Pomegranates to Pineapples: Transitioning from Tajikistan to Kenya

It actually seemed like only a few days had passed since I had left Tajikistan – and those of you who were with me there, and who saw me immediately afterwards, know how hard it was to say goodbye to Dushanbe – before I was boarding yet another plane back to Kenya, and my feeling was that I hadn’t given myself enough time in between. I was still suffering from some serious reverse culture shock – not to mention severe and extended jet lag – and to be honest, as I sat at the gate at Newark Airport, I didn’t quite feel ready for yet another adventure. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t looking forward to returning to Kenya. It only took me about two days after my last return from Nairobi (almost exactly one year ago) to start searching for a way back. So I took off with pretty mixed emotions about the semester ahead.

My two weeks in the US were a lot rougher than I was expecting. I arrived in DC overwhelmed by everything from the highway to the grocery store, and while I was thrilled to be around my friends again, a lot of me was only wishing to be back in Tajikistan. Central heating blew my mind. When I got home, I had a few of the most hectic ever trying to cram Christmas preparations into the three days left, visited grandparents, and was visited by other grandparents, all while trying to see everyone and do (and eat) everything I’d missed over the past four months. When I was sent out to buy soup and crackers (with no other instructions), the rows and rows and rows and rows of soup left me standing open mouthed in the aisle of the grocery store for a couple minutes, until someone asked what he could help me with. Who knew soup could be so debilitating?

I had kind of assumed that arriving in Kenya would feel a lot like returning to a place I was used to – something more like what I had grown accustomed to in the fall; after all, my first thought upon my arrival in Dushanbe was that it smelled like Nairobi. And as I had already been to Kenya, I wasn’t expecting such a period of adjustment. As it turns out, Kenya’s not as much like Tajikistan as I remember.

For one thing, say what you will about the Soviets, but Dushanbe has paved sidewalks – at least along the two main streets, which is where the majority of walking near cars happens anyway. It’s taking me some time to get used to just hugging the side of the (dirt) road as I walk to school to avoid the cars driving by on any and every side of the road (this Kenya and Tajikistan share). In terms of buildings and houses, most of Dushanbe seems more developed than most of Nairobi (oh those Soviets…). Dushanbe doesn’t have the hastily constructed homes that the majority of Nairobi lives in, nor does it really have the fruit and vegetable stands or tiny wooden stores that sell things like phone cards, soda, chips etc. (with a few exceptions, but even these seem significantly sturdier than Nairobi’s). On the other hand, Kenya also has some huge department stores, malls, and grocery stores that Tajikistan does not. While a lot of shopping in Kenya is from these little stands, and the markets, the country also has Uchumi and Nakumatt, huge Wal-Mart sized grocery stores that are sometimes multiple levels and sell anything you could ever need or want. Vahdat, a small grocery store near my house in Dushanbe, just doesn't compare. Things in Kenya are either tiny stands or huge supermarkets; Dushanbe doesn't really have either of these.

Kenyans are different as well. Apart from the whispers of “mzungu, mzungu!” the people I pass on the street tend to be friendly, warm, and helpful. While some of this might have to do with the fact that they speak English – and assume I do, too – I never really felt like the people on the streets of Dushanbe were ever looking to extend a greeting beyond “devichka!” In my last post I talked about our drop off in Naivasha – when we were left alone in the small town and told to find directions and meet up again in two hours – and again, as nervous as I was beforehand, I found that most people were thrilled to help me find my way, often engaging me in conversation even before I could ask.

On the other hand, Nairobi is the busy city that Dushanbe just is not. There are buildings here that taller than all those in Dushanbe could be if they stood on top of each other. Walking through the city to grab a matatu after getting off the USIU bus in the afternoon is an exercise in agility as we try to wind in and out of the solid wall of people and cars. Crossing the street on the way to the office (Kenya friends, you know what I’m talking about: right before we cross under the bridge) is nearly impossible, at least until the traffic is backed up to the point that all cars must stop, and we can (somewhat) safely weave through them. I won’t pretend that Dushanbe doesn’t have its difficult roads to cross, but the number of cars there is negligible, compared to Nairobi. And while we’re talking about traffic, some days it can take two hours to get across the city on the way home from school. The only traffic jam I ever saw in Dushanbe was when it snowed and trees were falling down all over the city. So getting used to the Nairobi roads is going to take some time. For now, they stress me out.

