Impressions of a country bumpkin.

So groggy and tired....Im roughly 30 hours into the process of leaving Tajikistan.  I began preparing to leave Tajikistan roughly a week before my departure.  

I spoke for months about delaying my departure date; but when the time came to make a change or payment, I didn’t have the motivation.  Additionally, I secured a 2-month internship in Houston and was heavily encouraged by my parents to come home…so in the end…I left on June 20 – exactly 10 months from the date I started my grant.   Given all the prior talk of leaving in July or August, however, my departure felt early and rushed.

And even if I had delayed, I can’t feasibly expect going from life in Dushanbe to life in America to feel seamless or completely natural.

So now, I am sitting in Terminal 7 at JFK, flanked by two eateries selling quick, custom salads and across from my Starbucks Tall Vanilla Iced Coffee (I waste no time).   Surely the fact that I have been awake and shuffling in security and customs lines for over a day is adding to my delirium.  But I can’t help looking around in awe and wonder.  I shamelessly stumbled to the currency exchange desk where to smartly dressed women greeted me with shiny customer-service smiles (far cry from the pot-bellied Tajik men who stare sleepily from currency exchange windows in Dushanbe).  After inspecting their sign, I sheepishly asked, “Do you really buy back all currencies like it says here?” “Which currency do you have?”  “Tajik Somoni.” The women chuckled, shook her head, and apologized, “Oh sorry, we don’t.”  I thanked her and mentally congratulated her for not instantly recoiling in confusion at the mention of such a strange and faraway place. 

I am expecting odd looks soon enough when I arrive in Texas.  But now I still feel like I’m at some kind of exhibition of American life in Dushanbe, and that by this evening I’ll return to my crusty soviet-style flat to sleep for 10 hours.  Then, I think, maybe tomorrow I’ll present a lesson on “summer vacations in the USA” and then stop for borsch downstairs.  Reality check to self: you can’t just talk about being American now, you must live it.

Earlier on, as we touched down at JFK Airport, the Turkish political satirist next to me urged me to look at the window at “home.”  I casually glanced over, but was unable to simulate the thrill I felt when I arrived home after extended travels to Syria and Jordan.   Again, it may have been the delirium and the draining, but epic, send-off I had in Tajikistan.

I should recount said epic send-off.   In Tajikistan, family is everything.  Even when young Tajik mothers travel by taxi from Dushanbe to Qurganteppa for a week, they still get an epic family send off:  In-laws waving, brothers honking, thumb-sucking nieces blinking goodbye.  And that’s just a city 1.5 hours away.  So when I left for America (at 4 AM this morning) I found 10 of my favorite students and my work colleague at the airport toting small trinkets and souvenirs as gifts for me.  How they convinced their parents to let them out at that hour, I am not sure.    They whirled around me from entrance to security check like an adoring windstorm guiding me through the hectic check-in procedure.  In a gesture of Dushanbe-style hospitality, the airport employees laughed off my sizeable excess baggage fees.  I guess even they were touched by how many students came to see off the strange American teachers. 

There was thankfully little dysfunction in Taj and Turkey.  Even so, I was altogether unprepared for the competency of workers at JFK airport.  Each American employee had answers to my questions.   Everyone anticipated my quick transfers.  And everyone spoke perfect (albeit heavily New York-accented) English.  Welcome home to me.

I still have two remaining flights before I am really home.  I do not feel ready to answer questions about Tajikistan tomorrow morning because I have not yet processed the idea that I left (and because I want to sleep for 3 days straight).  

But I will try not to embarrass myself just yet by feeling novel in my own hometown.  And I will have to remember not to over-romanticize where I just came from even though the stark contrasts make it hard not to exaggerate.

Time to board.  

unexpected encounters

"It's a small country,"  I keep saying.  It has come to the point where I am sick of hearing myself say it.  But the run-ins with acquaintances are too frequent to not notice or expect.  

But from time to time, I am reminded that it is the unexpected encounters that make Tajikistan so quirky.  

Yesterday, two international visitors, an AKDN intern and I were traveling the tried, tourist path at Hissor fortress 30 KM outside Dushanbe when we ran into another small group of expats.  Likewise, these expats had previously run into an intriguing Russian cosmonaut who had worked in Tajikistan during the USSR.  The cosmonaut, Alexander, was the head of an observatory in Tajikistan.  I took no pictures with Alexander, but he was a around 5'3", with twinkly blue eyes, and skin like milky leather. 

He boasted his wife was the first Russian cosmonaut back in the 60s to discover a comet.  His observatory was part of a network of 46 Soviet observatories built in the 1960s and 70s, which were used for "purely scientific"research.

We piled into the trunk of our friends Land Rover and headed 15 minutes outside of Hissor, past Sherareh village, and down a short dirt road to a white, iron gate that was clearly closed and guarded.  Alexander bellowed in wispy Russian, "OPEN," without turning a head to face the window.  The caretaker did not oblige the confident Sinbad-esque command.  Alexander guffawed and swung his two, stout legs out the vehicle.  I stared from the back of the car like I was watching a magic show.  Could I really have just been whisked away to see a Soviet observatory thoroughly hidden between two well known villages in Tajikistan?

15 minutes later, we had wound our way down another path, up a solid concrete column of stairs and through many sets of cold, Soviet, concrete doorjambs.  We emerged in a large, dome shaped cavity. In front of us: a vintage, but completely functioning telescope.  A sleeping giant surrounded by old desk with dusty knobs and classic dials - straight out of "a Bond film" (as our host reiterated many times.)

The local Tajik caretaker opened up the rickety roof, which sounded like a long forgotten tractor coming to life.  With the night sky in view, he removed the telescopes lens cover, and manually directed the machine toward the sky for ten minutes, gauging star locations.  He drew our attention to the set of mirrors that reflected light; the technology reminded me of a science project with a camera obscura in second grade.  

I chatted with the caretaker in Tajik, and his warm enthusiasm and clear, academic diction made communication so simple.  I learned galactic Tajik words ~ "sayora" for planet and "sitora dumdar"for comet.  Finally, he motioned for us to look through the viewing hole.  Lighting up in the night sky was Saturn, rings in tact, 1.35 billion KM away.  Upon recognizing what I was seeing, I let out an unexpected, but unrestricted, giggle.  It was perfect, but I would make one giddy cosmonaut.

We continued around the observatory for another 30 minutes asking questions.  Alexander followed 2 meters behind us.  Finally, our Tajik guide explained how he studied in Uzbekistan, and used to camp at the observatory as a student of astronomy.   For five years during the civil war, he became a self taught car mechanic since power at the observatory was cut for months at a time.  Still he would come out on Saturday evenings and play with the many telescopes on-site.  "It was a senseless time from which we are still recovering," he said.   

We tipped the man generously and thanked him profusely as is customary.  We piled back into the car - 8 of us in a 5 seater vehicle - and dropped of Alexander along the way.  "Next month my wife and I go to French Guyana," he informed us in a thick Russian accent, "for Cosmo-Bowl."  I know something was lost in translation, but I imagined a casino resort with aging cosmonauts and cocktails...  

Without a doubt, the observatory outside Hissor is only one example of the drastically different life pre and post-1991.  Although its antique, solitary charm is not lost on me, I can't help but think of all the young engineers back in Dushanbe that I teach, who want to seriously study science, and have no idea such a place still functions.  More than anything, the silent observatory is a testament to how much is happening in the corners of this country unbeknownst to neighbors tending their wheat fields.  I would have never expected it.