Flowers in Winter

What's been happening these last few weeks in Tajikistan, you ask?

Quite a lot.

Maybe my explanation of The Rogun Powerplant Drama either didn't make sense or wasn't very interesting to anyone who reads this regularly (I know, you don't number all that many, and probably the bulk of you are more interested in the Anya report than in updates on the political or social situation in and around Dushanbe). Or maybe you just decided that the long arm of the Tajik government might reach out and bite you if you commented? In any case, if you had spent the past month here, you would see to what farcical and more serious (although not yet that serious) extremes the whole enterprise has played itself out.

The forced deductions from people's salaries continue, and reports are also piling up about people (and organizations) receiving "strong suggestions" to purchase blocks of shares to support the hydropower station. Those suggestions have supposedly been backed by very real consequences: students can't take (or pass) exams; car owners are blocked from registering their cars; and there are some vague reports that the health ministry requires citizens to show proof of purchase of their Rogun shares (for what? all I can assume is for getting health care, or maybe access to their health insurance?).

For those who work with the bureaucracy I think it's been a pretty demoralizing time, although since I don't have a lot of direct interaction of that kind I have not been experiencing the same level of negative feeling.

For me, I've been getting more active locally -- doing a little bit of charity work, getting active in my next research project, on malaria in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 30s (finally, after finishing the Draft That Would Not End, based on Vladivostok materials), and continuing with a few different outlets for improving my Tajik, where I do finally feel I'm making some progress.

Back in the summer I added to my Tajik language lessons one additional way to practice language: I started taking embroidery lessons. (The most well known word for Tajik/Uzbek embroidery among expats in Central Asia is suzani, but apparently this really describes the object -- only some of the particular kinds of embroidered decorations -- produced using this method of embroidery. The craft method that I am learning, and which I guess is used to create those suzanis, is called gulduzi [гулдӯзӣ, literally "flower-sewing"] in Tajik.)


In some ways this embroidery stuff seems totally crazy: both in the way that even a 1.5 hour lesson barely fits in my week, as well as in the way that at first glance this seems like something only a "lady of leisure" would do. But I think it's good for two reasons: first, because it does allow me to have a little more chance to hear and try to speak Tajik, outside of class. But also, because men and women live in such separate spheres in Tajik culture (traditional Tajik culture -- which still accounts for so much more of the total culture here than it would in many other places in the world), and because women's roles are so prescribed (again, at least for those women who are not in the middle or upper class, that is, those whose lives tend to be more traditional), this actually seems to me to be one real, authentic way of interacting with some of my natural peers -- Tajik women.

Sure, I could have a local friend who, in education and interests and life situation, was a bit more like me, and I would interact with her by, I guess, going out for a coffee or having lunch or getting together for a play date with our kids. But I haven't yet found that person. It's not that she doesn't exist. It's not even that she wouldn't speak Tajik -- although the probability is, as far as I can tell, that a peer in terms of education and class probably would be more likely to speak Russian in her daily life and more generally live in the European (which in Tajikistan means Russian) style. I think in theory she probably exists, but she is rare. Mainly I just haven't had the opportunity to find her.

Anyway, embroidery class is fun, and it's a totally different way of interacting with a few local women (and girls: I study with a lady at a local NGO who gives daily lessons to groups of Tajik girls between the ages of 8 and 16. Teaching them embroidery is viewed in part as a way of giving these girls a skill that they can use to earn money even within the confines of their more traditional, home-bound lives into adulthood. It's a strategy that isn't unique to this NGO -- I've heard others engaged in this kind of training. In the months I've been visiting the sewing studio I've started to reflect -- undoubtedly with the help of the meditative process of embroidering -- on that development strategy and have kind of decided that it is a bit lame and overly accommodating of the very misogynistic tendencies in contemporary Tajik culture. But I guess I still enjoy the activity and the unique kind of contact it gives me, so... I continue to participate in it).

So far I've learned the 3 basic stitches and have completed one mini doily-square (see photo) and one larger doily-square, the smaller of which I guess I'd like to frame or something for Anya. I know how to say "my yarn has a knot" in Tajik ("Решта гиреҳ зад."). I keep forgetting the damn Tajik word for "scissors." I have only seriously pricked myself once with the needle and have (surprisingly) only once sewed my needlework onto my own clothes. An important element of the whole method is that we sit on the floor on a traditional Tajik cushion (курпача), surrounding a low little table that is like a Western table that has had its legs chopped off halfway down. We sit with our backs propped up against pillows, and our knees folded up at a loose angle, and we have to keep the right edge of the fabric that constitutes our embroidery project fastened in place by holding it between our knees. That is actually an important element that our teacher always needs to remind me to do. Somehow the friend who used to take the class with me in summer got away with using a safety pin (сӯзанак) to anchor her project to her right knee and sitting cross-legged. I just keep forgetting the suzanak.