And then aside from all of that, the programs here and in Tajikistan are completely different. In Tajikistan, living with my wonderful host family, immersing myself in Tajik culture was effortless. I ate Tajik food every night, lived in a Tajik house according to Tajik lifestyle. I learned the language and spoke it whenever I was home. Here, however, immersion is an active process. I am living with a group of American students, in beautiful apartments definitely designed for the wealthy minority of Nairobi (and more likely, for foreign diplomats and expats and their families). Two of my four classes are with only AU students, and while the others are with mostly Kenyans, the classes are taught in English, in what appears (after only a week, so I may be prematurely judging this) to be an American style. I’m not saying I’d rather spend the next three months in Kibera, but I’m not really feeling the integration that was such an important part of the Tajikistan program. Hopefully, this will change once we start our internships in two weeks. 

Karibu Kenya!!

 I landed in Nairobi with no problems or delays whatsoever, in the morning on January 3^rd, and it only took the short walk from the gate to the customs desk – lined with Safaricom (one of the popular telephone networks in Kenya) advertisements – to get fully excited again. I had met up with a couple students in London who were on the same flight from Heathrow, and so the four of us were met by Victor (a Kenyan who works here for AU Abroad and basically helps the poor, lost Americans with their problems) who took us directly to our apartments. The AU students – 13 in total – are divided between three apartments (4 in two and 5 in mine) which all have full kitchens, living rooms, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry room (but only one apartment – not mine – has a washing machine, and none have dryers, so I’m not really sure what qualifies them as laundry rooms). We also have a balcony, from where we can admire just how green and beautiful Westlands (the area of Nairobi where we live) is.

The last several days have been orientation. That first day, when only a handful of us were here, we bummed around Westlands for a while, bought some internet modems, and went to Java, a coffee house that I frequented last year, and whose mango juice brought about another burst of Kenya excitement. Afterwards, we went with Lynsey, our program director and Politics of Culture in Kenya (a course that we take only with AU Abroad, but all together) professor, to a shopping center where we had dinner and then wandered around for a while, and then all went together to the airport to collect the rest of the students as they arrived. We were waiting for two more flights, so it took a while, but eventually we had everyone (minus one student who missed her flight due to a tight connection and so would be arriving in the morning) and headed home. We unpacked (motivation!) and then fell into bed.

The next day we went to the United States International University where we will be taking two classes via direct enrollment (with actual USIU students, instead of just with each other). Mine are French and International Humanitarian Law. We filled out some paperwork, took photos for our school IDs and then got a tour of the school (lecture halls, a beautiful library, and smaller classrooms that look a bit like cabins). The campus is gorgeous – so green and all of the buildings are very open. Unfortunately, walking on the grass will earn you a fine, so sitting on it is probably not an option either. In any case, I’m excited to get to walk around there, even if the tales I’ve heard about the classes, professors, and other students aren’t all that great. After our tour, we headed to a park called Paradise Lost, where we had a picnic (with the greatest, most LITERALLY ALIVE juice boxes ever) and then walked around a bit through caves and amongst waterfalls and such.

On Thursday, we headed to Naivasha, a town about an hour and a half from Nairobi for the “Living in Kenya” part of our orientation. We covered things like health, gender issues, transportation, security etc. Mostly, things I had figured out last year, or just learned to deal with. We also had a brief Swahili lesson, in which we basically covered things like greetings, numbers, animals etc. and played fun games with Swahili vocabulary. Naivasha’s a reasonably small town, so we took a Matatu (the Kenyan anwer to Tajik Marshrutkas, or basically large vans that roam around picking up far too many passengers for next to no money) for the first time (with the help of some Kenyan orientation leaders), in the hope that this would make the ones in Nairobi less intimidating. Personally, I’m a big fan of Matatus. The evenings were filled with games (or rather, one lengthy game) of Kenyan monopoly, which is still ongoing. I’m winning, because I collected the two cheapest (Kibera and Kawangware Slums), which are the key to the whole game. Just wait. It’s really intense, and there are an awful lot of zeros on the money. We’re having some trouble working with that, but we’ve almost got it down.

