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.