I'm now on my third project, which is probably a tad ambitious: my teacher decided I was ready to embroider the flower pattern all over a set of Tajik national loose-fitting pants and dress (kurta, or chakkan), all to be completed (and worn!?) in honor of the Persian world's start-of-spring holiday, Navruz (March 21). So I have just under 6 weeks to finish, and I think I am done with all of 4 flowers -- woefully under par by my calculations. But it continues to be fun, and if all else fails I will aim to wear it on Navruz 2011.

Cornuccopia

Reporting in here at the close of a long, relaxing weekend that started with a classic all-American Turkey Day, continued with a day off of preschool due to local swine flu concerns, kept on going with Tajikistan's idiosyncratic celebration of Eid al-Adha on Saturday (one day later than the rest of the Muslim world -- and here they call it Qurban). After a rainy Saturday Eid, we had a glorious, sunny Sunday with a fancy breakfast and a walk in the Botanical Gardens. And today, Tajikistan's public holiday in honor of Eid, the 3 of us took our first long drive of the season, into Takob valley for a romp in the snow!

Thanksgiving was a real delight -- a buffet laden with a bounty of dishes at the home of our good friends, shared with a bunch of other good friends. Several kinds of stuffing, a corn pudding, a beef fillet, gravies both meat-based and vegetarian, baked sweet potatoes topped with golden-brown marshmallows, and two cranberry sauces. All of that was accompanied by the meat carved off a 23-pound monster of a Butterball turkey, which was shipped into Central Asia via Bishkek (Manas Air Base), detoured through Tashkent, and then afforded a special US Embassy escort to Dushanbe (frosty relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan make the connection much less realistic than it ought to be).

We were the ones responsible for the bird. Since I guess up to now I'd never been solely responsible for the turkey on Thanksgiving, I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. Least daunting of all was the roasting: receiving the fully frozen bird on Monday and given a defrosting schedule of 4 pounds per day in the fridge didn't get us quite all the way to Thursday. A cold water bath for the turkey on Wednesday evening got us the remainder of the way to thawed.

Prep on Thursday morning, despite Dan's protests, and roasting pan into the oven at 10:45AM still had us scrambling at a quarter to 5 to get the turkey to our hosts' house in an attempt to stick to the projected 5pm call to table. We sat down late, but I think we were not the only reason, and anyway, the freely flowing wine and "White Ladies" (something involving enough lemon juice to mask the taste of gin) and blue-cheese stuffed dates kept the rest of the other guests at bay almost the whole time.

And then there was dessert! So many pies, let me see if I can remember: apple, sweet potato, two pumpkins (one with "vodka crust"), chocolate pecan.... and something else I'm forgetting. As well as turkey-shaped sugar cookies, thanks to the smallest of our hosts.

It was a great holiday in Dushanbe!

Pizza Night

On Saturday we served pizza to our nanny. We were running late and didn't have our dinner on the table until after she'd already arrived to babysit Anya for the evening. So, as probably would be natural not only in Tajikistan but in the US, too, we offered her some -- in Tajikistan the difference is, you set her up a plate and don't ask, since she will inevitably say "no thank you," yet to simply accept her refusal and not give her any would actually be pretty rude.

(Normally she doesn't eat meals at our house at all, neither food we've cooked nor food she's brought, partly because I actually try to schedule her hours so that they naturally stretch in between realistic mealtimes. I know some people here who provide food for nannies or others working for them, although my guess is that this is not typical in Tajikistan. Really I just don't want to feel guilty for not feeding her on any given routine day; the reason we hired her wasn't to have another mouth to worry about feeding!)

Anyway, this was the typical Walkenfeld pizza special: Bittman pizza crust with a touch of cornmeal for crunchiness, pepperoni, mozzarella (hey, in Dushanbe it is not a given), mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. As Surayo was feeding Anya her dinner (pelmeni!), she saw that Dan was very active in the cooking process -- in fact, my usual role in the pizza preparation is limited to making the dough and helping cut or grate the toppings, and then Dan takes over with the kneading and stretching of the dough, the actual construction, and the decision of when it is done.