Our last day of orientation began at 8:30 am, when we were taken around Naivasha and dropped off separately at different places, given three questions to discuss with friends we might make, and told to meet at “Naivas Kubwa” at 11:15. No other information, and no idea what “Naivas Kubwa” might be. I was pretty nervous about this part. Not necessarily the conversing with people, but you know… my sense of direction is somewhat shaky. For this reason, I set off with the single goal of finding my destination, determining that once I’d found it, I could take off from there to answer the questions and make friends. I actually found it quite quickly, thanks to the many helpful Kenyans around, and my impressive Swahili/Charades skills. Then I walked out of the more developed parts where the shops are, looking for people to talk to. I was pretty successful too. I got all the questions answered, and I talked for a while to a woman sweeping her porch who was pretty taken aback when a sunburned white girl with red hair approached her house. With still quite a bit of time left, I found a woman about my age with a two-year-old son and her friend, and a girl (also about two) who didn’t seem to belong to anyone, but who kept tugging on my skirt and touching my skin and hair.

And today, I started school. We had a Swahili class at the AU Abroad office (about a thirty minute walk from here, over a terrifying bridge and through a construction zone) at 8 am (luckily, my state of constant jet lag – not to mention the rooster who crows at 4 every morning – is helping me to get up early). That class is only the US students here, like our Politics of Culture in Kenya class, and our professor is supposedly really good. I’m excited, because from looking at the course syllabus, it looks like a really intensive class. Perhaps by the end of the semester, I will not be such a lost mzungu. From there, we headed to the Matatu stop to grab one to town, from where we can get a bus directly to USIU. We arrived at the bus stop close to 9:30, and almost immediately one pulled up. We figured we were so lucky and clever to arrive right on time, but sadly, it didn’t leave until 10:30. This was rough, since my first class starts at 11, but we made it just in time. Classes seem like they’ll be fine, but I suppose the first day isn’t a great judge of the class. My Humanitarian Law professor is Danish, and my French professor is Kenyan, and extremely Kenyan. She was unable to sit still through class, and kept wandering around the room dancing, explaining her ideas of why Kenya isn’t having the same development success that Europe, the US, and Japan have. I haven’t quite figured out the relationship between that discussion and French, but it was interesting all the same. Apparently, Kenyans aren’t proud to be Kenyan, and so if they get a chance to leave and learn something to further themselves, they’re unlikely to bring those skills back home, but will choose instead to stay in the West. Like Tajikistan.

Airplane Musings

I am writing from my second of three flights today (sort of today… the time change plus the 25 hours of flying sort of messes with my perception of time), heading from Istanbul to Paris. Frankly, I think it’s a miracle I made this flight, but more on that later.

This was too fast. The semester, not the flight. I am not ready to leave. While I’m certainly glad to be heading home for the holidays (and I there aren’t many people on whom I would wish a Tajik January), I really wish I were coming back. I’m not great with goodbyes, and it has been a hard last couple of days. Even doing the “this is my last Mass Media class ever” thing left me in tears. On Friday night, we had a going away party in lieu of our December group dinner, at a new Persian restaurant opened up by the host parents of one of the students. All but one or two of our professors came, plus the people who work in the office and are just generally always around. Only three of us (out of eleven) are leaving for good this semester (though one of the three is coming back to Tajikistan in January, just not with the program), so it was more of a “goodbye for a few weeks while we recover from Tajikistan and then come back all ready for more” party for the rest of the gang. I’m jealous that I won’t be back here in six weeks, but I must stay focused on Kenya.

The rest of the weekend was mostly packing and getting things in order to leave today. I assumed it would be a quiet two days, just chilling with the family, but when I awoke on Saturday morning it was to the familiar chatter of my host mother’s gossipy group of ladies and to the delicious smell of Osh cooking away outside my bedroom. Side story: On Wednesday, we had a big party to celebrate my host nephew’s fortieth day of life. This is a Tajik thing, because, if you recall from September, when I learned from the last host sister of mine who became a mother of forty days, generally women stay with their mothers after they have a baby for forty days learning the ins and outs of motherhood, until they are fully prepared and move back to their husbands’ houses. There’s a big party to celebrate the moving back, and people bring baby shower-type gifts. The mother of the nephew we were partying for on Wednesday though, has a slightly different situation. She’s been living in Uzbekistan for I don’t know how long. She came back home with her husband to have her baby, and after the baby was born, he went to Russia to look for a job, and she’ll move there as soon as he finds one (though shaky tensions with Russia right now make me a little nervous about the likelihood of that). Since she’s moving, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for friends and relatives to bombard her with cradles and toys and such, so everyone did the logical thing and just brought food. We ate all day Wednesday, and then more guests showed up on Thursday with more food, so the party continued. End of side story. Saturday morning, I assumed the Osh-cooking and gossiping was just a continuation of Wednesday’s party, but it turned out to be the baby’s circumcision party. Busy week for a 40-day-old baby. Also, let it be noted that my circumcision party count is up to three in less than four months. So I spent most of the day on Saturday sitting with the ladies (quietly at times, so they could hear the baby scream and cry and nod with approval at one another), trying to avoid being married off to one of their sons  (although I’m not entirely sure I succeeded, since the conversation happened in very Uzbek-influenced Tajiki, and I didn’t catch a lot of it, and mostly responded by laughing a little bit). The party went well into the evening, finally boiling down to just the four sisters, one brother, three brothers-in-law, three nephews and a niece and I just eating the left over food (I was scolded for thinking that it’s normal to only eat when you’re hungry. In the words of my ever-wise host mother, food is for eating, not for curing hunger).

