Weekends

Undeniably, one of the industries best suited to expand in Tajikistan is tourism.  Ecotourism to be exact.  Many of the best English speakers I have met here have spend their summers guiding American and European tourists around the spectacular mountains and countryside of Tajikistan.  It is in a way the natural extension of the culture of hospitality here.  Tourism has the potential (according to many Tajiks I have talked to) to employ thousands of people and stimulate an economy that is too dependent on illicit drug trade.

I got my own taste of this over the weekend.  A group called Hike Tajikistan, which caters primarily to westerners who can afford to pay for a good hike, offers scenic medium level hikes throughout the mountains for around $20 a person/ a day.  This is a lot of money in Somoni, but trust me, as a cheap student traveler, even I though the $20 was worth it.

We set off at 9 AM from the northern end of Dushanbe for the foot of Khoja Obi Garm.  The medium paced hike took us about two hours, and we all picnicked at the top of the mountain for close to an hour.  I dunked my feet into the icy blue water of the snowmelt stream for about 30 seconds before I could bear it no longer.  It was enough to cool me off completely.

We hiked back down the mountain after filling up on bread, cheese and coffee.   The weather was magnificent, and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Of course we had the luxury of a foreigner-fortified bubble and two clever hiking guides.  However, if all of the hikes in Tajikistan are half as good as this one, I can safely say, Tajikistan is a top tourism site. Period.

Moreover, I didn’t see one piece of litter or have one uncomfortable confrontation the entire trip.  I suppose this is crucial for a good tourist experience. But anyways personality of a tourist in Tajikistan probably isn't that of the seven day sunbather or the mocktail sipper or the passive spa goer.   I think it takes a certain amount of engagement, gumption and adventurousness to take on Tajikistan.  So I think the kind of tourist this country would attract would be especially invested in keeping the mountainsides as clean and stable as they are now.   Besides, the mountains here are some of the most humbling in the world.   

The Art of Pumpkin Sambusa (one of the best things in TJK)

Open Gutters

There are things I can’t go a day without noticing like how the gutters in Dushanbe are open.  Unlike in the States, I am hard pressed to cross a street in Dushanbe without gliding (ungracefully) over one of the precipices lining its sides.  Sometimes the gutters emerge in the center of the road or creep down an innocuous alley and block the entrances to a row of magazine stalls and barbershops. The gutters are stressed hand-me-downs from Soviet urban planning. A typical street-side gutter is a foot wide and anywhere from 4 inches to 2-3 feet deep.  A native urbanite once patiently explained that gutters were open to make them easier to clean and maintain.  Indeed, although a slow trickle of grayish-green water flows inside, every murky stream I’ve traversed is odorless. 

But maybe it’s because I am a foreigner in Dushanbe, and better acquainted with the subtle grails in Sugar Land, Texas, which conceal underground sewage activities, that I first noticed Dushanbe’s gutter system. 

In the daylight of early autumn, these gutters present genuine entertainment – Dushanbe is an adult-size obstacle course.  But it takes a few inches of December snow or February sleet for these very same gutters to become treacherous sinkholes.  I thought by my fourth month, I could predict the gutters’ zig-zags; but instead, my first winter in this valley city was ripe with hesitation.

While taking careful stock of every variety of awkward gutter, I began to notice that they challenge and entertain most residents of Dushanbe - not only me.  I suppose many Tajiks are new to this city too.  It wasn’t so long ago that families from villages all over the mountains of Tajikistan relocated here.

Beginning on Monday morning, I leave the complex of Soviet blockhouses behind the Avtavaksal where I live with my host family in the building furthest from the main road.  I follow the fence around a neighboring elementary school, which is encircled by the most burdensome gutter-pit I’ve seen.  My host mother, who was born in Dushanbe, purchased one of the many flats that were abandoned by citizens fleeing the civil warfare before 1997.  She bought it for 2000 USD.  Despite complaints from her mother and daughter, she feels no urge to leave her flat and move closer to the road just to shorten her walk time.  As the morning wears on across our apartment, schoolchildren are scooped up and swung over the gutter by rushed parents.  There is the slightest breeze, and while mother grunts in irritation, her daughter floats over the trench smiling – blessedly unaware of what her parents know.

