June 6, 2008
Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Tajikistan is the poorestof the four countries that we visited on this mission. Sixty percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The contrast coming from Kazakhstan, the richest in the region, is striking. Dujanbe is more the size of a regional capital, so I have to keep reminding myself that I am in the capital of a country. I attended a reception where there was a representative from the U.S. embassy and I was blown away when he said they had 50 staff here, until he reminded me that Tajikistan shares a border with Afhanistan. Oh, yeah...
Another contrast besides the wealth is the clothing styles, indicating a much more traditional culture. Virtually all women wear long skirts and many cover their heads with a scarf. But for some reason, they only seem to import the baggiest dresses with the loudest, brightest prints. If Tashkent was dominated by extremely fashion-concious women wearing very well-cut, form-fitting dresses, this country can be said to be a fashion nightmare. It's also hot. Damn hot. Temperatures over 40 celsius (105 farenheit) in the shade. So having to wear long, polyester dresses must not be much fun. I sweat buckets just looking at them.
The Tajikstanis are poor, but they are working hard to re-build their country after 10 years of civil war, 60,000 dead, and half a million displaced. Forty percent of the adult population has migrated internationally (mostly to Russia) for work. They must be finding it because they send a half a billion dollars a year back to the country, which is about 70% of the GNP.
There are so few tourists here, and an apparently amazing mountain range, it seems criminal that we won't see anything outside our hotel or office. Luckily, our hotel - Marion's Guesthouse - is a veritable oasis. Both Susanna and I almost broke into tears when we arrived. It is a B and B with 8 rooms and a small pool, large rooms, free wi-fi, free driving service, free laundry service, and 80 euros a night. Just too good to be true. So we are glad that we are ending our trip here.
I have to end with a quote about another hotel in town from the Lonely Planet Central Asia guidebook, which has been our bible for restaurant eating anyway. The wry style of writing makes it an enjoyable read, regardless of whether or not one is traveling there:
Hotel Avesto: Old-fashioned and chronically overpriced monster with a dreary Soviet feel, though some rooms have a fine view of the mosque and the suites are big enough to get lost in. the management must be waiting for the Brezhnev-era wallpaper to come back into style. The US and Russian embassies used to be here, so expect some rooms to be bugged...
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
23 hours in Kazakhstan
June 5, 2008
En route from Almaty, Kazkhstan to Dujanbe, Tajikstan
We got in the country but I’m not sure it was worth $262 in visa support and visa costs and all of the hassle. If Uzbekistan was characterized by friendliness and hospitality (and a certain level of ‘cloak and dagger’), then Kazakhstan can be characterized by its suspicion and xenophobia.
From the time we arrived until we left we felt unwelcome, examined, and suspected. For example, arriving at one of the “luxury” hotels in town (former Department of Geology), we are greeted with “Documenty!” We were then given the privilege of handing over $200 for one night in a giant (thankfully cool) cave with one small double bed (strangely short), two chairs, two bedside tables, a desk and a TV. But it is only one night and we are in Central Asia and are not going to complain. The high cost and low value is irritating but we had been warned that Almaty is a very expensive city. However, we were given a taste of the back side (or maybe cause) of the paranoia here the next morning when we were checking out of our room: pure corruption. The housekeeper came to our room to check the mini-bar. She claimed that we drank 2 bottles of water (complimentary water is apparently not included in the $200). We insist that we only drank one bottle of water and show her the empty bottle as evidence. Down at the front desk, we are now accused of drinking three bottles of water. We are obviously being scammed and insist that we will only pay for one bottle. It’s not the money that is the problem (although $4 for 250 ml of water is a scam in itself), but the fact that we know the blasted housekeeper is completely corrupt. They threaten to call the police if we don’t pay for the other two bottles and since prison isn’t something we want to add to our list of misadventures, we call our contact in Almaty who talks to her. She then tells him there is no problem because “I only charged them for one bottle.” Grrr…Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to get out of the country.
But trying to leave is almost as difficult as getting in. The passport control to leave is puzzlingly the most rigorous of any country I have ever visited. But all of the suspicion and unfriendliness we experienced probably had nothing to do with us; Kazkhstan has simply not been able to shake the Soviet mantle the way the other Central Asian countries we have visited have. For example, we noticed that every time two people exchanged shifts, all items and money had to be counted and checked. I think the paranoia would drive me crazy if I lived here.