Sunday, then, became my day to do final packing, which didn’t take too long, since most things had been packed since Friday, when I finished my early morning exam and realized I had nothing to do for the rest of the day, and after that, I just spent the day watching weird, weird Russian TV shows with the family. I’ll miss those… We lost power for a few hours, which was just a terrific ending to the semester. Not sarcasm. I really appreciate eating and talking by candlelight, all bundled up in fleece blankets because the space heaters (which don’t provide all that much heat anyway) aren’t working. Planning to depart for the airport (via American Councils pickup) at 2:00 am, I decided to try to nap a bit around 10, after being assured by my family that they would wake up at 1:30 to say goodbye.

So begins the fiasco that makes my being on my way to Paris a miracle. Not twenty minutes after I got into bed Sunday night, just as I was dozing off, Jake, our director, called. He said, “Have you heard the news?” and I said “No,” to which he responded, “It’s not good news.” He then proceeded to tell me that Turkish Airlines had contacted one of the students and told him that our 5:30 am flight from Dushanbe to Istanbul had been cancelled, and that there would not be another one until December 26. He assured me that nothing was sad darsad (100%), but that it wasn’t looking good. When I hung up, it took me about eleven seconds to go through all the reasons I did not want to stay here for another eight days. A few examples:

1.     That would mean going straight home instead of hanging out in DC for a few days, which is my plan.

2.     That would mean missing Christmas. Again.

3.     That would mean only having less than a week between Dushanbe and Nairobi.

4.     It is cold in Dushanbe, and without classes or exams to study for, I don’t know what we would do.

5.     It is cold in Dushanbe, and I threw out my sneakers today, which were my only closed toed shoes.

After that, I thought about why I might want to stay in Dushanbe until the 26^th. Just when I was convincing myself that Christmas in Tajikistan with all of the students would be fun, Jake called back, with better news. The flight wasn’t cancelled. The Dushanbe airport was dealing with a fuel issue. Possibly we would be delayed, or possibly we would stop somewhere before Istanbul to refuel, since we didn’t have enough to get all the way to Turkey. Thus, we headed to the airport at 2 am in much higher spirits than we might otherwise have been.

When we got to the airport, I learned that we would be diverted to Azerbaijan for forty minutes to get fuel, but that we should arrive in Istanbul only an hour late. I had a somewhat tight connection planned in Istanbul (a little over 2 hours) so I was a little worried, but figured it would be okay. The Istanbul airport Starbucks coffee run I had been planning for literally weeks might be impossible, but I suppose one must make some concessions to avoid Christmas in Dushanbe. We took off a little late, which made me a little more worried about my flight to Paris, but I figured that if necessary, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a replacement flight out of Istanbul that would get me to DC tonight. It took us about two hours to get to Azerbaijan. You know what is not an interesting place? Azerbaijan. But we only sat there for a short time before we were moving again. We landed at 9:40 am, and my next flight was scheduled to leave at 10:20. Luckily, people sitting around me were understanding and willing to let me go ahead, and even more luckily, when I got to the exit of the gate, a guard was standing there collecting people going to Paris. There were surprisingly a lot of us off of the Dushanbe flight, so they were able to hold it for us, and we only took off about ten minutes late. If after all of the terrifying phone calls last night, having to dash through the Istanbul airport is the worst thing that happens, I will be very pleased. Also, there is no one on this plane. I have an entire row to myself. No, I do not mean I have three seats; I mean I have three seats, an aisle and three more seats. It’s great.

