Travelin' Man

It seems that we pretty much skipped spring and have gone straight to Summer in Dushanbe. For the past couple of weeks, we've had temperatures in the 90s almost every day. Even the dryness doesn't make 90+ feel comfortable. Luckily, my travels over the last week got me out of some of the worst of it.

On Monday morning, I got home from my morning run, had breakfast, showered, and got a phone call from on of my travel staff telling me to get in a cab and come to the airport. The weather was clear and I had a ticket on the flight to Khorog. Since the flight only goes when the weather is perfectly clear between here and there, they don't even sell tickets until about an hour before the flight.

I said a quick good bye to Stephanie and hopped in a cab for the airport. When I asked the guy how much it would cost, he said 15 somoni - I had to ask him twice because I thought he was saying 50 somoni (the cost is normally about 30). But I heard right and thought that a deal like that had to be a good sign for my trip. One big area of uncertainty was how soon I'd be able to get back. If the weather changed, I'd have to wait for another clear day to fly back, or worse, take the dreaded 16 hour car ride!

My trip to Khorog was unbelievably smooth. As I mentioned in my last post, this flight is nothing if not uncertain. But we took off right on time and I got to enjoy the incredible views from the air.

Apparently, the plane flies low enough that cell phone service is still available.

It's definitely lower than some of the mountain tops as we flew between the peaks. Looking at the pictures, I still can't get over it. Some of them look like I was standing on the mountains. It's a little scary, but well worth it.

In Khorog, I had a bit of a scare when an airport official asked for my diplomatic passport and then got away from me. For about 10 minutes, I wandered around before I found him and got it back. Then I made my way to the guest house where I was to stay - the same one my family stayed at last fall - and made myself comfortable. I asked my hosts for advice on where to get lunch in town and whether I could find a place that would serve yak for dinner. The owner of the guesthouse gave me pointers for lunch and told me that he'd have his staff prepare me a yak dinner right there at the guest house!

I had a little bit of time before my presentation, so I wandered down to the park to enjoy the fresh, cool air and beautiful scenery.

At over 7,000 feet above sea level, Khorog offered much more pleasant temperatures than Dushanbe. When lunchtime rolled around, I made my way into the bazaar and found the restaurant that was recommended to me for a hearty meal of plov and lagman.

From there it was time to do my Earth Day presentation. We had a good group of students, but this was another case where I had to do a lot of translating into Russian. There were some tough questions as well, such as "If the United States won't sign the Kyoto Protocol, why should we care about the environment". I was definitely kept on my toes and was tired by the time I was done.

So I moseyed on back to the guest house and spent the evening reading on the porch until my yak feast was dinner.

With the trees blooming in the garden and the light of the setting sun on the mountains, I wished I could have stayed longer. Dinner was delicious and I went to be well fed.

Early the next morning, I got a phone call from Dushanbe saying that there would be a return flight and that I should get to the Khorog Airport asap to make sure I'd get a ticket. Flying up one day and back the next would be unprecedented luck, so I scarfed down a breakfast of blini and eggs and hightailed it to the airport. It looked like I was the first person there and the guy told me to go around back to the cashier. When I got to the indicated place, however, all I saw was an empty room with no doors or windows. Perplexed, I wandered around until someone else came in and pointed me to a 4 inch hole in the wall, which turned out to be the cashier.

While I was waiting for my ticket, another man came in and passed a plastic bottle of something smelling suspiciously like vodka to the cashier. I was hoping that he wouldn't turn out to also be the pilot. You never know.

Tickets in hand, I sat outside to read and wait for the registration to open. Everything went smoothly, aside from a short delay when we had to wait for a helicopter to land. The passes are too narrow for two aircraft to pass safely. When we were on board the plane, some guy who obviously thought himself a bigshot (he had a cop shining his shoes earlier), demanded that the pilot tell him why we were waiting. The pilot responded that we could wait a few more minutes or crash into the helicopter. I think the point was clear.

I got to enjoy another hour of incredible scenery before landing in Dushanbe.

I worked the rest of the day from home, and packed for my next trip, which was scheduled for Wednesday evening.

I left work on Wednesday a little early to get to the airport for my flight to Khujand, in the north of the country. This turned out to be the worst flight I've ever experienced. The plane to Khorog is the smallest plane I've ridden in, but at least there was a place to put my feet. On the plane to Khorog, I literally couldn't move for the entire time I was on the plane. I swear I could feel the woman's kidneys in the seat in front of mine. Add to this the fact that the plane was boiling when we got on, so I was sweating all over myself and the woman next to me. And to top it off, my seat belt had two of the same endings.

I guess it wouldn't have mattered anyway given the age of the plane, but it was just one more thing.