On Thursday evening after work, I jump across a medium-sized gutter and walk toward a famously detached and overpriced Italian café that caters to the Western crowd.   I look north of the café to where the gutter intersects another, and I pause to look at a young boy of sixteen or seventeen at the carwash next door.  He washes his towel in the gutter’s steady stream, and wipes his brow with his wet hand. Washing cars secures at least some regular pocket cash since cars in Dushanbe are fined if they collect too much dust.   When he feels my gaze, he looks up and without blinking and returns this stranger’s stare.  I instinctively look down and quickly disappear inside the café feeling both inappropriately rude and wildly mysterious.  

By Sunday, I am walking in a small bazaar behind the train station, close to the edge of Dushanbe.  Houses are somewhat different from those in the city center.  They have high mud walls built up around ornate, pastel-painted steel doors.  These doors guard havlis.   The Tajik havli-style house reminds me of the open Algerian and Turkish courtyards in houses we studied back in university class.  Glancing in front of me, I see, a crowd of 20 young men blocking the alley ahead.  Above their heads a cloud of dust and smoke billows and the smell of burning rubber fills my nostrils.   This smell is not the sour, earthy smell of burning trash.  Creeping closer, I see a gray Mercedez with two rear wheels sunk into the gutters.  The open gutters have claimed another traffic victim who tried to reverse recklessly.   The exasperated driver has brought together a team of nearby shop owners to hoist up the back bumper.  A small boy, not older than thirteen, stomps on the gas pedal trying to accelerate the car and burning the tire rubber.   He is pretending to drive and the front two wheels flail left and right like the fins on a stranded dolphin. 

The gutters get the best of us all.  I don’t understand their existence yet, but I accept them as part of Dushanbe.  The gutters are intimately tied to the construction of the city.  Just today I saw streets near the Presidential Palace torn up and repaved for the obnoxiously fast Presidential convoy, and being lowered into the ground: those same open gutters!

Meanwhile, this is the fourth week of my residency in Dushanbe and I have completed two weeks of teaching at the American Corners.  I wrangled with a few issues as I started setting up classes here.  Perhaps parsing them out will help illustrate the situation a bit:

1.     How to feel like a real teacher – I always loved school and I deeply admired my best teachers.  I respected them because my parents grew up in a culture that feared teachers and never questioned their authority.  So if in any situation I had a problem in school, the problem was always mine, and never my teacher’s. I also respected teachers who could put on a seamless performance and deliver a seamless lesson.  I want to be the kind of teacher that really changes lives, but that kind of cultivation and relationship with students doesn’t happen overnight and certainly not when your students are all from a different culture than you.  In these two weeks, I realized I to keep a professional distance from my students so that they have a sense of respect for me.  Then hopefully over time, they will see the care that I put into each lesson (anticipating a lot of care to go into these lessons) and will be “inspired” to perfect their English.

2.     Deliver to the people that which they need – From my observations thus far, American diplomacy is very customer oriented.  Of course, the diplomatic staff I have the most access to belongs to the Public Diplomacy cone.  This section of the US “Mission” to Tajikistan exists in order to make real connections with the citizens of the country in which it operates.  That means they provide a few Tajiks with opportunities to visit America.  But that’s one thing I really like about my job.  For example, many students come up to me asking for ways to study abroad or for ways to get financial aid at a US university or to learn more about consular services at the Embassy.  Finally, I have resources (scholarships, grant opportunities, contact information) that I can pass along.  It may not mean that every single student gets to go abroad, or that even most of the students I teach can secure unnaturally good opportunities.   But I do feel truly satisfied to see the few who I can connect to the right people.