And now we are flying over Austria, about an hour before we are set to land, and I can’t believe I am flying home. I know I have complained about a lot of things, especially on the phone and over Skype (the weather, mostly) but I really love Tajikistan. I have had the most incredible semester, I had a wonderful family, fantastic professors, and the greatest classmates, and I really have fallen in love with Dushanbe.

Also, just a heads up: this is my last post on my adventures in Tajikistan. However, if you check back in a couple weeks, you will find the beginning of my adventures in Kenya!

What I Will Miss Most About Tajikistan

What I Will Miss About Life in Dushanbe

I know my last post was only a couple days ago, but I was sitting at the dinner table feeling a little sad about leaving in a little more than two weeks (since it’s December now, it’s really starting to hit!), which is odd, since I woke up this morning freezing cold, after being without power for several days, thinking “I am so done with this country… take me to Africa.” So I thought I’d write some more specifics about my life here, that you can laugh about, and that I can look back on later and reminisce about that time I moved to Tajikistan for three and a half months.

1.  Three somoni taxis, that drive up and down Rudaki Avenue, picking up Tajiks who are too proud to take the bus, and charging them about 60 cents to go anywhere along the main road. My impression is that they’re not quite legal, because whenever they approach a police officer, they remove the card that announces their route out of the windshield, and replace it once they’ve past him.
2. The store on around the corner from my house/the school where I go almost every day to get something for lunch, so the cashier knows me and the owner greets me with “good morning” (in English) no matter what time of day it is, and points out new things he has in stock that I might want to buy.
3.  My grammar professor announcing that everything we do is wonderful, and proclaiming “Your grandmuzzer and grandfazzer Iranian!” no matter the level of skill required to answer whatever question he might have asked.
4.  My host mother looking me over – and I can tell what’s coming – and saying “Emilia, Gir” regardless of the amount of food I have eaten, or the fact that I have only paused to take a sip of tea. As much as I complain about this, know that it is all in jest. It has become a running joke in my family, and these days whenever she says it, the rest of the table turns to her and says “Sir shod!” (“she’s full!”) in a “really, Mom, just leave it alone” kind of way.
5. And on that note, my host mother being unable to stop at the “y” when she says my name. Try as she might, an “a” will always follow. Just so we’re clear, Tajiki has words that end in a long e sound. In fact, they have a special letter for that, which only appears at the end of words. So I don’t understand it. But I will miss it.
6. Taking only language classes, where sometimes we play Scattegories (and I’m no better at that game in Farsi than I am in English), and other times we read stories about farm animals. Today in conversation, we discussed Farsi names for such childhood games as “Hide and Seek” (literally “Wolf to Air”), “Chutes and Ladders” (literally, “Snake and Step”), and that game where you try and slap the other person’s hand, before they can pull it away (literally “I bring bread, I take kebab”), and then we moved on to explaining folk tales. Luckily, I’m trying to take two language classes (Swahili and French) in Kenya, so the fun should continue, as long as all works out.

Also, today we went to a beer factory. It's Dushanbe's oldest and least developed, and all the machinery is operated by hand and manpower, not like those fancy Russian beer factories that use computers to do that. The room where the yeast is prepared looked, we all agreed, like the set of some bad horror movie - all filled with rusty tubs and with two feet of ice covering the blue-grey walls. It was good to have something to do, but not really a great example of the beauty of Tajikistan. 

As November Winds Down...

Let me look back on the month of November. It’s rained at least half of the month, sometimes for a week at a time. The streets are full of puddles, and though the deeper ones often have makeshift paths of a couple bricks scattered across them, the rest are just left for us to struggle through. My shoes have been wet since the first of the month, so every time I put my feet in them, it takes a lot of effort not just to get back into bed. And on that note, some days the cold is so intense that all I want to do after class is crawl under my thick fleece blanket that could fit nine of me comfortably and warmly underneath it and cuddle up next to my space heater, but I feel bad if I’m not interacting with my family. Our power flickers on and off, and sometimes we lose it for the best part of a day or two. When that happens, there’s often no water either, and if you’ve ever tried to use a squat toilet in the pitch dark… In the streets, the colors of coats and umbrellas and hats range from black to dark gray (with, perhaps a few navy ones for the more adventurous Tajiks), and my bright red coat stands out like a sore thumb. I am cold literally all the time. While the temperature is nothing to write home about (though believe me, I have), there is just no relief from it. I am cold in my room (I can see my breath right now, sitting at my desk) and while I sleep and in the kitchen as I scoot as close to the stove as possible and in school since our heaters only work about 40% of the time and as I walk down the streets of Dushanbe (though my motivation to do that is decreasing significantly with the temperature) and in every store I go into. A couple months ago, I said that I was glad it was cooling off because it made covering my shoulders was becoming unbearable. I take all that back. Bring on the scorching sunshine, Dushanbe. So November in Dushanbe could be the gloomiest place I have ever been. And yet…

