
Take our shoes off as we enter and give them to a shopkeeper for safekeeping. It's striking how much my sensibility balks at walking barefoot in the courtyard, swarming as it is with people, animals, all manner of being. But there's barely time to reflect; it's almost all just instant reaction to the throng and noise around us. We linger for a while by the altar for goat sacrifice (Anya and Dan wait nearby out of eye shot). The little black kids are led bleating to the pair of plinths (which people have been leaning over and in between in a symbolic show of prostration before Kali), and the large blade comes down quickly to behead each animal. They're then dragged back to the butchering area (leaving a squishy bright red trail and big droplets of blood in its path, right through where we entered and will exit, of course).
After a bit more looking we retrieve our shoes and leave. We pass a train of shaven-headed pilgrims from Andhra Pradesh, who peer at us with smudged yellow faces (marigold? saffron??), before we make it back to the car.
From the masses to the few: Tollygunge Club and the dip in the "swimming cool," as Anya continues to call it. Fried prawns and a lassi.
From "Tolly" to Fabindia for fabrics and gifts.
Home for our daily rest.

Sunday:
A tour of colonial Calcutta. Begin at St. John's and Job Charnock's tomb, in a sleepy little grassy pocket of downtown. Then to Dalhousie Square (BBD Bagh) and the big, red brick Writer's building: the home of bureaucracy.
A walk around the center, picking our way through the people simply living on these streets and sidewalks, going about their Sunday business, washing pots, clothes, even giving themselves a splash amid all the old neoclassical bank facades.
Anya continues to draw smiles (one of the biggest differences from our usual, post-Soviet surroundings is this culture of smiling!). A lunch back on Park Street at what seems to be another old grey lady: Kwality. Fresh lime sodas: Ah! Papadums, pickle, tandoor chicken, dal, palak paneer, and pineapple raita. Naan. (Indian 'non'!)
More subdued quiet and shady lanes at Park Street cemetery, where the preponderance of early 19th century deaths in their 20s and 30s makes me want to read more about the health situation in colonial Calcutta.
A stop at St. Paul's Cathedral and the famous Burne-Jones stained-glass window (but which window is it?). More colonial deaths memorialized in marble plaques as we contemplate what the century between 1756 and 1857 meant for the British and for Indians and for India.
A very quick look at the Toria Moria (Victoria Memorial) as the sun lowers in the mid-afternoon sky.
A respite while Anya naps and then out to sample famed Indian Chinese food (whose distinction from "regular" Chinese food I sheepishly admit I didn't quite grasp...). Veggie drumsticks and hot-hot stir-fried crab and chicken in plum sauce.

Monday:
After Dan's mid-morning departure, Anya and I continue to take it easy and play at home. (The last morning with the beloved music box! The plink-plink tune of "Me and My Girl" is so deeply lodged in my brain that it makes a comic resurfacing later on our late-night Dubai airport wait amid shalwar-kameezed and henna-bearded passengers bound (I assume) for Karachi and Kabul.)
A trip out with L. to provision for the journey home. Then the surprisingly salty-sweet explosion of a raj kachori.
A trip to Oxford children's books for some plane diversions and home for a nap.
A relaxing last evening with our hosts, a short night's sleep, and an early morning departure in the misty-smoky, greenish-grey light of a Kolkata morning.

A Day of Surprises, Small and Large (Pre-India Edition)

Morning:
Sunny, after another day and night of rain. A walk down the crooked street to the big and busy street where we catch the marshrutka. Some running, some walking ("Anya's running!" "Want mommy to run!"). Some observations: "Dere's dat kitty cat!" "Lo'a wa'er! (A lot of water!)" "Anya's almost to the store." Some matted grey fur on the side of the road -- someone's coat? The slow realization that I shouldn't have looked more closely to identify it: a sheep's carcass, eyes clouded over. Yuck. A heeby-jeeby feeling that doesn't quite fade until after I arrive with Anya at sadik.

