Stantastic: August 2008

The internet’s a little slow, so no pictures today. Whenever it picks up again, I’ll give you a photographic walkthrough of my house. My everyday life isn’t quite as beautiful or interesting as those yurt pictures though.

Tomorrow is the first day of school, both here and in almost every former Soviet country. The First of September means all the kids get dressed up in their school uniforms and new backpacks. The elementary schools have concerts and all the girls show up with huge lace bows in their hair (reminiscent of Princess Leia) and the boys come with their cheap shiny suits that look like they’re made of vinyl. Since I’m at a college, blessedly I get to miss out on the concert event, for now at least. But there will be lots of new students. Our college has the following departments: Economics, Kazakh Language and Culture, Computer Programming, English Language, Design (clothes making), and Physical Education. It’s not where the best students go, but it’s a good college for a town this size and the best students may go to university in the city afterwards. Because we’re a college, though, we have to recruit students. This often results in fifty elementary school students plowing into my class in the middle of a lesson while on a tour of the factory building that is our college. Tour Guide: “Look this is an American. This shows how great our college is. Look, he even talks. You may touch him if you’re brave, he bites sometimes.” In addition, with my counterpart English teacher I visited ten or so schools last year. We gave an open English lesson to their older students and told them to consider coming to the college. These tactics obviously work (and the Director gave money to teachers who recruited the most new students) because last year’s first year English class had only five students. This year’s has over twenty. We’ll see if they actually want to learn anything. But regardless of this, I’m hoping to have a movie club in addition to the standard after class English club I already do. My better students should be able to understand enough of an English movie with the English subtitles on, if I prepare them with a handout and new vocabulary. At least I hope they’ll get it, we’ll see.

In other news, Ramadan starts tonight. This is the Muslim holy month, when (healthy) observant Muslims should not eat or drink anything during daylight hours. Islam has Five Pillars to follow: 1) Profess that “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Prophet” 2) Pray five times each day in the direction of Mecca 3) The Hajj: Visit Mecca once in your lifetime (my host dad made the trip, by bus, a few years ago) 4) Zakat: Give money to the poor. Many people give money to beggars here, even ones who look relatively fraudulent. No one yells “get a job!” or anything. 5) Fast during the month of Ramadan each year. So that’s what this month is all about, fasting. I’m not set on being totally observant; if I weighed twenty pounds more I might consider doing it, though. But food will be harder to come by during the day, both at home and around town. I’m pretty sure the college cafeteria will still operate (there are a few Russians here) so hopefully I’ll get a mid day meal. I think fasting is a good way to focus your mental energies on what’s important in life, and it would be easier to do it here than back in the States because everyone else is doing it. But me and my 145 (completely healthy, according to my mid service physical) pounds think that maybe this is not the time to get all religious and maybe I could work on the other Pillars of Islam before I do the fast.

On the topic of religion, as in, “what’s it like living in a Muslim country?”, it’s not really that different than a Christian country. It’s more traditional than religious. And Kazakhstan is as Muslim as America is Christian. It’s an integral part of the culture and contributes to a lot of traditions, but religion doesn’t dominate everything. Gender roles are definitely still present, but this is more of a traditional thing than a religious thing. In fact, the militant Wahabbi strain of Islam that dominates the news broadcasts is not traditional at all outside of the Arabian Peninsula; it’s a very recent phenomenon. For example, the tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which have made so much news lately. Those regions have always been fiercely traditional, insular, and hostile to invaders. But tribal law has always been enforced, not Islamic law. The Taliban style militancy present there now is only a product of the Saudi money that has flowed into Wahabbi Madrassas there since the Soviet invasion in 1979. That sort of militancy hasn’t at all taken root in Kazakhstan or anywhere in the region, though there has been a little in the Andijon valley in Uzbekistan. People around here are pretty much peaceful, normal people. There are good people and bad people. And most of them just happen to be Muslim.

Also, I still want to go to Georgia. I know the Russians invaded and all, but they’ll go home eventually. And hey, if you went there right now, there’d probably be plenty of cheap hotel space and good deals for tourists. (Once all the journalists clear out, funny how during the conflict hotel prices triple when the CNN and BBC crews show up.)