And yet, I am writing this at my desk next to the only source of light and heat around right now: a small red candle sitting in a mug and dripping wax onto its matching saucer, while the smoke alarm above my head beeps indignantly, and I am listening to Christmas music, wearing my huge and colorful Pamiri socks. Every time the power goes out I sit with my host mother and sisters making shadow puppets by candlelight in the living room while we pile on more and more blankets. The last remains of Saturday’s snowstorm are melting and turning into ice and everything looks beautiful outside. And yes, it is cold everywhere, and I’m feeling nostalgic for Dushanbe in September, but I still have a great host family, who I’m happy to spend several hours a day with, just sitting and watching crazy Russian TV (lately they’re really into a “Fear Factor” show, except with children and with Barbie dolls and race cars as prizes for reaching into boxes of spiders) when I can’t bring myself to go outside and find something to do. I’m still loving taking only language classes (though I admit, some more than others). And I know that I will be sad to leave when the time comes, in just a few weeks.

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration on Thursday. Our classes were cancelled for the day, and the Tajik guys who work in the office cooked us a fabulous lunch feast of osh (the Tajik national dish: rice, cooked in a lot of oil with beef, carrots, and other vegetables) with turkey substituted for the beef, and cranberries and walnuts thrown in. The osh was great, and a few of us also made hot apple cider (a nice change from the pots and pots of tea I drink here). Our director had gotten some pies (apple and pumpkin) from the American style café nearby. While they weren’t great (somehow all foods in this country always taste just a little bit like Tajikistan), it was very Thanksgiving-y, and I really enjoyed it. Thanksgiving Day also happened to be Tajik National Flag Day, and for a country with the longest flag and the tallest flagpole in the world, this is a big deal. There was a parade of Tajiks along Rudaki Avenue, waving flags. It was almost like the Macy’s Day parade, except with fewer beloved cartoon characters, and more Tajiks.

So, despite the cold and rain and unreliable power, I am still loving Tajikistan. I’m excited to come home, but I’ll definitely miss things here. There are things that are hard to deal with, but it’s an amazing, beautiful country. Don’t believe me? Look at my Pamirs pictures.

One Month Left?!

That’s right. Today, November 19, 2011, is one month from my departure date. I can’t believe it. The semester has gone so quickly! While I’m bummed about leaving (most people on this program are coming back for the second semester), I’m starting to get things in order for Kenya (leaving January 2^nd!) and I’m getting really excited about that.

Last week, Tajikistan played Japan in a World Cup qualifying match, in Dushanbe. Who even knew Dushanbe had a soccer/football stadium?? The last time they played each other, we lost 8-0, so we didn’t have such high hopes, but we still thought it would be fun to see the game, so we convinced one of our professors to let us go instead of one hour of class. We got to the stadium around half-time, and there was a crowd of Tajiks waiting outside the gates, being held off by armed police officers, wearing vests and carry shields. Not joking. We were trying to figure out where we might be able to buy tickets, when suddenly the crowd started to run back towards the streets. Not sure what was happening, but also not wanting to get trampled by Tajiks, we ran with them, and when we got the chance to look up, saw that the police were chasing people back away from the gates with horses. One of the students I was with went up to someone and asked about tickets, but was told that they were all gone. Not deterred, she asked someone else, and was finally directed to the other side of the gate, so we followed her. Again, we were told that the tickets were finished, but suddenly one of the guards said “oh, foreigners, foreigners” and ushered us through the gate. We reached literally a line of armed guards who asked for our tickets, but we said that we didn’t have any. Several of the guards just shook their heads and said “not possible” but one of them again said “foreigners” and stood aside to let us through. Weird. The stadium was really not that impressive. I’m pretty sure we were the only women in the stands, but I think people were more shocked by our foreign-ness than anything else. The Tajiks did the wave. A lot. With great enthusiasm. Also, we only lost 4-0, so improvement! And it was a lot of fun to see the game, even if it wasn’t played so well. On Sunday, we went to the Zurkhane to see an exhibition of Iranian weight training. It was exciting, and also hilarious to watch my American classmates try it out.