Enough whining. We are now on a Tajik Air flight to Dujanbe, Tajikstan and already we can feel that the final country on our tour is going to be very different from anything we have experienced thus far. Boarding was a chaotic, whirling adventure, with people waving their boarding cards around, children bawling, and someone blasting Persian music from their own radio for everyone’s enjoyment. A troupe of 10 year old “Scouts” walks by with blue uniforms and white braiding, a line of skinny, grim Indian or Pakistani men file by. The only people not making noise are the few women in headscarves. Lunch is a plastic box filled with a potpourri of items from around the world: Finnish cheese, a Chinese wet wipe, Turkish peach juice and chocolate, Russian chicken and prune pate and apricot jam, Iranian cookies, Moroccan Nescafe, Belarusian hard candies, Dutch butter, and boiled eggs and bread presumably from Kazakhstan. The United Nations in a box!
En route from Almaty, Kazkhstan to Dujanbe, Tajikstan
We got in the country but I’m not sure it was worth $262 in visa support and visa costs and all of the hassle. If Uzbekistan was characterized by friendliness and hospitality (and a certain level of ‘cloak and dagger’), then Kazakhstan can be characterized by its suspicion and xenophobia.
From the time we arrived until we left we felt unwelcome, examined, and suspected. For example, arriving at one of the “luxury” hotels in town (former Department of Geology), we are greeted with “Documenty!” We were then given the privilege of handing over $200 for one night in a giant (thankfully cool) cave with one small double bed (strangely short), two chairs, two bedside tables, a desk and a TV. But it is only one night and we are in Central Asia and are not going to complain. The high cost and low value is irritating but we had been warned that Almaty is a very expensive city. However, we were given a taste of the back side (or maybe cause) of the paranoia here the next morning when we were checking out of our room: pure corruption. The housekeeper came to our room to check the mini-bar. She claimed that we drank 2 bottles of water (complimentary water is apparently not included in the $200). We insist that we only drank one bottle of water and show her the empty bottle as evidence. Down at the front desk, we are now accused of drinking three bottles of water. We are obviously being scammed and insist that we will only pay for one bottle. It’s not the money that is the problem (although $4 for 250 ml of water is a scam in itself), but the fact that we know the blasted housekeeper is completely corrupt. They threaten to call the police if we don’t pay for the other two bottles and since prison isn’t something we want to add to our list of misadventures, we call our contact in Almaty who talks to her. She then tells him there is no problem because “I only charged them for one bottle.” Grrr…Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to get out of the country.
But trying to leave is almost as difficult as getting in. The passport control to leave is puzzlingly the most rigorous of any country I have ever visited. But all of the suspicion and unfriendliness we experienced probably had nothing to do with us; Kazkhstan has simply not been able to shake the Soviet mantle the way the other Central Asian countries we have visited have. For example, we noticed that every time two people exchanged shifts, all items and money had to be counted and checked. I think the paranoia would drive me crazy if I lived here.
Enough whining. We are now on a Tajik Air flight to Dujanbe, Tajikstan and already we can feel that the final country on our tour is going to be very different from anything we have experienced thus far. Boarding was a chaotic, whirling adventure, with people waving their boarding cards around, children bawling, and someone blasting Persian music from their own radio for everyone’s enjoyment. A troupe of 10 year old “Scouts” walks by with blue uniforms and white braiding, a line of skinny, grim Indian or Pakistani men file by. The only people not making noise are the few women in headscarves. Lunch is a plastic box filled with a potpourri of items from around the world: Finnish cheese, a Chinese wet wipe, Turkish peach juice and chocolate, Russian chicken and prune pate and apricot jam, Iranian cookies, Moroccan Nescafe, Belarusian hard candies, Dutch butter, and boiled eggs and bread presumably from Kazakhstan. The United Nations in a box!
Control, gender and HIV in Uzbekistan
June 2, 2008
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world. Everything is orderly and clean and one constantly feels watched. All of our meetings are attended by more than one person, presumably to control the information that we receive. There seems to be little crime. But they can’t seem to keep the drugs out. In some areas of the country (near Afghanistan and Turkmenistan) heroin is apparently cheaper than vodka (which is dirt cheap). One can imagine what a nightmare it would be if the same were the case in Europe or the U.S. Some say the problem has gotten worse since the Americans entered Afghanistan. Others give a more nuanced picture, which is that it initially peaked, but then has declined and is still quite high.