At this time next year, I should be wrapping everything up here and getting ready to come home. Peace Corps service is officially 27 months, three months of training plus two years at site. However, there is a ton of paperwork and bureaucracy to go through prior to cutting a volunteer loose at the close of service. There’s medical stuff, administrative stuff, logistical stuff, etc. So, Peace Corps can only out process a few volunteers at a time. This means they start COSing (close of servicing) volunteers at the beginning of October and continue until the official COS date of November 10. I’m not sure when I’ll COS, but late October is a good bet. Then maybe a month of travel and home in time for Thanksgiving, or at least holiday shopping (or not). But that’s a ways away, I’m still having a decent time here and I’m not counting down the days until I leave, yet. But I’m pretty sure during the winter I’ll say to myself at least once a day, “365 days from now where will I be?” or something to that effect.

I hope everyone who has kids gets them back to school without a problem. And everyone else, enjoy the last part of summer. I see Cal football pulled out a week 1 win over Michigan State. I know a volunteer from MSU here, I think he should buy me a beer. Take care.

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. It was hot there, but it's a nice quiet city.

Hissar, a fortress outside Dushanbe which was used up until the Soviet period.

Robert, Emiko, and the van we were in for 20 hours. I had the back right corner.

APC hulk left over from the civil war. We saw one tank and four or five of these APC's, none of which showed any evidence of a violent end. They may have just broken down.

Khorog, the start of the Pamir highway. Though this one looks calm, the rivers in this part of the country were the roughest I've ever seen anywhere.

Khorog at sunset. This is what the western part of the autonomous region looks like: steep valleys and small areas of greenery (that's an orchard in the foreground).

Our UAZ Russian jeep which we hired (with a driver) for a week. You need a jeep here.

Gas station. At least they weren't smoking. There weren't any stations in the autonomous region, just trucks on the side of the road. And how else are you gonna measure the gas except to pour it in a bucket?

In states in America where they require full service (Oregon), they should make the attendants pump gas like this.

Emiko, Robert, and Me. The river is off to our left and Afghanistan is in the background.

Afghanistan

Roadside Shrine. The horns are from the Marco Polo Sheep, which is endangered. Maybe it's just me but I think they're endangered because all their horns end up in roadside shrines.

A Pamiri house that we stayed in for a night.

This little guy was our guide around the village of Ptup for an evening. I told him to look tough in the picture. Overhead are more sheep horns.

Hi everyone,

I got back to my site this week after traveling around for the months of June and July. School starts in September, so I have a bit of time to relax and prepare, if I’m motivated enough. And study some language, too. And by the way, it is hot here. It’s been around 40 Celsius (104) all week, which is kinda difficult without air conditioning. But I count my blessings: there aren’t too many mosquitoes (flies are a different story) and it’s a dry heat, no humidity. But as I was laying in bed sweating last night at 3 in the morning I was thinking, “Somewhere there’s a land with air conditioning, where you can take two showers a day, where there are ice cold drinks instead of hot tea, where I won’t be stinky and sticky like I am now” I went to the bazaar and got a fan today, so as long as the power stays on I should be better off. Now for a summary of my travels in Tajikistan.

I went to Tajikistan with two other volunteers, Robert and Emiko. No matter how much I write here, Robert is always more thorough in describing things on his blog (http://robertkazakhstan.blogspot.com) so if you’re really interested in what we did, check that out.

Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic to the south of here. It was the southern flank of the Soviet Union; it has a long border with Afghanistan to the south and a shorter one with China to the east. During the 1990’s after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan endured a decade long civil war between various warlord like factions. Tajikistan is a small country with no great natural resources (unlike Kazakhstan’s and Turkmenistan’s gas and oil reserves) and really nothing other than hydroelectric power to base its economy on. It only has six or seven million residents; a million Tajiks work in Russia and their remittances account for at least half of Tajikistan’s economy. A civil war was not what they needed. But the country is peaceful now, if not the most democratic or market oriented. On the cultural side, Kazakhs (and Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, and Turkmen) are Turkic peoples and speak Turkic languages. Tajiks are not Turkic; they’re related to Persians (Iranians) and their language is Indo-European. Tajiki (Tajikistan), Farsi (Iran), and Dari (Western and Central Afghanistan) are all pretty closely related languages. Anyways, I don’t speak Tajiki, so I had to get by with my pigeon Russian, such as it is.