Getting off the plane into the cooler air was one of the best feelings ever. I got a cab to my hotel and met up with some other embassy colleagues for dinner. The lady at the reception desk was a real character. She insisted on personally escorting me to my room and showing me all of it's features. This included turning down the bed to prove that the sheets were clean, showing me the inside of the toilet, showing me how to open and close the windows, and scalding my hands to show me how hot the water was.

The next day, my presentation wasn't scheduled until the afternoon so we had the morning at our leisure. After breakfast, we headed out of town for lake Karaikum, also called the sea of Tajikistan because of it's huge size. There, we went to an unlikely looking place to buy fresh smoked fish. The proprietors wanted us to tell them how much fish we wanted and to bring it to us, but we insisted on going in and picking out the fish ourselves. I got to sample some and it was excellent, so I bought three fish for 10 somoni ( a little more than $2). It turned out to be a steal, because we found the same fish being sold at the bazaar for 25 somoni each!

Unfortunately, the fish sellers didn't have any plastic bags, so we all ended up smelling strongly of smoked fish by the time we found a store that would sell us some. Despite repeated washings, I didn't entirely get rid of the smell until the next day.

The lake itself was hard to take in as it was very hazy. It was also kind of disappointing because it was heavily littered with plastic bottles. More fodder for my Earth Day presentation...

After the lake, we headed to the main square where the mosque is located and spent some time at the bazaar.

I picked up some white honey and a special sausage called a Kazi, which I've never seen in Dushanbe. I was told that this sausage is especially for use in making plov. That reminded me that my favorite plov was in Khujand, so I asked that we go back to that restuarant for lunch. It was just as good as I remembered. Complete with stuffed grape leaves, boiled eggs, and sure enough, kazi.

Lunch took a little long so we had to rush to the American corner for my presentation. I also had to rush the presentation a bit because it had been planned from 1-2pm and my flight to Dushanbe was at 3 pm. My colleagues told me that it would be fine if we got to the airport by 2:30, but we didn't.

The presentation went well and I even finished a little early. But then one of my colleagues decided to buy a bunch of bread and sambusas on the way to the airport. We got there about 2:40. For someone like me, who likes to plan ahead, this was close to torture. But everything worked out. The airport officials hustled us through and onto the plane. I even lucked out and got a seat at the bulkhead exit row so I even had room to move my feet.

By the time I got home, I was pretty tired. In the last two weeks, I've been to five cities around Tajikistan. Three of them requred overnight trips and two of them involved flights. It's been amazing though, and I've gotten to see a lot of great scenery.

On Friday, I gave my last Earth Day presentation at the American Corner in Dushanbe. We had a good turn out and even the Ambassador attended.

I've enjoyed all of these little adventures, but it's nice to be done. Now we have a three day weekend and I'm putting it to good use recuperating.

There are many more pictures from my trips than what I've put on the blog. So, for those who are interested, here's the link:

Earth Day Tour 2011 JPGS

If They Resort to Serving Goat, Stay Away From The Beef

The travels I had planned this week didn't go quite the way I... planned. It wasn't really surprising since one of the trips was supposed to be to Khorog, in the Pamirs. This is the flight that only goes when there are no clouds whatsoever because the pilot has to be able to see between the mountains when he flies through them. Of course, this time of year the weather is far from unreliable, so the initial trip on Tuesday was cancelled.

Instead, I left early for the three and a half hour trip to Garm. To call Garm a city would be a gross understatement, but it's the major population center in the Rasht valley. Getting to go to Garm at all was uncertain as usually the government here starts counterinsurgency operations in that region around this time of year. In fact, a couple of days before I left, they announced that they had killed one of the opposition leaders. But our security officer determined that it was safe to go and the trip was without incident.

This was actually my second trip to Garm. We went last year in the beginning of March to see Buzkashi. Of course then it was still winter and the scenery was quite different this time around. It was nice to see the area all green with snowy mountains clear of most clouds.

Once in Garm, the driver and I decided to stop for lunch. Although it's small, Garm is in an extremely picturesque location.

There are only two restaurants in Garm, so I decided to try the one we didn't eat at last time. At first it seemed encouraging because the decor was really nice.

But then the lady told us that the only dish was bread with yogurt and oil because the sanitation department had shut down the butchers at the bazaar for being unsanitary and there was no meat in town. Now, everyone knows I'm an adventurous eater, but yogurt, bread and oil didn't sound adventurous, just gross. Even the driver seemed put off. He suggested that we go to the first floor of the restaurant because they might have different options. Don't ask why, I didn't.