3.     Set your own schedule and stick to it – Since we do not have a schedule laid out for us, I am often asked by many people to promise my time to their organization or their family member, etc.  I want to help everybody, and not always for selfless reasons.  Rather, the more sectors of society (family members, organizations, universities) I help, the better I understand Tajikistan.  Or at the very least, the better I understand education in Dushanbe.  That is why I am quick to say yes.  However, when there is so much to do, and so much of it has to happen between 1 PM and 6 PM (after school hours), it is very easy to double schedule a 30 minute block here or there.  But waking up one morning only to realize that I have double scheduled even two very minor meetings leaves me feeling completely useless to everyone.  That is why from here on out I resolve to make a rigorous schedule and write everything down! This is true for TJK or anywhere in the world.

4.    Teach what you want to learn – Despite the intense orientation I had in new methods of English Language Learning, and the many liberal minded teaching guides I read that reiterate that language cannot be taught only through grammar or in a vacuum, I still find myself falling into traditional teaching patterns. That is, I have started many classes with a classic lesson in grammar rather than a story or a cool new video.  I guess it’s my own deep-seated need to do something “productive” in each lesson.  But looking back, I can’t believe how boring I let some of my classes become.  I wouldn’t want to sit through a class with a know-it-all teacher with a strict grammar agenda.  I need to remember that in an ESL setting at the American Corner, I can do better by the kids to put fun first. Seriously.  What a ridiculous thing to have to remember.  So for the next few weeks my personal mantra will be “out-of-the-box commonalities and easy-to-appreciate oddities.”   This may be a disaster, but as I’ve also come to realize, it’s really hard to mess up when your job is primarily to get to know students using English...

5.    Dream big – I really would like to start a theater group here.  There are a ton of obstacles that I could face trying to start it.  Primarily: no space to rehearse on the weekends, students’ awkward and inconvenient school schedules, not enough money to produce a show, my own inexperience directing, lack of English skills...but still, an acting troupe of Tajik high school students…a troupe that also acts like a community and safe space to create… That is my personal goal and I don’t want to speak too much about it.  But I’m officially putting it out in the universe so that I can hold myself accountable for it. 

I will end by documenting here that my 23^rd birthday in Dushanbe (September 21) was one of the better birthdays in my life. I cannot agree completely with thirty-somethings out there who are tremendously nostalgic for their twenties.  Of course, I am having a great time as a twenty-something.  But I also have a good track record of each birthday being better than the last.  It probably has to do with the fact that I always have low expectations, which means whatever my birthday is, is better than I expected. But at this rate, I think 30, 40, 50 will only be ecstatic.  Right?  I’m very excited for wisdom to set in, and for the new and the different.  And even though 23 isn’t a huge milestone, I am grateful for it.  #Karaoke, Al Sham, Georgian wine, Fulbright fever, share taxis, Tajik hospitality. 

When the bazaar was on fire

Dushanbe is the Tajik word for Monday.  The Soviets selected the site of the “Monday  Bazaar” or “Dushanbe Bazaar” to build the capital of Tajikistan.  Before I arrived, a few people warned me against staying in Dushanbe since it was a concrete jungle, where no one will speak to you on the street.  To me, Dushanbe is a great mix of city and country.  Inside stores, homes, and libraries, people are welcoming and patient.  Outside, in buses, open markets, and walking home, people keep their distance, and I am fine with that as well.

Still the city feels small enough to bump up against the daily trials and triumphs of those around me.  Walking home from services at Jamatkhane last week, I saw a huge plume of smoke.  Larger than a plume – this was a massive, assaulting mega cloud of purple and gray and it felt much more ominous than rain.  It was so odd that I made a mental note of it.  Later that evening, my host family told me there was a fire in Korvon, the largest bazaar in Dushanbe.  Many fine rugs, wood carvings and antiques had been looted or burned from a whole stretch of stalls.  Apparently, this happened many times a year.