Emiko has a friend from college who works in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. He coordinates short term programs for graduate students studying language and doing research. The students come over for six or eight weeks and get intensive language practice in Tajiki, Farsi, or Uzbek. So we were able to crash at his apartment and relax at the beginning and end of our trip. In the middle we did a big loop through the Pamir mountains in Eastern Tajikistan. We left Dushanbe for the town of Khorog (which is the start of the Pamir highway) via a horrendous 20 hour van ride. The roof was low enough that I couldn’t sit up straight and Robert had to sit facing another guy with legs interweaved. There were plenty of stops, including two hours for the driver to take a nap, but it was still a long ways. The Eastern half of Tajikistan is composed of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous region. The altitudes are so high here that not too many people live here. In the West of the autonomous region there are many rough valleys and canyons with raging muddy rivers (the roughest I’ve ever seen) racing through the bottom. In the East, there is a high plateau, too high for anything except stubby grass to grow. Nomadic Kyrgyz herders inhabit this part, along with Chinese long haul truckers bringing stuff over the passes from Western China. The part with the river valleys was really pretty, but out on the plateau it looked like, um, Eastern Nevada… except the air is thinner.

So in Khorog we hired a driver and 4wd Russian UAZ jeep (think old school Land Rover) for a week and set off down the Wakhan Corridor, which is a valley cut by the Panj River that separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan. For about three days we could always look across the valley and see Afghanistan. Robert made quite the (futile) effort to get over to the other side, too. In the end we just tossed a few rocks over. (There’s not too much to tell you that it’s a different country on the other side. On the Tajik side every now and then you pass a checkpoint or a pair of border guards with AK’s who look like they’re about to enter the 8^th grade, nothing like the spy movies.) An NGO in Khorog has a small tourism initiative. We hired our driver through them and they gave us a list of families along the way who would host guests (there aren’t any hotels). So each night in the Wakhan we would pull into a village and the driver would ask around until he found one of the houses and that’s where we would stay. The families were really nice; along the Wakhan they are Pamiri (which is a distinct ethnicity from Tajik). Two really interesting things about the Pamiris: 1) Their native language, Pamiri (there are a bunch of dialects) goes all the way back to the ancient Soghdians, who Alexander the Great conquered when he whipped through here. (Marco Polo also came through the Wakhan and over the Pamirs on his way to China) 2) They are Ismailis. If you’re really interested, wikipedia it, but basically it is a sect of Shia Islam. Their spiritual leader (equivalent of the Pope) is the Aga Khan. He runs a huge charity organization called the Aga Khan Foundation, which seems to be single handedly responsible for the level of development in the autonomous region (much more than the government). It is said that during the civil war the Aga Khan basically kept the Ismailis from starving. Anyways, very interesting people and they were very kind to us.

After the Wakhan we stayed one night near a high altitude lake called Bulun Kul. The area was rough and very wind swept, but I got some pretty good pictures there. In the winter months I would not want to be there, though. Next we took the Pamir Highway to the frontier town of Murghab, which was a former Soviet garrison town (that’s the only reason there are any paved roads, power lines, or bridges out here). We stayed one night in a Kyrgyz yurt, then walked over a mountain pass (hiking at 14,000 feet, amazing we all made it) to another Kyrgyz yurt where our driver came around to meet us. The Kyrgyz herders spend the summers on these high altitude pastures fattening up their herds. In the winter they live in villages in the surrounding area. We actually ran into some German doctoral students in geography with GPS units who were in the middle of three consecutive summers mapping the pasture land in the area and interviewing the herders.

After the hike, we spent a couple nights at a hot springs nearby, basically lying around between dips in the hot water. Then we headed back down the highway to Khorog. We spent a night there and decided that we did not want to do the 20 hr ride back to Dushanbe. So since the van ride cost about $50 and the Tajik Air plane flight cost about $70, we went for the plane flight. The Khorog to Dushanbe flight has quite the reputation for being an exciting flight. Apparently Soviet (civilian) pilots were given danger pay for flying the route. (Khorog’s runway is, uh, short) To add to the story, Tajik Air treats their flights like a mini-bus ride. You show up early in the morning and get on the list, then wait around all day before you’re told that you made the flight and can pay your money. On the plane (an Antonov-28 turboprop) the co-pilot actually rearranged the 14 passengers to even out the weight. The plane never actually gets above the mountains; it really is a flight through the mountains. I never really felt like we were gonna brush the mountain side, but it was interesting. And no one shot at us from the Afghan side. It’s all about perspective. (Though I was a bit worried when it looked like we were gonna take off with only one pilot. The co-pilot (who looked my age) came along shortly, though.)