We have been told that before the ‘War on Terror,’ “Everybody loved Americans.” Now not everybody loves Americans. Despite this, we met several people who say they know at least 10 people who have emigrated to the U.S. They say they like it, except for the food.
I didn’t feel any anti-Americanism there, albeit I was speaking Swedish the whole time. Those who did find out I was American usually smiled broadly and asked where I was from. Then they told me where their family and friends lived: “New York, Tennessee, Los Angeles…”
One of the unfortunate backsides of this lovely and friendly country is the status of women. Although they are to be found at all levels of the workforce (30% of parliamentarians are women, which is better than the U.S. senate!), their role is apparently extremely controlled. Girls are tightly guarded and married off between 18 and 20 years of age. We were assured that “There is no pre-marital sex in Uzbekistan.” If it is discovered that a girl has had sex before marriage or a child out of wedlock then she is banned from the family. If a woman with children is divorced or widowed and re-marries she is considered a “bad mother.” Boys and men are, of course, also restricted by gender norms (marriage by 25 being de rigueur for them), but sex outside of marriage for men is tolerated, and even encouraged. We’re not exactly sure who they are having sex with if women are not allowed; presumably sex workers or “fallen women.”
The honor of the family can sometimes result in a very tragic outcome: some babies or children who are born with HIV or infected through blood (which several hundred were a few years ago), have been given up for adoption by their families because of shame and stigma. Of course, this is also due to lack of knowledge and information about HIV, which is something that the country is trying to improve. Unfortunately, personnel at the orphanages do not have the knowledge themselves to care for the children so they are doubly stigmatized (actually, triply, since orphans are also a stigmatized group in themselves). They reportedly divulge the child’s status to others, refuse to give them their anti-retrovirals, and refuse to bathe them with other children because of fear that they will infect them. We met a non-governmental group running a wonderful child development center for HIV positive children in Tahskent, but they are the only group of their kind in the whole country, and their funding is minimal.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world. Everything is orderly and clean and one constantly feels watched. All of our meetings are attended by more than one person, presumably to control the information that we receive. There seems to be little crime. But they can’t seem to keep the drugs out. In some areas of the country (near Afghanistan and Turkmenistan) heroin is apparently cheaper than vodka (which is dirt cheap). One can imagine what a nightmare it would be if the same were the case in Europe or the U.S. Some say the problem has gotten worse since the Americans entered Afghanistan. Others give a more nuanced picture, which is that it initially peaked, but then has declined and is still quite high.
We have been told that before the ‘War on Terror,’ “Everybody loved Americans.” Now not everybody loves Americans. Despite this, we met several people who say they know at least 10 people who have emigrated to the U.S. They say they like it, except for the food.
I didn’t feel any anti-Americanism there, albeit I was speaking Swedish the whole time. Those who did find out I was American usually smiled broadly and asked where I was from. Then they told me where their family and friends lived: “New York, Tennessee, Los Angeles…”
One of the unfortunate backsides of this lovely and friendly country is the status of women. Although they are to be found at all levels of the workforce (30% of parliamentarians are women, which is better than the U.S. senate!), their role is apparently extremely controlled. Girls are tightly guarded and married off between 18 and 20 years of age. We were assured that “There is no pre-marital sex in Uzbekistan.” If it is discovered that a girl has had sex before marriage or a child out of wedlock then she is banned from the family. If a woman with children is divorced or widowed and re-marries she is considered a “bad mother.” Boys and men are, of course, also restricted by gender norms (marriage by 25 being de rigueur for them), but sex outside of marriage for men is tolerated, and even encouraged. We’re not exactly sure who they are having sex with if women are not allowed; presumably sex workers or “fallen women.”
The honor of the family can sometimes result in a very tragic outcome: some babies or children who are born with HIV or infected through blood (which several hundred were a few years ago), have been given up for adoption by their families because of shame and stigma. Of course, this is also due to lack of knowledge and information about HIV, which is something that the country is trying to improve. Unfortunately, personnel at the orphanages do not have the knowledge themselves to care for the children so they are doubly stigmatized (actually, triply, since orphans are also a stigmatized group in themselves). They reportedly divulge the child’s status to others, refuse to give them their anti-retrovirals, and refuse to bathe them with other children because of fear that they will infect them. We met a non-governmental group running a wonderful child development center for HIV positive children in Tahskent, but they are the only group of their kind in the whole country, and their funding is minimal.
