Cool Weather, Hot Tempers, and Other Stories

It looks as though cool weather is upon us at last. While the blast furnace of Summer died off long ago, we were still getting into the upper 80s and low 90s on a regular basis. Now, highs are in the 70s at best and into the low 40s at night. Sweet comfort! The other great thing about the cooler weather is that it seems to have done in the remaining aphids that were attacking my collard greens.

Nothing too major as we roar full speed ahead into the holiday season, but I’ll share a couple of stories.

On Friday night, Stephanie asked me to pick up some bread on the way home. I walked about halfway from where the marshrutka lets me off before I got to the place we usually go. So I’m standing there at the counter, waiting for my turn but the clerk ignored me. In fact, he took two other customers who came in after me. Then, when I finally got his attention and asked how much the bread was, he told me and walked away to help another newcomer before I could even say “yes please”.

Knowing that there’s more than one place to get bread in this town, I stalked out and started heading back toward the marshrutka stop. I stopped in the first store I found and was able to get the price of bread from a clerk right away. I took my loaf up to the counter to pay and gave the guy my money. But rather than give me my change, he held on to my two somoni and started texting on his phone. Now, by this point, I wasn’t long on patience, so I snatched the money out of his hand, plunked the loaf of bread on the counter, and told him “If you want to earn money, pay attention to your customers!”. The concept seemed most surprising to him.

Finally, when I had walked almost all the way back to where I started, I found a store with prices clearly marked, went to the counter, and a young boy took my money and gave me my change in less than 15 seconds. On the way home, I poked my head into each of the previous stores and waved my bread at them. Despite the fact that I had to walk twice as far, and despite the fact that I paid a whole 20 dirham (4 cents) more, I felt triumphant. And the bread was delicious.

Not much else to report from the weekend. I went to a friend’s house for a rousing night of karaoke, performing my standard “Baby Got Back”, plus a few new favorites like “New York, New York”, “Hey Ya”, and “Painted Black”. I even branched out to a couple of Russian songs. A great time all around.

One other thing that I haven’t mentioned, but can, now that it’s made the mainstream news, are the recent incidents of violence around Tajikistan. Things started heating up in August when about 25 prisoners escaped from the main jail in Dushanbe. The government claimed that they were extremists, although here, you have to take everything with a grain of salt. The escapees seemed more interested in getting away than causing trouble, so we weren’t particularly concerned. It only affected us in the fact that we had to take the southern road back from our trip to the Pamirs because the northern one was closed as part of the hunt for the fugitives.

While we were in the Pamirs, Tajikistan had its first suicide bombing in the northern city of Khujand – about 7 hours driving from Dushanbe. The attack was clearly aimed at the government, not at civilians, much less foreigners or Americans. Shortly thereafter, a bomb went off at a Dushanbe night club, wounding 7 people. The big news, though, was an attack by insurgents, (as they are called by the host government), on a convoy of Tajiki soldiers. This occurred in a region to the east of Dushanbe and the violence has been simmering ever since. Facts are hard to come by as it appears the local government is working hard to censor information about the conflict.

For all our friends and family, there is nothing to worry about at this time. None of these events have targeted foreigners or Americans at all. The embassy is keeping a constant watch on the situation and I can honestly say that the safety of American citizens is their top priority. The embassy has been releasing information to let private American citizens in Tajikistan know of the precautions the embassy is taking, such as declaring the affected region off limits. The situation is concerning, but certainly not scary for us. Stephanie and I are able to go about our daily business without fear. We just maintain the same level of vigilance that everyone should in these times. If that ever changes, we’ll let you know.