So anyways, that was our trip. Now for a few random thoughts. 1) We ate at a Georgian restaurant in Dushanbe (as in Georgia the country in the Caucasus next to Armenia and Turkey, not soul food) and I now want to go to Georgia. They have good food and wine there. I’m not sure what else but it doesn’t matter. Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are not culinary destinations, my taste buds are dying. And they have Peace Corps in Georgia! I could have been drinking wine instead of vodka. (Actually my host family’s religious so I’m not forced to drink too often.) (Glamorous PC postings/aka Posh Corps: Georgia, Fiji, Ukraine (PC Ukraine nickname: Marriage Corps)) PC Kazakhstan is somewhere in between, we’re definitely not as hard core as PC Africa, but give us some credit (he says as he types his blog and checks his cell for text msgs) 2) Despite the picture of the rusted out APC, there was not much evidence left over from the civil war. We saw one rusted out tank and four or five APC’s along the road side throughout the whole trip. None of them really looked like the met a violent end; they may have just broken down and been abandoned. There was also one mine field, clearly marked by a perimeter of painted red rocks. 3) Before you gasp and worry about my safety, let me identify the real threat to my well being for you: yak milk. It didn’t actually taste that bad but it had my stomach doing summersaults for a good five days. And when yaks grunt it sounds like they’re farting. I don’t know what it sounds like when they fart. (You know that was your next question.) 4) During the President of Tajikistan’s re-inauguration/coronation ceremony (he probably got 100% of the vote) they played the Imperial March, from Star Wars. No joke. I think the Empire has always gotten a bad rap anyways. Though I’m not sure you could compare Tajikistan to the Empire… maybe some combination of Hoth and Tatooine. 5) Quite a few other volunteers took some vacation time this summer and went home to the States for two or three weeks. I would love to visit home, but I’m really glad I did not do it. Getting back on the plane to come back here for another year would probably be one of the most depressing things I’d ever do. It’s not that bad over here when you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Just keep sending me pictures of your kids so they don’t have to wear nametags when I get back. 6) Future travels. These are all just ideas right now, I have the whole winter to plot details. But it seems that it would work well to have my parents come over and visit me here in June of next year. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would be a nice introduction to the region without too many logistics. Then I may try to go somewhere (maybe Georgia and Armenia?) in July or early August, basically to stay away from the oppressive heat I’m sitting in now… with my new fan, oh the joy of cheap Chinese manufactured goods. And then there is the post-close of service (COS) trip. Assuming I’m not too homesick and am willing to travel a bit, I could see a few places on my way home in November 2009. I definitely want to give an Uzbekistan visa a shot; if they let me in I’m going there. Then India seems the most logical for that time of year, Russia and Western China might be too cold. I could spend a month there and be home for Christmas (great time to arrive home and deal with culture shock… consumerism!!). And then I could fly home via Singapore (Singapore Air) or Hong Kong (Cathay Pacific). Who the heck wants to fly an American airline all the way home anyways.

Now that I’ve put down my hopes and dreams for the next year, I’ll go about relaxing for a few weeks and then attempt to survive the Fall semester. I should get a site mate in November, too. This means talking to an American face to face more than once a month. Not sure how I’ll deal with that. I’ll just have to wait a few months until he/she starts becoming a little weird, too. Then we’ll be cool.

Thanks for reading all this if you did, have a happy August and enjoy your air conditioning. I have my Chinese fan so don’t worry about me.

Take care, love, Eric

One of the houses we stayed in, lit up by the moon.

The central room of a Pamiri house. Every house has a room like this with five pillars: one each for the Prophet Muhammed, his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali, and their sons Hassan and Hussein. Pamiris are Ismaili (wiki it), which is a branch of Shia Islam. Ali, Hassan, and Hussein are much more important for Shias than for Sunnis.