However, when they served shirbo (soup) and goulash with meat, I did ask why. Why, if there was no meat, were we eating meat? I didn't get a clear answer and the driver didn't seem to think it was a problem. But after lunch he said that at dinner we should plan to have some vodka to sterilize ourselves - that's a direct translation. Needless to say, I was a bit concerned, but what's done was done.

After lunch I gave my Earth Day presentation to three different groups of students. This time, the students had varying levels of English. In one group, I had to give the presentation in both English and Russian, going back and forth for each point. It really tested my language capabilities and was exhausting. Nonetheless, it was well received and I enjoyed myself.

For dinner, we went to the other restaurant because the driver thought it would be safer. When a local person worries about food safety, it's cause for concern. We had goat and french fries because that's what the restaurant was serving. And of course, we had a decent amount of vodka to 'sterilize' ourselves.

Going to bed at the hotel, I was more than a little apprehensive about what to expect from the digestive perspective, but seemed to get through relatively unscathed. The next morning we had a quick breakfast and made our way back to Dushanbe, enjoying another day of beautiful weather.

On Thursday morning, my travel team called to say that the flight to Khorog was going to take off and that I would need to be at the airport by 10am. So I quickly rushed home and got Stephanie to help pack my bags. And as I was a bout to head out the door, they called and told me to wait. I waited, and waited, for about two hours before it became clear that the flight was going to take off too late for me to make my presentation so I went back to work. I know how unreliable that flight is, but it's still infuriating to go through all that effort for nothing.

On Friday we marked Earth Day at the embassy. I had organized a paper recycling drive for the week and we held a short ceremony with the Ambassador in the afternoon. We've recycled over 3 tons of paper in less than a year, which is substantial. We've also started installing the solar lights and LED light bulbs that we ordered last year, so it's nice to see some of my plans coming to fruition. The best thing is that all of these initiatives actually save money. So if any of my congressional representatives happen to read this, I hope that's noted.

Stephanie and I had a date night Friday after work and went to the Korean restaurant. It was a wonderful dinner and it was also where things went downhill. I guess I didn't escape Garm as unscathed as I though since I was up all night with Tajik Tummy and couch-ridden all day today. It was a shame because Stephanie and I had a lot of plans for Easter. We still managed to dye Easter eggs and came up with some interesting colors from our limited supply. I'll try to get pictures up later. For now, I'm going to focus on recovering and hope that tomorrow I'll be up to eating some of our goodies.

Road Show

As I mentioned, on Thursday and Friday, I made the first two stops of a country-wide tour for Earth Day. Like last year, I prepared a presentation to teach students about the history of environmentalism, current problems, and potential solutions. It went very well last year, which is why I'm expanding the program this year. I also added information about a number of embassy programs that are improving sustainability in Tajikistan, both at the embassy and in the country at large.

On Thursday, I went to the town of Qurgon Teppa, about an hour and a half outside of Dushanbe.

My first stop was at a small elementary school and it's still my favorite stop so far. I presented to a class of English-language students and they were extremely engaged and asked lots of questions. They talked about wanting to do a trash clean-up in their town and then gave me several of their own presentations. One was a skit about a talking tree.

Another was a song about water.

And the third was a speech about important things that we can do for the environment.

I was thoroughly impressed.

After a delicious lunch of plov and lagman, I went to the American Corner (AC), where I had one of the larger crowds so far - over 40 students. The AC coordinator said it was the most people they've ever had at one time. The group was also very attentive, but didn't ask as many questions. I wasn't surprised since it was an older group of students and the older they get, the less willing they are to ask question - same as in the United States.

I later found out that one of the reasons we had so many students was because the local university couldn't get permission from the ministry of education for me to speak. This is an ongoing problem for the embassy because every year, the Public Diplomacy section has to get permission from the government of Tajikistan to speak at the universities. As usual, the government is taking its sweet time.

On Friday I made a longer trip to the southern city of Kulob, about three and a half hours from Dushanbe. There, I started with the American Corner.

Afterward, during lunch, we got word that the local Ministry of Education officials gave permission specifically for me to give my presentation (not to be mistaken for the broader blanket permission that we are still waiting for).

When we got to Kulob University, there was one more unexpected hurdle. I had to meet with the head of the faculty for foreign studies. He asked what my presentation was about and then told me it would be better if I were talking about education. I didn't really know what to say to that, but I explained that I had a whole powerpoint presentation ready and when he learned there would be pictures, he was appeased.

Since the arrangements were so last minute, I wasn't expecting many students, but we easily had over 60 students. These was the oldest group I had spoken to, so they asked the least questions, but still seemed generally interested.

One of the nicest things about all this traveling is getting to see the country in spring. Even though the weather was sort of rainy, there were some very dramatic landscapes.

