Week 2: Easing In, оҳиста, оҳиста...
Because I had limited WiFi in Dushanbe, I decided to journal everyday and upload blog posts / highlights after I returned. Warning: it might be a mix of at-the-time journaling with current comments I add.
I’ll be breaking these up into weekly posts, with key events or days that made my Tajikistan experience special. I hope you enjoy reminiscing with me on my six-week journey. I miss it already. :)
Itinerary
6/28: 1st Full Day, Walking Tour of Dushanbe**
6/29: Embassy Visit*
6/30: Bet on It, Bet on It (A “Bazaar” Day)***
7/1: Hazrati-Mavlono Shrine, American Corner
7/2: Meeting Family / Neighbors*
7/3: ~Normal Day~
7/4: Mantu-Making, 4th of July Party**
* partial day described; ** whole day; *** whole day in separate post
POSTS
6/28: 1st Full Day, Walking Tour of Dushanbe
My host family made ширбиринҷ for me for breakfast - that rice milk dish! It’s sweet, delicious, but heavy on the stomach. I was also convinced to eat many slices of bread with jam, chaka, cheese, meat. And of course, tea!
For some reason, they decided to call a taxi with Mikaela’s family, so we took it to class near American Councils. Class included many, many, many professions and lots of random concepts - including izofat constructions (you’d think they want to teach us that explicitly by an earlier time), question words (same comment as above), nationalities, shortened possessives, and honestly, my head was a mess. I was trying to swallow tears for half of class, because the others just kept adding more and more words to the board and yes, I felt like dying! I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
For lunch, we ate at a Cafe Сафо. After classes, we took the bus to the Opera Ballet Square, where we got some ice cream (ice cream: a MUST in Dushanbe). Then, we started our walking tour of Dushanbe. Some highlights:
the original building for the official library
The new national library, китобхона милли (fun fact: they asked officials to donate a book each when they moved buildings, but because of Soviet rule, the library now has 30,000? Of the same donated Lenin book
Statue of Ismaili Somoni! He isn’t as highly regarded in Iran bc he’s not Shi’a. He established the Somoni Dynasty 8th-10th century, and for the first time, he united a number of kingdoms to lead to a society that first called themselves Tajiks. Also established tradition of court poet!
Rudaki Park - He accidentally led the king’s daughter to her death by singing a love poem she wrote that the king heard (he didn’t know she was in love) >> broiled to death? I’ve got the name in my notebook.
Rudaki was blinded at the end of his life: either from Ismaili Somoni’s son who was jealous of him (bc Somoni loved Rudaki) or by sickness (more likely). Reminded me of Goya.
Statue shows him as blind. Museum had replica of his tomb.
Flagpole area: pretty much no one was there, super hot!!!
National Museum: Alexander the Great planned to kill a Persian king and a dude under the king killed the king, but then Alexander was annoyed that sometime would kill his own king and tried to kill him.
In 1920s, a few heroes/leaders successfully pushed for independence from Uzbekistan under the Soviet dominion.
The Vice President was in the museum!! They were going to close the museum but they let us have a special tour / rerouted us to avoid the VP
Sleeping Buddha discovered in Tajikistan
Panjikent - oldest civilization in Central Asia, named by UNESCO
Tajikistan: ~Crossroads of Silk Roads~
After the tour ended, at a restaurant for dinner, I tried Фатир for the first time!! The flaky bread was delicious. Қурутоб was good, but it’s a bit oily for the stomach.
I got home around 8, but Shahnoza gave me dinner even though I told them I ate already. Then, Firuza and I “did homework” - I tried to start flashcards while she learned some English (family member words). Her mom was so sweet: she had me write down my family’s names in Tajiki, and she also wrote down the phonetic pronunciations of hello in English, Chinese, Spanish (I forgot to mention Japanese - if this doesn’t tell you how tired I was, I forgot how to say it. I could only remember thank you.)