Mid-Day:
Still sunny, breezy, as I leave a cafe lunch. A speedy 25 that circles down past the Circus, up past the Avtovokzal, and over to the Barqi Tojik electric company (how do they show their administrative faces this time of year? Aren't they ashamed?). The Barqi Tojik bus stop, and a curious, squinty gander up at oncoming traffic on Somoni. An 8! Flag it, ask whether they are really continuing on for the length of the forbidden avenue, up to the embassy. Assurances that they are. Slide into the remaining seat in the back, wedged in the middle of the 3-person bench. A chance to look at my surroundings: a surprisingly dapper marshrutka! Plastic green garlands woven along the seats and up above the dashboard. The song on the radio proclaims "Segodnia my kaifuem! (Today we're high on life!)"

Late afternoon:
A panicked call from Dan informs me that, although we thought to check and make arrangements for Emirates, Nepal, and Kazakhstan, we remain, stupidly, visaless for India. A few more calls, passports at the ready. The race is on: gallop down Kuprina to Karamova, scan for taxis while continuing at a fast clip toward the cabs that accumulate near Rudaki. Hail one, speed towards Bukhara Street for a sheepish visit and ultimately, thanks only to help from others, success. Literally ten minutes to collect our things (and Anya) at home and head to the airport.

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

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.

Babes in Boots

Thank you to a friend from our Vladivostok days for pointing out to me a recent New York Times piece on how valenki (felted wool Russian peasant boots) have become quite the fashion accessory. Apparently Anya is a pretty darned hip little munchkin.

Valenki are a very rare sight here in Dushanbe (and, to be fair, winter here typically is not quite harsh enough to warrant wearing them). When Anya showed up to sadik on the first snowy winter morning we've had in the flowery boots we bought last winter in Vlad, Anya's sadik teachers oohed and aahed very admiringly.

As I remember that purchase, I can't help but think how well that cute little pair of baby valenki illustrates the remarkable distance between Vlad and Dushanbe in economic terms. Those shoes are a good-looking, rather stylish, well-made pair of Russian-made boots bought for a reasonable price in this curiously Russian kids' "super-store" called "Bubl'-Gum" (a funny play on the words "bubble gum" and "GUM," the classic Soviet state department store). I remember having been told when we arrived in Vlad in October 2006 how the first outlets of that chain in town had radically improved local shopping options for toys, kids' clothing, and diapers.

But there is absolutely no store like that here in Dushanbe -- nothing even close. And there are really no comparable goods like that here, either (I know, I made that clear in my musing after a downer of a visit to Sadbarg). Most manufactured goods you find here are depressingly ugly, poorly-made, and overpriced, and virtually nothing is mass manufactured or distributed from within Tajikistan. I remember many times thinking that it seemed like "everything" for sale in Vlad was from China, but here in Dushanbe that seems much more literally to be the case. Anyway, I guess it's kind of interesting that a little perspective can give me a new appreciation of one aspect of Vlad!

Heard Recently Inna Biiiig Dushanbe

Surayo says "prosnulas'." That's Russian. Mommy says "wake." Dat's English.

Anya had a bwess. [= Anya sneezed -- and someone said "bless you."]

Baba Yaga has a yucky nose. [That New Year's yolka in the Mayakovsky lobby really made an impression.]

Snow goes "crunch!". Like an apple. In your mouth. Not with your toes and your feet. 'Cuz that would be dirty. And silly. And turkey-lurkey.

That was a present for Annika. [About a present given in honor of the Festival of Lights. And after some attempt at explanation from Mommy...] Hanukkah is Jake's mommy. [Usually followed by a groan and shrug of the shoulders from Mommy.]

Novyi gott [Russian for New Year's, complete with unvoiced "d" at the end of words, just like the Russian speakers do it.]

How you say bus in Russian? You say "trolleibus (twayay-booss)," and you say "avtobus (aftoh-booss)." Dat's Russian!

Marina says "ty khochesh' chornye shuziki?" [= "want black 'shoesies'?"; a very correct memory, indeed]

[While putting pants or tights on] "Pull 'em up!" (...Surayo says "podnimai")

Want li'l bit of nonn! [= naan, Tajik flatbread. Also frequently heard: the Russian word for flatbread, "lepyoshka."]

The Many Faces of Anya's New Year's 2009

I finally uploaded a selection of pics from the embassy holiday kiddie bash.

As you can see from the images, we went from inquisitive to happy and engaged, to interrupted and bratty, to bored, to interested in our own visage, all in the space of about an hour and a half. I guess that is what being two years old is all about.