We're off!

Here we are... Waiting at the airport. So far, so good, except that we weren't able to get our seat assignments online. When I called the airline, the Danish guy told me that "the seats are reserved for the passengers". Which frankly was not all the helpful. So when we checked in, I hoped we'd be able to get seats then. But the woman told us that we could get our seat assignments at the gate. So after an easy and hassle-free trip through security (for us; the guy ahead of us tried to bring a fake sword, which TSA deemed too realistic for the flight), we arrived at the gate. Unfortunately the woman at the gate took our boarding passes, told us she'd page us at 4:30 (which is what time we are supposed to be boarding) and sent us on our way. So now, one free coffee later, here we sit, at the gate, with no seat assignment, no boarding passes, and 16 minutes to boarding time. Sounds like a good start to a trip to Russia to me!

Testing

Hello again! This post is a test to see how terrible it is to blog via iPhone before I decide whether to bring my computer on my next adventure.

For those who don't know, as a post-graduation present to ourselves, my roommate Ashley and I had planned a Russia trip. It transformed from a transsiberian railway trip from Moscow to Beijing into a 2 week tour of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Helsinki. Then, after some prompting from my aunt, I decided to continue extend it as a backpacking trip down to Istanbul, a city I've been itching to see ever since I looked out at it from the plane on my way to Tajikistan (2 years ago, how crazy is that?). I'll be traveling trough the Baltics, down through Poland to the Czech Republic to Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, a few towns in Romania on the way to Bucharest, to Sofia, finally to Istanbul, and I'll be flying home from there. I'm leaving in 11 days, and I'll be gone until October 21. I'm a little nervous about traveling alone, but mostly I am so excited! I'm just finishing up a couple last minute planning things, and then I'll be on my way!

One Month In

And what a busy month it has been. I apologize that I haven’t been updating as frequently as I had promised – I’ve had a lot to do with schoolwork, and now with my internship at Al-Taawon Trust.

I guess I’ll talk about that first, since it’s the most exciting! Al-Taawon is a community development organization that is doing a lot of awesome work in Korgocho, a slum in Eastern Nairobi. Right now, I’m only working there one day a week, but starting in three weeks (after our AU Abroad class ends and we have two more free days) I’ll be there three times a week, which will be awesome. We’re working on two major projects: one is setting up a computer center in the local government school (but first we have to figure out how to get them some electricity). That includes teacher and student training programs, which hopefully I’ll be able to help out with a bit. The second one is a reproductive health awareness project that’s geared toward Korogochoians around the ages of 12 and 15. This week, I’m supposed to be writing a script that will be performed by some actors in another of Korogocho’s community groups. I’ve only been there three days so far, and things are pretty unorganized, but hopefully things will start rolling soon – I’m excited!

Classes are still going along – I’m loving my Swahili class (even though it starts at 8 am and is a half hour walk away). Swahili’s an awesome (and pretty easy) language, and it’s just the AU Abroad group, which is fun. Also, Fred, the professor, is wonderful, and class is just really fun and relaxed. We have our first quiz tomorrow though, and I’m sitting here looking at my stack of 200 notecards (and that’s just the beginning… I had to send my roommate out on an index card run, so I’m waiting for her to return to add some more…) wondering how I will ever remember the difference between nimelewa (I’m drunk), ninaelewa (I understand), and nimeolewa (I am married). We’ll see how that goes. Politics of Culture in Kenya, our other AU Abroad only class – the one that is ending at the end of the month – is interesting, but I’m pretty much over the three hour classes twice a week. Also, did you know that Nairobi was originally divided into three residential zones, based on race? I didn’t upon my arrival here, but since then, I must have read about it in every single thing we read in that class. Then there are the USIU classes. Don’t get me wrong. I was warned about these classes by previous Kenya participants before I left, but the United States International University is just not a place I want to be on Mondays and Wednesdays. First of all, it’s such a trek to get there… first there’s a matatu to town, which usually takes about 20 minutes on a decent traffic day, and then there is the USIU bus, which leaves from town at 10:30 and occasionally reaches the university just in time for the 11:00 class. Once, we arrived at 11:40, because of some traffic jam. No one really seemed to mind. And on top of the trip, the classes themselves are just… not my favorite part of the semester. My International Humanitarian Law professor explained the structure of a research paper to us last week: Introduction, Body, Conclusion! Some of my friends in a literature class have to write a book report, complete with a paragraph on whether they would recommend the book to a friend. I’m pretty stressed about my law midterm coming up, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know anything about humanitarian law. We’ll see how it goes. My French class is a lot better, mostly because the professor loves tangents, being side-tracked and storytelling with a lot of mimed actions. Classes are certainly never dry, and I do feel like I’m learning some French (even though I still don’t understand why half the word is silent…).

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.