In particular, I was interested in seeing the Nurek reservoir. This body feeds the country's largest dam, which produces 80-90% of the electricity. This year it's been making headlines because of record-low water levels (due to low precipitation or mismanagement, depending on who you ask).

I could see that the reports were not exaggerated. There was a lot of land exposed that I had never seen before, and in one place there were only mud flats where there used to be a lake.

Hopefully the rainy season will last a bit longer this year. The situation seems to be getting a little better as the electricity rationing has stopped - at least in Dushanbe - for the time being.

The rainy weather cleared away for the weekend and Stephanie and I took full advantage of the beautiful weather. On Saturday, after my haircut, we walked down to an outdoor restaurant we like for lunch. Then we spent the afternoon in the park behind the opera house just reading and relaxing. We even stopped at one of the restaurants there for tea and ice cream.

In the evening, we went to see the first Arabic Opera, Avecinna. Avecinna is the westernized name of Ibn Sino, the famous philosopher and doctor, who lived in Bukhara during the Samanid dynasty. I haven't been able to find much about the story online, but the opera was translated into Tajiki for the Dushanbe performance.

It was an impressive show and I don't mean just impressive for Dushanbe. There were elaborate sets and costumes and the singers and orchestra were excellent. We really enjoyed the show.

Fortunately, they don't seem concerned about the use of cameras during performances so in addition the pictures, I was able to get a couple of short videos. They're a little over-bright, but I think they convey the idea well enough.

We followed the opera with dinner at the Ukrainian restaurant (always a favorite) and then finally went home.

Today we spent a bit more time on mundane things around the house. Yard work, cooking, etc... Although we did experiment with Stephanie's candle making kit, with mixed success. We're still learning.

The other thing I got done was to complete my montage of Buzkashi video from a month ago. I hope you enjoy...

Next week has more travel in store for me, so I'm sure stories will follow.

Touring Tajikistan

We survived the Annual Bilateral Consultations and our VIP guests have safely departed back to Washington. Overall the visit was much easier than the planning and I even got to go on a hike as part of the deal. The weather in the eastern part of Tajikistan wasn't good enough for the delegation to make a planned trip to Khorog, but it was fine here in the Dushanbe area. So a group went on a hike with the Assistant Secretary and his entourage. It was a beautiful day for it and I got some great pictures.

In the U.S., fall is without question my favorite time of year, but in Dushanbe spring takes the cake. The hills are green and the mountains are still snowy.

With those events out of the way, I've been free to get back to a sense of normalcy, sort of. The Public Diplomacy section asked if I would repeat my tour of giving presentations on Earth Day, so of course I agreed. This year I'll be travelling even farther and wider than last year. I started today with a trip to Qurgon Teppa, not far from Dushanbe. Since I have to get an early start tomorrow morning, I won't be able to get the pictures up, but I'll provide updates on my adventures as I have time.

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.

Another Week Gone By

There goes another week. It's been really busy at the embassy as we've been transitioning to a new electronic travel program and preparing for some big visits in the next couple of weeks (no, nothing newsworthy).

Thanks to Stephanie, I had a wonderful birthday. We had planned to go to the Hyatt for their business lunch on Friday (a week ago), but when we got there we learned that they had cancelled the business lunch for the week because of the holiday. It would have been nice if they had announced that before we went all the way there. I guess that wasn't such a nice start to things. But Stephanie more than made up for it.

Last Saturday, she baked me a delicious carrot cake and we had some friends over for a game night. On Sunday, I had chocolate chip pancakes for my birthday breakfast and we feasted on leftovers all day. Unfortately, by the time we were ready to go out for my birthday dinner, we were both too full so we postponed it until this weekend.

My family was also very generous and sent a bunch of Girl Scout cookies, most of which have already been devoured. I haven't had Samoas or Tagalongs for two years, so they were a welcome treat.

The week was a generally blur, but Friday was a perfect spring day and my morning commute stands out in my mind. As I was walking to catch a marshrutka, the sky was blue, birds were singing, leaves were budding on the trees, and the sun was glinting off the gold teeth of a local man, who was greeting a friend with a smile.

I decided to spare my wasteline a bit and took some of the Girl Scout cookies into work on Friday. None of my staff had ever heard of them, but they were devoured before 9am. There are lots of ways to share the American experience, and I think that was one of the most delicous.

Yesterday, we rescheduled my birthday dinner and had a wonderful meal of sushi at the local steak house. The sushi is very good quality and not just by Dushanbe standards.

Stephanie has started taking tennis lessons once a week with a local instructor and is keeping busy. We're both starting to think ahead about our transition from here to Moscow. It's hard to believe we'll be leaving Dushanbe in a little less than 5 months.