Of Budgets and Crooked Men With Tiny Light Sabers

Another week has sped by in Dushanbe. Work is now mostly consumed with the end of fiscal year process. Without giving anything away about how we reconcile budgets and close out the year, I can say that we are very busy making sure that we've used government money as it was intended. It's a great learning experience and is giving me some really good insight into how an embassy, and really the whole government, work from a financial point of view.

On top of the flurry of fiscal fun, we received a shipment of eight 40 foot shipping containers at once. Usually, we only get one or two at the most and that's about all our laborers can handle. We don't usually know what's in the containers until we get them so as far as we knew it was just some unlucky confluence of orders descending upon us at once. Fortunately, it just turned out to be a big shipment of large items that were easy to unload in a short period of time and the team was able to get through it in a couple of days.

On a more disappointing note, there were rumors that we'd get our bid list for our next assignments this week that turned out to be very untrue. Now there is no firm idea of when the lists will be available, but my colleagues and I who are due to bid in this next round are all chomping at the bit for any scrap of information or clue as to when we can expect it. Bidding is by far one of the highlights of Foreign Service life as we get to speculate about where we could go next.

Outside of work has been almost as interesting. On Wednesday, coming home from work, my marshrutka driver saved all 7 passengers (me included) from a very nasty crash when he swerved after a large SUV made a u-turn from the other side of the road into our lane. It's been almost a year since we got here and I still haven't figured out if people are really that oblivious or just don't care. Earlier in the week, the driver of the car I was in suddenly put the car in reverse and drove backwards against traffic for a good mile before continuing further. No clue as to why.

In more transit fun... Thursday, on my way to the gym, I had to wait quite some time to get a ride because there was an inordinate amount of police officers with their pazhalusta sticks, as we call them. (Pazhalusta means 'please' in Russian and the cops here all have these little orange sticks, like cutoff light sabers, that they use to tell people 'please pull over'. Although, if you see them do it, there's nothing so polite as 'please' about it since they're usually just asking for bribes). Anyway, there were so many, that the cars that didn't get pulled over just sped by to get out of the way. Then there was the one cop who was just standing in the middle of the road, pulling people over in the middle of traffic. There were several times I thought for sure he was going to get run over, but no such luck.

And like any good super-busy week, this one finished off with a surprise. I found out that I need to go to training in Washington the week of August 23rd. Not only is this an unexpected trip halfway around the world, but I will now see my family less than a week before they arrive in Dushanbe to visit us. How ironic!

So with all of that put behind, Stephanie and I went to a happy hour at the marine house after work to say good bye to departing colleagues, then we tried a new Korean restaurant on the main street with some friends. It was remarkable because the food was delicious, the restaurant was clean, and the wait staff was professional and courteous. A trifecta rarely found in Tajikistan. As a bonus, they even had Western toilets. Besides all that, it's nice to have another type of food to choose from. We finished off the night by stopping by a luau sponsored by the embassy and just enjoyed hanging out.

The weird weather continues and it has recently become oddly humid here. We especially noticed it last night when even at 10pm it was uncomfortable outside. Usually, with the low humidity, the nights are quite cool by around 8:30. Even today, the weather remains quite yucky. I went to get a haircut and being under the smock with no air conditioning was quite unbearable, although I did have an interesting conversation with my barber about the upcoming Ramadan season in Russian.

On a closing note, Happy Birthday Mom!