The next morning was a Thursday.  I stepped out of the National Library, where I work on the fourth floor, around 11:30 AM after a morning session at the American Corner.   The Library is within a few blocks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Presidential Palace and the Mayor’s Office so it was a central spot to meet with my new Tajik tutor.  We sat on a bench opposite the row of identical fountains lining the pathway. 

After around 15 minutes of chatting, my tutor, who is about 45 and wears the same golden Tajik tunic at each of our lessons, kept darting looks behind me.  I kept looking over my shoulder and didn’t notice a thing.  I felt as though she was spotting ghosts.  Another five minutes passed and the swarm of people gathering, shouting and calling the name of God, attracted due attention from everyone around us.   By the time I turned back to face my tutor, she had already picked herself and her bags up off the bench and ushered me to follow away from the crowd.  From a safe distance, we turned around to watch the ensuing punches the crowd was throwing.  Their anger was directed toward the policemen restraining them at first, and then it turned on each other.   The most dire snapshot from this chaotic scene that I can recall was of a stress-ridden young lady, maybe in her late 20s, slouching on another lady and throwing tired punches into the air while yelling at the top of her lungs at a police officer as he poked her and her supportive friend away using the tip of his baton. 

By this time, my Tajik tutor had asked a passerby about the situation.  She informed us that at the center of the crowd were young shopowners whose entire livelihoods had burned in the bazaar.  They had taken their grievances to the Mayor’s office, but were quickly batted away by the city police, unable to even meet the Mayor.  In such a situation, no Tajik is guaranteed money from the city or insurance, although they pay monthly fees to both to maintain their bazaar stalls.   Some speculated it was a way for the city to commandeer land without having to pay landowners.

At that moment, I realized my tutor and I were watching some of the deeper wounds of the people of Dushanbe being salted.  I knew I should leave, but as a natural reaction, I stayed on a little longer to watch.  My tutor had retreated 50 feet behind of me and two men shoved me as they ran toward the mob.  I knew I had to leave right then, even though I didn’t feel personally threatened or in any danger.  I just wanted to see the slouching lady once more to know if she had hit her target, or had finally collapsed under the weight of her situation.

Sleepless in Dushanbe

Week three is in swing.   I had my first conversation class with students at American Corners yesterday.  I chose a topic of general interest to me:  “What Would You Put Inside Your Time Capsule?”  But after completing my first one-hour session, I realized a few things:

1.     Do not judge an English student by their expression. When you are dealing with multiple levels of English, there is not an easy way to get everyone to speak.  Some kids will look bored while other students will look like they are in great pain.   I didn’t find any cure all for the multiple levels, but it helped to announce at the beginning that, “Everyone must speak.”  At least all students HAD to be patient when I called on quiet ones.

2.      When leading a Discussion Group, don’t talk too much.  In moments when no one had an opinion, I felt compelled to take over the discussion.  I did not have constructive ways to probe the students.  Part of this had to do with the question I was asking; since there is no wrong way to fill a time capsule, there is no reason to contradict or try something new.  The question of “What Would You Put Inside Your Time Capsule” did not stir a strong range of positive and negative emotions.   However, after asking the same question for 30 minutes and using many examples to ill, more and more students grasped the concept.  Many of the higher-level English speakers took time in small groups to explain the concept to those who didn’t understand.  But that explanation was in Russian/Tajik, which was perhaps defeating the purpose. 

3.     Manage numbers.  When leading a conversation club, I have to decide early what is possible and what isn’t.  For example, I could not have broken the large group into small groups if there was more than around 30 or 35.  I also could not do break out groups around the Corner if there had been other students sitting and working on the side tables.  I also could have had a topic where “everyone speaks” if we had been pushing 40.

4.     Have your classes (formal and informal) inform your Discussion Group.  I am starting to sense what is important to most of these students.  They spend a lot of time criticizing what is wrong in their city, and thinking of solutions.  They are also very interested in comparing Tajikistan to Russia and the US.  Although I want to pick a variety of topics, there is no shame in using these go-to topics as fire starters.   