Last week was pretty standard… The rain and cold of November in Tajikistan has sort of curbed my interest in wandering around Dushanbe, so I have spent a great amount of time in cafes and at school. Classes are still going well – It’s cool to have only language classes, and it’s going to be hard to get back into the swing of deep thinking and paper-writing. I read Winnie the Pooh in Farsi, but was dismayed to learn that in the Persian version Winnie is the rabbit, so it’s actually Winnie and Pooh. I was extremely confused for some time, because I kept reading “Winnie said to Pooh” and becoming quite concerned, thinking that Pooh had developed a serious personality disorder.

EXCITEMENT! (In the Form of a New Arrival, Goat Meat, Mud, and Precipitation)

This has possibly been the most exciting, action packed couple of days of my semester (with the possible exception of the Pamirs trip, but even that is debatable). On Thursday I woke up and went out to the kitchen as usual for breakfast. Matluba, my host mother, was there, bustling around, which is unusual, as she usually makes breakfast and sets it out, then goes into the living room to curl up near the space heater. When I came in, she told me “tonight is Guldasta (my second oldest host sister)’s son’s birthday, so I am going to stay with her” I said “oh, cool!” with, I thought, proper enthusiasm for a birthday party, but only after I responded did I realize that several things were wrong with what she had told me. For one thing, Guldasta doesn’t have a son (but she is pregnant), and for another, she and her husband live in Uzbekistan. They’ve been staying with us for the last month or so, but on Wednesday, she disappeared. After riddling through what Matluba had told me, and considering all possible translations of the Tajiki, I concluded that either Guldasta had had the baby (although the “tonight” confused me) or was having the baby, and that Matluba was planning to go to the hospital for the evening to stay with her. Unfortunately, by the time I had pieced all this together, Matluba had left the kitchen, and I felt a little silly chasing after her and asking “wait, what?”, so I never got the chance to clarify, and I went through the day extremely confused.

When I got home Thursday night, nobody seemed particularly excited in a our-daughter-just-had-a-baby way, so I assumed I must have been mistaken. At dinner, though, Gulnora, my oldest host sister, turned to me and asked “did someone tell you that Guldasta had a son?” and Matluba said “oh yes, I told her this morning.” So, it turns out I do have a new host nephew, but the whole thing was very confusing and took a while for me to figure out. I asked what his name is, and Rahmatullo (my host father) said he doesn’t have one. Guldasta and her husband are thinking about it, and maybe he will get a name next week, but no promises.

In the midst of all this excitement, Sunday was one of the biggest holidays in Tajikistan – Idi Qurbon (the sacrifice feast), which celebrates Abraham not sacrificing his son. To recognize this, a big thing in Tajikistan is to sacrifice a goat or a sheep. Then, people go around from house to house eating with their family, friends, and neighbors. I asked my family what we were doing, and Matluba said we would have a party, visit friends etc. And in the middle of all the Idi Qurbon preparation, she was busy welcoming Guldasta and her son home (they came home on Friday), so there has just been an absurd amount of food and cooking and busy-ness in my house lately.

On Saturday, a bunch of Americans and I took a trip to a big bazaar on the edge of the city, where they have absolutely everything. It was pretty crowded, and there was a lot of traffic getting in, because everyone was shopping for the holiday, but it was still fun to look around, and nice, at least, to get out of the house for a while. When I got home, I went into the kitchen where Matluba and Munisa (the youngest host sister) were making two deliciously fried snacks for Sunday: fried-dough-cookie sort of things (something like Mandazzi, if you’ve ever been to Africa) and these fried almost-dumplings with potato inside. I went into the kitchen to sit with them while they did this, and was instantly told to “Gir” (take). Well, I should have expected that. They were really good, and trying them turned out to be dinner, so that worked out.

