Of Budgets, Blackouts, and Big Visits

Well, as of this writing, it looks like we will finally have a budget for the rest of the fiscal year. But it sure was a lot of work preparing for the potential shutdown. Embassies generally remain open during a shutdown, in the interest of national security, but there are still an endless number of processes that are affected and contingency plans had to be put in place.

Add to that, the fact that we are preparing for the Annual Bilateral Consultations between the United States and Tajikistan. Of course, this involves a number of high-level visitors and extremely complicated plans for logistics. Again, with the budget situation uncertain, we had to have contingency plans for everything just in case. Nonetheless, now that the budget situation seems to be in hand, we can get back to doing our jobs.

The other hot story in Dushanbe is the looming energy crisis. According to news reports, the state energy company was selling electricity to Afghanistan during the winter months when the supply is severely limited in Tajikistan. It's bad enough that Tajikistan sells electricity abroad when it doesn't have enough for it's own people, but now it seems to have put us in a crisis situation.

The mild winter and below average precipitation this spring have left the reservoir at the main hydro power station only about a meter above dead level. This power plant supplies 70-80% of Tajikistan's electricity. The power company is blaming it entirely on the weather, but the stories of power being sold abroad during the winter is understandably creating a lot of skepticism. As of now, most of the country is running on two hours of power per day or less. In Dushanbe, the power goes off at 10:30pm and comes on again at 5:00am. What's funny is that the blackouts are the only reliable thing I've seen from the Tajik government. At 10:30pm on the dot, the power goes out. You could set your clock by it.

Since spring is usually the time when the rivers flow their fastest, if we don't get some significant rain, we could have a very interesting summer.

But even hotter news is that Stephanie and I both made appearances in a fashionable local magazine...

When we heard that our picture was in the magazine, Stephanie and I ran out to get a copy. Something neat to keep for posterity. My first appearance was as part of a feature the magazine did on life at the embassy. I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but I'm guessing that most of it has to do with how to get a job at the embassy. When we met with the journalists, they weren't as interested in how the embassy works or the things that we do to help Tajikistan as they were in finding out how to get jobs. I guess that's not surprising.

The second appearance was in an article about that big shindig at the Hyatt last year. So Stephanie and I now rank among the 'who's who' in Dushanbe.