Last Monday, Joey (one of the other students – also from AU) and I decided to spend our morning at the Tajik National Zoo, since we didn’t have class until 1. We knew that it was on Somoni Avenue, the other main street besides Rudaki, so we jumped on a bus line that Joey was sure would turn down Somoni. It did, and we thought we were all right, until it abruptly turned off of Somoni, onto a mysterious side street. We assumed it was no big deal – that we would just get off wherever it stopped and walk back up to Somoni. Unfortunately, when the bus finally stopped, we were pretty far from the corner, and in a place that didn’t look like somewhere we wanted to walk around… that far from the intersection of Rudaki and Somoni looks much less developed and much more wasteland-ish. So we decided to stick around and stay on the bus, hoping that it would take us back to Rudaki, or someplace we recognized. Unfortunately, it just brought us deeper and deeper into the unknown, so we finally decided to get out and see if we could wait for a bus on the same route going in the opposite direction, which could take us back to Somoni. After waiting a while without seeing a bus go by in either direction, we hopped in a Mashrutka (a van acting as a taxi for as many people as can possibly fit inside) which brought us back to Rudaki, about as far from the zoo as we had originally started. So, abandoning all confidence in public transportation, we set off on foot, and arrived at the zoo about 30 minutes later.
It turns out that we shouldn’t have worried about reaching the zoo with adequate time to look around. Despite the promising entrance – a brightly colored sign, and a man selling actual cotton candy – inside, there were a couple dirt paths, lined with cages, holding exotic animals like rabbits, dogs and goats. One path was completely surrounded by empty cages. We did find some camels, which were actually reasonably exciting: they had a relatively large space to live and run around in, but when we found the jungle cats and large animals exhibit (which our resident director had insisted we see), it was pretty terrible. The cages were about half the size of AU dorm rooms, just large enough for the bears to sit in. There was one wolf that just kept pacing his cage, taking about 8 steps before he had to turn around and go the other direction. We turned a corner and saw kittens (as in, house cats) in cages just mewing and actually climbing the wire of their cage. It was about then that we decided we had had enough, and we left pretty horrified, reminiscing about the DC zoo.
The rest of the week was filled with midterms, which went pretty well – I only had three of them, and they weren’t too difficult… I’m glad they’re done though, so I can go back to my ignorance of the farsi words for “gall bladder” and “past progressive tense”.
On Friday, Jake, our RD, brought us all pumpkins to carve on the takt (which speaking farsi, of course!), which was fun and festive… and now they are decorating the school and the office, so that’s great! Not to mention that he salted and roasted them, and brought them to us for our excursion yesterday, which were delicious, as pumpkin seeds are my favorite seed snack, and one of the many things I have been craving lately, amongst olives (of course), Product 19, and bagels. And the smell of flour…
Our trip yesterday was to a city called Sharitus. It’s about 3 and a half hours away. It has been cold and rainy for the last few days (so much for Dushanbe’s cloudless weather, which I was raving about for the first few weeks here) so several people cancelled at the last minute, leaving us with a lot of extra space in our two cars. The car I was in had only three people in addition to the driver, with the capacity to hold eight. Thrilled, we all stretched out until we stopped unexpectedly and the driver got out to inspect the engine, then suddenly grabbed an empty water bottle and walked down to a nearby river. Apparently, our van had broken down, and it was discovered that it would take several hours to fix. Since we didn’t have that kind of time, we were forced to all squish into the other van, also able to hold 8 people plus driver, but actually holding 10. Much less comfortable, we proceeded to Sharitus, where we stopped to walk around a bazaar while Jake and the driver looked around for a car to hire to drive us back – more comfortably – to Dushanbe. The bazaar was cool, but my interest in bazaars has declined since the third or so one I saw, and also since the temperature dropped considerably. Our next stop was the Khoja Mashhad Madrassa and Mausoleum, which was really cool and beautiful, except that the tour guide who was supposed to meet us wasn’t there, so the historical and cultural significance of it remains a mystery. After that, we headed to Chilichor Chashma (44 Springs), which was also beautiful… we had a nice takt-picnic lunch, and fed lots of huge and ridiculous fish. Apparently, people swim in these springs, but not much at the end of October, when it’s drizzling and cold, so we didn’t hang out there long. When we had had our fill, we headed back to Dushanbe, where we wasted an hour and a half before our monthly American Councils-sponsored dinner. We went to a Chinese restaurant and ate an incredible amount of delicious food. We were all pretty satisfied with the quality of the food, and all went home a little uncomfortably full, sleepy, and happy. Despite the miserable weather, it was a pretty successful day.
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