Surayo commented that, in her family, she's never had a male relative cook anything for her -- which she has actually told me before (when I offered her a leftover scone that Dan had made), but it is still kind of surprising to me.

We were partly just trying to make conversation, I guess, but Dan and I started trying to explain or put into context the fact that Dan plays an active role in cooking this dish: we explained how he worked in a pizza parlor when he was in high school; how I had no idea when we started making pizza at home how to stretch and form the dough onto the pizza pan, so the default from the start had been for Dan to do it; how, when we started making pizza, we were both grad students, so it wasn't like one of us worked and the other tended house...

To some extent I think she understands all of these things. Her younger brother actually has lived and studied in the US for several years now, although she has never visited. But I also find it funny in such situations how little of some things can really be translated. It occurred to me later, of course, how in the Central Asian (or at least Tajik) context, the fact that a man is a student or not working or just plain out of work does not have any bearing on whether he cooks actual meals in the kitchen. Here, those are just completely unrelated aspects of life for most people, just like the idea of a couple building the elements of their life in relative equality, on equal footing, let's say, I think also really has no relevance or basis in reality.

There's nothing wrong with it, really -- it's just strikingly a subject on which it is really hard to find a bridge point; just one of those things that make you realize how far apart we are. (And probably we are the ones who are atypical from a global point of view, not the Tajiks.) I guess I'm a true Westerner: in the end I'm pretty glad that's the cultural context I grew up in, where Dan will do about 2/3 of the pizza-making, and everything that follows along with that.

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...).

What's That Noise?

It's the sound of the "Slow Boat to Dushanbe" finally coming into port!

Our stuff arrived all in one surprising 24 hour period, both the many, many boxes of household effects from Vladivostok, and the many, many boxes of consumables sent from southern California. (And the car is apparently in town, still in process, but there is some hope of a workaround on the tinted windows law. [Hey, it's still Central Asia -- if it were all airtight bureaucracy and no workarounds, wouldn't it just be Germany?])

What's that other noise now, you ask?

The sound of Dan praising the heavens that only a small fraction of the wine and beer burst or forced their bottle tops, despite the -30C temperatures reported by the truck driver who delivered the goods through much of Eurasia to us. And now what you're probably hearing is Dan popping open a bottle to enjoy while he happily sets to work organizing all of that beer and the other food items down in our basement.

Lots of unpacking and organizing going on inna Biiiig Dushanbe today!

Feeling Trashy

I spent my Friday afternoon two weeks ago whipping up an impromptu batch of oatmeal cookies (they are my staple, since I know I can make them with the ingredients on hand, the kitchen tools and pans I have at my disposal, and they are pretty quick and a tested recipe).

Why, you ask? Because I needed a peace offering, or at least a good faith kind of gesture, for when I went to ring the bell at my neighbor's courtyard next door.

We have been a little slow to understand the local customs surrounding neatness and cleaning the public area around your house and gates. The main way this issue has made itself relevant to us is in the thin sliver of land running alongside and just outside our courtyard wall, located around the corner from our entry gate. People decided that this was a good place to dump their trash -- plastic bottles, discarded half-eaten fruit, even full plastic bags of trash (and one of dirty diapers) that were clearly headed for a more formal garbage tip but we can only assume someone got lazy on the way and relieved himself of the burden at the first chance he got.

My hazy memory from when we first moved in (everything was new, so it's hard to recall what that space looked like then) is that this was not the cleanest area even then. And that's believable, since our rented home had not been occupied for at least several weeks if not a few months, after the Embassy acquired it and while they were bringing it as far up to code as it can reasonably get in Dushanbe, and until we moved in.

Another factor here, I think, (although I feel a little sheepish expressing it) is that I think my perception of what was clean and neat has changed as I've gotten used to my surroundings. I haven't taken or posted all that many photos of our neighborhood, but the couple we have on Flickr may give a hint of a sense of what the immediate environment looks like.