Tashkent: beautiful, but sinister
June 1, 2008
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Note: I wrote these blogs from Uzbekistan a few days ago but we were nervous about posting them while we were still in the country.
There aren’t a lot of foreigners here but there are a lot of empty hotel rooms. There are even fewer foreigners who don’t speak Russian. So the bellhop laughed when he heard I didn’t speak Russian and asked “Why not?” Why not, indeed? Who needs to speak anything else? Hmm, reminds me of another place I know…
The city of Tashkent is the largest capital in Central Asia (2 million officially, but apparently 4 million unofficially). There has been a town here for 2,000 years, although it was first referred to as ‘Toshkent’ in the 11th century, and it was never as more famous as Samarkand, which is a few hundred miles away. Most of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1966 so there is little of historic interest to see. It is very modern, green, and clean, with wide, wide boulevards, shady parks on almost every block, and many Soviet-style buildings leftover from before 1991. However, these are interspersed with beautiful Georgian (the architectural style, not the country…or even state) buildings, which mostly house ministries and the like.
Unlike in Kyrgyzstan, most people here do not look “Asian.” In fact, there is no one “look,” except maybe some leanings towards Turkish, with some European thrown in. There are virtually zero women with veils, and many who don’t wear anything on their heads. People are very gentle, calm and polite. Few look us in the eyes, even when we brushed shoulders with them in the grand bazaar today. We did make contact with a few people though, most of whom showed only a passing interest in us. Given the fact that we were virtually the only tourists in a market consisting of hundreds of vendors, and thousands of visitors, I found this a little suspicious. I am guessing that it was out of fear. After 2005, most international organizations were asked to leave after many foreign governments protested the ‘Andijan’ incident, where hundreds were killed during a peaceful demonstration. We heard from several sources that there has been a thawing in the last year, however, on the part of the Uzbekh government. This may be why no one has yet asked to look at our documents, which we had heard was quite common. Our other theory is that the police know exactly who we are and what we are doing so when we jog by in the morning they just check us off their list. One tends to get paranoid in this country, although there is no outward need to be so.
Just found out that we now have official letters to enter Kazakhstan, which we are trying again on Wednesday. For some reason I’m not really looking forward to visiting that airport again…
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Note: I wrote these blogs from Uzbekistan a few days ago but we were nervous about posting them while we were still in the country.
There aren’t a lot of foreigners here but there are a lot of empty hotel rooms. There are even fewer foreigners who don’t speak Russian. So the bellhop laughed when he heard I didn’t speak Russian and asked “Why not?” Why not, indeed? Who needs to speak anything else? Hmm, reminds me of another place I know…
The city of Tashkent is the largest capital in Central Asia (2 million officially, but apparently 4 million unofficially). There has been a town here for 2,000 years, although it was first referred to as ‘Toshkent’ in the 11th century, and it was never as more famous as Samarkand, which is a few hundred miles away. Most of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1966 so there is little of historic interest to see. It is very modern, green, and clean, with wide, wide boulevards, shady parks on almost every block, and many Soviet-style buildings leftover from before 1991. However, these are interspersed with beautiful Georgian (the architectural style, not the country…or even state) buildings, which mostly house ministries and the like.
Unlike in Kyrgyzstan, most people here do not look “Asian.” In fact, there is no one “look,” except maybe some leanings towards Turkish, with some European thrown in. There are virtually zero women with veils, and many who don’t wear anything on their heads. People are very gentle, calm and polite. Few look us in the eyes, even when we brushed shoulders with them in the grand bazaar today. We did make contact with a few people though, most of whom showed only a passing interest in us. Given the fact that we were virtually the only tourists in a market consisting of hundreds of vendors, and thousands of visitors, I found this a little suspicious. I am guessing that it was out of fear. After 2005, most international organizations were asked to leave after many foreign governments protested the ‘Andijan’ incident, where hundreds were killed during a peaceful demonstration. We heard from several sources that there has been a thawing in the last year, however, on the part of the Uzbekh government. This may be why no one has yet asked to look at our documents, which we had heard was quite common. Our other theory is that the police know exactly who we are and what we are doing so when we jog by in the morning they just check us off their list. One tends to get paranoid in this country, although there is no outward need to be so.