The next day, I was awakened to the lovely sound of children outside the front door shouting “IDI MOBARAK!!!” and banging on the door, looking for candy. Sort of the Tajik answer to Trick-or-Treating, except costumes are unnecessary and it happens early in the morning, rather than in the evening and late at night, on a day when no offices are open, so there’s no excuse for not answering the door. I went out to the kitchen, where I had breakfast of eggs and more of the food from the night before. At 10:30, I was invited to eat more food. This was when the feasting of the day began – I was given a bowl of potato-carrot-beef soup, bread, more eggs, fruit, more fried things, and cake. Literally as soon as I finished one thing, I was offered more of something else. Family members came all throughout the day – all of the sisters and their husbands and children (it was hinted at several times that at my age, it’s getting unacceptable that I don’t have any of those) I sat with Matluba and the three older sisters and their collective four children (two age 4ish, one 3 months and one 3 days) for several hours, being repetitively told to GIR by everyone except the two infants (and probably only because they can’t talk) until 2:30, when Matluba got up to fetch a plate of goat meat. We hadn’t sacrificed anything, but we did have the meat (possibly a gift from a neighbor who had). Goat: the strangest thing I have eaten in Tajikistan. Not a huge fan of meat in the first place, I couldn’t eat much of it. First of all, it smelled like goat, so that was a bit of a turn off for me. Second, like all meat in Tajikistan, it was mostly fat, and I actually was physically unable to chew it. Luckily, since I had been eating since 10:30, when I said “I’m so full,” I think it was plausible. And true. After an hour of the goat, Galya (the third oldest host sister with the 3 month old) got up and suggested she, Munisa (the final host sister who’s 15) go to her husband’s house to celebrate. So the three of us left (my first break from eating in 5 hours) and took a short cab ride to her house, where we were welcomed, sat down, and given more soup and snacks by her family-in-law. Again, every time I put my spoon down, all I heard was “GIR, GIR”. We left after an hour (the appropriate visiting duration) which was good, because someone had poured me a glass of this awful electric green (I’m trying to think of something to compare it to, but I really can’t imagine anything that green that I’ve ever seen before. Maybe highlighter fluid, but about eleven shades brighter) soda that tasted at once like liquefied jolly rancher and non-alcoholic rubbing alcohol. So when Munisa said we were going to leave, I was more than ready, to say the least. When we got home, some cousins (I think) were on their way to my host aunt (I think)’s house for more feasting. I was more than happy to hang out at the house (I thought if I put any more food in my stomach, I’d explode) but Matluba suggested I go with them and Munisa. So, we all piled into a minivan (about 10 of us in a car that could hold 5, not to mention that I, at least, had gained about 50 pounds since the morning) and drove across town to the aunt’s house. It was really fun, actually – all of the cousins were dancing and chatting and teasing one of them about how she’ll never impress her future in-laws (it kind of reminded me of being with my extended family, because there were just cousins and people everywhere, but to my mind, we’ve never talked about the proper way to serve soup to one’s in-laws). We were, of course, served more food, but luckily only nuts and chocolate – no meat or soup, so no pressure to eat a lot – and then we just watched Tajik TV and listened to Tajik and Russian music until Munisa and I left around 10:00. Since my bedtime here hovers around 8:30, I was exhausted, and so came home and, almost without a word, fell into bed.

On Monday, I went with a friend of my host sister to an aqueduct in Dushanbe. We walked around a bit (I fell in the mud a lot). Unfortunately, the water was quite low, because it’s fall (it will get much higher in the spring and summer as the snow melts), so it wasn’t as pretty as it might have been, but we did have some great views of snow covered mountains in the background (have I mentioned that I love Tajikistan?) Afterwards we went back to his house, where he showed me into the party room (set up with bottles of juice and soda, fruit, chocolate, cookies, nuts, etc.) and instructed me to “gir”. I told him that I was still full from Idi Qurbon, and he said “it’s still Idi Qurbon. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow” but didn’t make me eat. After a tour of his house (which was huge and looked like American – especially the kitchen, which had an oven (!) and a stove with gas fans above it), he showed me some photos of his last trip to the aqueduct (in the summer, with lots of water) and of his parents’ trip to New York City (apparently there is a Tajik Oshkhona there… a prize goes to someone who can find this for me and bring me there), and then we returned to my house.

On Tuesday, I awoke to a great surprise: It had been snowing all night. The floor of our courtyard was too wet and muddy for any of it to stick there, but the roofs and trees all over the city were covered with several inches of it. Because it’s so early, must of the trees still have their leaves, so lots of fallen branches all over Rudaki Avenue created lots of public transportation problems. 24 hours later, it’s still snowing which is nice, but cold. And yesterday, we lost power all afternoon and evening, so I ate dinner by candlelight with my host mother, sisters, and week-old nephew under thick winter blankets. Also, eleven Tajikistan points to whoever can explain to me how electricity is needed to turn boiling water into tea.