I think you can see how the streets are pretty uneven and in places unpaved, the household walls are sort of patchy and not all evenly painted, and there is grass or moss growing in the cracks, and random rocks lying around. But you'll also notice that there's hardly any real trash lying around (gladly, much different from our surroundings in Vladivostok...). I think what I'm saying is, it took me a few weeks or maybe even closer to a couple of months to start to perceive the difference between "neat, if shabby" and "straight-up trashy." That, and I do think that as we neared the New Year's holiday, for whatever reason (possibly simply the tipping point was reached, and it just started to strike passers-by with garbage to toss as all that much more tempting, and struck them that way all that much more frequently), the garbage really started to accumulate.

At this point we started noticing it more and more -- first remarking to ourselves about what was happening, and then finally feeling the lightbulb come on about the fact that there wasn't any city sanitation that was going to finally clear this junk, but it was probably on us.

I took a brief walk with Anya in between Christmas and New Year's, and while I was waiting for her to finish a little tantrum related to the fact that she was being made to walk a few blocks instead of being carried, I was watching out of the corner of my eye a woman and a boy of probably about 10, who were sweeping and cleaning out in front of their compound's metal gates. They were mainly having to sweep dead leaves, but they were also of course picking up a few small pieces of trash that had found their way there, too. I also watched as they used their short handmade Tajik brooms and a big metal dustpan to collect the debris in the wide, deep, open gutter running parallel to the street in front of their house -- the same as the gutters that line all of the streets here in Dushanbe, including our neighborhood, and which generally have a small but lively stream of water running through them. (You can see it skirting the corner in the photo above.)

It occurred to me then: hmmm, we don't really do that at our house -- let alone the trash-on-the-side-of-the-house problem, we don't ever really do that kind of neatening up in the front. I felt a little bit ashamed, but also kind of annoyed: how the hell was I supposed to fit another new domestic task into my day or my week? Or should I add this to the tasks that our housekeeper, who comes two days a week, performs? And I realized, yet again, how (and why) the typical residents of these large private houses situated around a courtyard (havli, in Tajik) are large, extended families, with multiple women and girls (and the occasional boy) who are not employed outside the home but who perform this kind of domestic work that keeps the place running smoothly.

Cut back to our growing awareness of the garbage problem. When it wasn't covered up with snow, we definitely were seeing it plainly and coming around to the fact that we needed to deal with it. But we made excuses. We lamely despaired that we didn't have the tools to gather it all up -- no work gloves to protect our hands; no shovel to get all the wet gunk in the wide street-side gutter or the rotting piles scattered on the strip of grass. We didn't have time -- we'd notice it on our way home or out, when we couldn't really stop and do anything more than make a tiny dent in the job that needed to be done. We'd just remark at how annoying it was, and other people's deed, and bury our heads to the problem.

Dan went out for two extended pick-up sessions one Saturday, using the obvious solution to the no-gloves problem by protecting his hands with plastic bags, and heaving the stuff into several of the huge plastic garbage bags I'd mistakenly bought at the grocery store a while back (finally, a good use, in our household populated with un-American small garbage cans!). But he wasn't able to get all of it, and the dumping continued. (And, strangely we thought, two men who passed by during one of his pick-ups, who'd been conversing in Tajik, switched to Russian as they neared Dan, and said something that he interpreted as a kind of hmph-y tut-tutting of a reaction: "He's collecting it! Filthy!")

Then, one morning when Anya and I got into the car with the driver who takes us most days to and from sadik, he started to relate to me the exchange he'd had with our next-door neighbor as he was waiting. I found myself feeling ashamed and outraged and annoyed and probably several other things, all rolled into one bad sensation. It turned out that the local communal services board representative had come with the intention of talking either to the landlady of our house or to the neighbor himself (I never got the whole story), in order to deliver a complaint about the trash. The neighbor then hired some workmen to pick up the area, and get rid of two cypresses on the strip that had seen recent damage, too. He told our driver that he understood that we weren't throwing the trash, but that the area had to be kept clean, including keeping under control the overgrowth of grass that has nothing to do with dumping but which has stopped up the drainage canal since before we moved in. It wasn't immediately obvious to us as we rode in the car that morning how this was all going to proceed in the future (and really it still isn't).

We aren't sure whether this is our responsibility, or the landlady's, or the embassy's. (And I suspect it doesn't really matter -- it seems pretty plain to me that if it isn't dealt with, the trash problem will be our problem by default, by virtue of its visibility and the perception that, if it exists, we're shirking our duty.)