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school of kids all over Dushanbe.  Traditionally, all students attend the first day in their finest attire to present their teachers with flowers.  They are dismissed around 10 AM to roam around and enjoy their last, sweet and sweaty day of summer break. 

Since every kid in Dushanbe from primary school through college is expected to dress in their finest at school, the streets were filled with sharply dressed packs of university boys, teenage girls in new black heels (some of them quite stylish), prim first graders holding their mother’s hands in oversized, confectionary hair bows that plume from the top of their braids, and tidy little boys who shuffle about like ring-bearers waiting for their cues.

Walking around this morning, Kyle and I pondered what Tajiks visiting America must think when they see how, let’s say, comfortably kids dress for school. 

I was in an especially good mood because September means the beginning of the school year almost everywhere in the world.   September is my favorite month since it’s a time for setting high goals, buying new pens, starting fresh.   Back home, it’s the start of the holiday season: Labor Day, my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years...it’s one, three-month-long party. Even in Dushanbe, I feel that particular September energy.

The second week of our orientation in the Embassy took a much slower pace.  We began to make arrangements for a ten-month stay in our cities. Work at the American Corners begins on September 4.  We cannot be placed in Tajik schools as English Teaching Assistants due to the long bureaucratic process with the Ministry of Education.  In Tajikistan, the Embassy would like our help with running classes, hosting interesting speakers, and programming cultural events at the American Corners.  This is not true of Fulbright ETAs all over the world, and not all countries have American Corners.  However, I will be in the American Corner Dushanbe.

Living in the capital means I have a leg up on certain amenities.  People in the regions, particularly the south, will not have the variety of goods, apartments, and English speakers that I will.  This also may mean my Tajik will not improve as rapidly since more people tend to speak English here.  But I do think Dushanbe is a good place to access the entire country.

A few months back, I told many people that I wanted to go to Khorog, a town that was 98% Ismaili, in the geographically isolated and semi autonomous Gorno Badakhshan region in the Pamir Mountains.  My original vision of Tajikistan had to do completely with this eastern part of Tajikistan where the Aga Khan Development Network’s work is most prevalent.  However, I have learned so much more about the country since I first applied to be a Fulbright teacher.  Due to the recent turmoil in Khorog, and Tajik military intervention, foreigners have been barred from entering the region.  Thus, the decision to remain in Dushanbe was indirectly made for me.  However, now I am even more interested in local perceptions of the Ismaili Muslim minority in the capital city; Dushanbe is the capital of a country that is seems to be terrified of potential religious extremism and, dare I say, unrestricted religious expression.

I have been fortunate to meet a lot of opinionated, intelligent people in the last week, who express to me (in English) the likable, unpleasant, and loathed parts of life, society and civic issues in Tajikistan.   Interestingly, I attended an English language debate club practice this morning that took on the issue of “Hate Speech.”  I was blown away by the passion, composure and graciousness the students brought to the debate.   But it goes without saying, despite all the intelligent people I have met in two weeks, there are also plenty of people living here who I would not understand or agree with at all.

Between these little moments of enlightenment, I walk around and take in the day-to-day of Dushanbe.  Essentially, I’m trying to wean myself off of the Embassy’s warm, generator-backed bosom.  

This morning we sauntered through the Green Bazaar.  I imagined myself buying groceries, with broken but improving Tajik.  In a new country, smaller feats like grocery-shopping mean a lot. I imagined conversing with the stall owner, who recognizes me as the English teacher (this new identity is growing on me).   I also see myself coming to some conclusion about my next career goal.  I see myself surrounded by earnest students.  I see myself in some tough, awkward, and embarrassing situations.  I see myself being very lonely, but see myself making lifelong, intellectual best friends.

See, isn’t September wonderful?