Just found out that we now have official letters to enter Kazakhstan, which we are trying again on Wednesday. For some reason I’m not really looking forward to visiting that airport again…
Sunday, June 1, 2008
I left my heart in Bishkek…
May 31, 2008
En route from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Tashkent, Uzbekistan
To say that Central Asia is a fascinating place is a gross understatement. It’s hard to believe that this part of the world, with an area of 4 million sq km (80% of which is Kazakhstan), is so unknown by the outside world. Crossroads between Europe and Asia, home of the Silk Road, it is truly the archetypical “Where East meets West.” Geographically it consists of vast grassy steppes and cragged, soaring mountain ranges; Kyrgyzstan itself is 90% mountainous. Recently, it has become a little more well known for its geologic and geopolitical importance: Kazakhstan happens to have the world’s 3rd largest oil reserve and Turkmenistan has its 4th largest deposits of natural gas. Americans and Europeans may also be familiar with the region due to its strategic importance for the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another unfortunate claim to fame for the region is that it has one of the world’s fastest growing HIV/AIDS rates, due primarily to injecting drug users, and fueled by the drug trade in the region (from Afghanistan), which is worse than ever.
Kyrgyzstan, like the other ‘stans in Central Asia, was never one ethnic entity. Before the Soviets created it in 1923, basing its name on the dominant of 80 ethnic groups, Kyrgyzstan, which shares a border with China, was part of the melting pot of Central Asia, ruled as small kingdoms. For the most part, Kyrgyzstanis look Asian, not European. However, there are still Russian minorities here, and there are clearly people who are of mixed origin.
Bishkek, the capital, where we stayed, is a small, sleepy, very leafy town of only about 600,000 people. The city’s women are very fashionably dressed in tank tops and miniskirts, and there is no visible evidence that the dominating religion is Islam (although this should not be surprising since Islam came very late and was rigorously suppressed by the soviets). Few people spoke English, but all spoke Russian and Kyrgyz, the State language.
Our interviews in Bishkek were very successful, but the best thing that happened was that we got our Uzbeki visas (not always easy). I keep looking at my passport to make sure it hasn’t disappeared...
En route from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Tashkent, Uzbekistan
To say that Central Asia is a fascinating place is a gross understatement. It’s hard to believe that this part of the world, with an area of 4 million sq km (80% of which is Kazakhstan), is so unknown by the outside world. Crossroads between Europe and Asia, home of the Silk Road, it is truly the archetypical “Where East meets West.” Geographically it consists of vast grassy steppes and cragged, soaring mountain ranges; Kyrgyzstan itself is 90% mountainous. Recently, it has become a little more well known for its geologic and geopolitical importance: Kazakhstan happens to have the world’s 3rd largest oil reserve and Turkmenistan has its 4th largest deposits of natural gas. Americans and Europeans may also be familiar with the region due to its strategic importance for the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another unfortunate claim to fame for the region is that it has one of the world’s fastest growing HIV/AIDS rates, due primarily to injecting drug users, and fueled by the drug trade in the region (from Afghanistan), which is worse than ever.
Kyrgyzstan, like the other ‘stans in Central Asia, was never one ethnic entity. Before the Soviets created it in 1923, basing its name on the dominant of 80 ethnic groups, Kyrgyzstan, which shares a border with China, was part of the melting pot of Central Asia, ruled as small kingdoms. For the most part, Kyrgyzstanis look Asian, not European. However, there are still Russian minorities here, and there are clearly people who are of mixed origin.
Bishkek, the capital, where we stayed, is a small, sleepy, very leafy town of only about 600,000 people. The city’s women are very fashionably dressed in tank tops and miniskirts, and there is no visible evidence that the dominating religion is Islam (although this should not be surprising since Islam came very late and was rigorously suppressed by the soviets). Few people spoke English, but all spoke Russian and Kyrgyz, the State language.
Our interviews in Bishkek were very successful, but the best thing that happened was that we got our Uzbeki visas (not always easy). I keep looking at my passport to make sure it hasn’t disappeared...
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