When I brought over the cookies and thanked our neighbor for the help, he said he planned to keep the area clean, and I of course protested that it was certainly not his responsibility. I think we hope that, now that the real cleaning has been done, we'll be aware of the problem and can maintain the area fairly easily by picking up the now very noticeable pieces of trash that get deposited there bit by bit. (Something I've started contributing to when I have the chance as soon as I can after returning home, if I've noticed a real increase in bits of trash.) And we even purchased a shovel at the neighborhood open-air market -- choosing the blade and requesting that the seller carve an appropriate handle for it -- in order to try to chip away at the vegetation in the canal. (We haven't begun to actually use it yet, but we did buy it!) In any case, however it develops further, the whole affair has opened our eyes to the communal relations in the neighborhood and to our part within them.

The Dinnertime Dispatch

Successful cooking ventures since arriving in Dushanbe:

• Beef curry stew with potatoes and peppers (secret ingredient: Kazakhstan packaged spice mix "Karri" [one of my more positive purchases at Sadbarg!]; secret technique: browning the stew chunks after first dredging in flour mixed with salt, pepper and spice)

• Cabbage, carrot and turnip/rutabaga? soup (the squat, roundish yellow root vegetable sold here in the markets remains a mystery to me -- even after scouring the Wikipedia page... I guess this is closest to a rutabaga, although the way it looks when sold really doesn't look exactly like the images I can find online)

• Apple tart -- gradually adapted from several recipes on Epicurious.com; just your basic flour-sugar-butter-salt-icewater dough, plus sliced apples, with cinnamon and honey and some more sugar, arranged on top, raisins optional (unless you are Anya, then they are de rigueur)

• Oatmeal cookies -- from this recipe (with the sole adaptation of substituting anise liqueur for vanilla extract -- thank you, Istanbul Airport Duty Free)

• Simple ground beef pasta sauce (secret shortcut ingredient: letcho [Hungarian stewed peppers] from a jar)

• Roast chicken and roasted root veggies (simple, but good...)

• Marinated strips of chicken breast (marinade ingredients: a whole lotta minced garlic, onions, lemon juice, and kefir and yogurt, coriander, cumin, and cayenne), pan-fried and eaten in a flatbread sandwich or over cilantro rice
  

• Pan-fried steak (well, it sounds easy, but can you really be confident you won't screw it up?)*
  

• Sour cream pancakes (quick and easy, and pretty tasty, too; recipe c/o The Big Book of Breakfast, often substitute some combination of kefir and yogurt for actual sour cream or local smetana)

* Meat/poultry note: I am still working my way up to the confidence to purchase the butchered meat sold hanging out in the open at the bazaars. So the beef we still buy from the counter at the nicer supermarkets in town, and the chicken is almost universally the Brazilian frozen imports sold in the same Western style supermarkets. But this week maybe I will screw up my courage and get some lamb, at 18 somoni or so per kilo.

The Shipping News

After checking in with the Belgian shipping subcontractor in charge of getting a portion of our stuff from California to Dushanbe, or at least at the present stage of its journey, Dan submits this Shipment Update:

Current location of CNS [consumables {read: beer... and some other stuff}] and HHE [household effects] from the US: Ishim, Russia. (What an appropriate name, incidentally ["Ishim" sounds suspiciously like the Russian for "Uh, we're looking for it..."])

An overview of Ishim:

* Current weather: -11 C

* Predicted low over next five days: -22 C

* Distance from Dushanbe (as the crow flies): 1,214 miles

* Approximate road distance: 1,400 miles

* Minimum number of borders between Ishim and Dushanbe: 3

* Maximum: 5

And some other fun facts:

* Temperature at which beer may freeze: -5 C (depending on alcohol content)

* What happens when supercooled beer is jostled: it explodes

* Estimated arrival date of our HHE: January 15

* Percentage likelihood of that happening: 1.

In other news, our 2006 Xterra being shipped from Vladivostok may run into serious trouble getting registered here in Tajikistan, if our colleagues' experience is any model. Reportedly because of the connection between tinted car windows and violence and/or criminality here since independence (as well as in other unstable areas in the former Soviet Union), the President of Tajikistan outlawed tinted windows earlier this year. And since it was penned personally by the president, apparently no one in the administration wants to be the first to try to sneak a darkened car around the edges of this decree. One 2008 Xterra has been on ice in the embassy parking lot for almost 2 months while the issue gets bandied about, and we don't have high hopes for our vehicle.

The market for used Nivas is lookin' pret-ty attractive right now...

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.

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!