I was then dragged to Shahnoza’s sister Gulnoza’s house around 9! I sat with a bunch of other women, and they were eating ANOTHER dinner (osh: heavy rice with carrots, meat) and I turned that down too. I managed to get their offers down to a few cups of tea and one big cup of kompot. I briefly met the 18-year old at the house, Hilola - she’s practically my age, but she was running around, preparing the food, doing chores. Her dad also asked if I knew karate since I look east Asian, so I just laughed along with them uncomfortably.
At some point I mustered up the possibly grammatically correct ман метавонам равам? Вазифаи хонаги дорам (хеле зиёд). Firuza got the message and pulled me home. I did some major vocab memorizing (it was so hard to remember the occupations) and poem memorizing (but I loved this one - the one from Rudaki), and slept at 1 ish.
6/29 - US Embassy Visit!
After class, we took the marshrutka to the US embassy, where we waited for a while to go through security. Since we didn’t bring phones, etc., it went by quickly (& no pics - sorry!). Nona from AC was with us, and told us about how she became interested in Tajik - she also talked about Fullbright, CLS, FLEX, ELRP.
At the embassy, Todd Hughes, the cultural affairs officer, talked to us most of the time. He was previously a teacher, and has a Ph.D in linguistics! He mentioned how his research in Tajikistan of a Pamir language discussed past tense markers that can change position based on the stressed word. He and Kevin, acting ambassador, as well as the security officer (Tajikistan was his 37th choice LMAO) were super nice! Todd kept poking fun at Maggie, and his commentary on cookies and pins was hilarious. Kevin was also really kind - he mentioned there was a resident poet in the embassy. Just about the embassy, it was super American - with its typical bathrooms, cafeteria, etc. Was this reverse cultural shock? Who knows?
The head security guy also recounted how he always mixed up welcome/congratulations in Tajiki, so he got weird looks all the time. As for Todd, he loved us and made us stay basically an hour later than planned. We kept asking him questions about Tajikistan, his career, and his linguistics. He even handed out homemade choco chip cookies in the beginning - and accused me of being too excited! I couldn’t deny it - I really missed having good choco chip cookies.
7/2 - Meeting Family / Friends
For dinner, I ate osh (the rice with carrots/beef). Muharam’s other daughter, Shokhsana, came over with her two kids - Oisha, a cute 2-year old with the CUTEST pink hat, and her little brother Muhammat, who’s about 10 months old. Her nickname is "gulak," or little flower!!! (гулак). Along the way, I met our neighbor Мавзунаҳ, who’s 23, and has two kids about 2-3 years old, Abdullah and Bobojon.
I went over to her house, where I ate two cakes and drank juice. The mom, Махбуба, was ironing clothes, and we chatted (with minimal understanding on my part). The grandma was sitting elsewhere, and there were a few girls dressed up, staring at me / waiting to go somewhere. Mavzuna helped me out with some of her English when I had no idea what was going on. They were surprised I was studying Tajiki - they thought it’d be Russian! They were also surprised I knew “хеле мамнунам - nice to meet you!” And, they said I should learn to make Tajiki food to make it back in the US. Oh, I also said I was from NJ (near NY) and they took that to mean that I’m from NY. Finally, I met this 22-year old brother named Hurshed, and he said hi in English - apparently, he’s also fluent in Chinese. I was a little confused as to what he asked me in Tajiki, but he commented he thought I was from China (like every other person in Dushanbe) - I clarified in Tajish (aka Tajiki and English).
Soon, the whole family left, but they invited me to come again. Back home, I had fun with Oisha!!! I showed her my animal post-it’s from Japan, gave her a few, and she stole one and I pretended to chase her around. I gave Oisha a few of my toy animal erasers too.
Later that night, Oisha and Firuza stopped in briefly while I was dying and doing homework - I actually fell asleep at my desk. They really do make this bearable.
7/4 - Mantu-Making, 4th of July Party
In the morning, I sort of did homework while watching a Tajiki-dubbed Russian movie, and I vaguely understand that a guy wanted this computer from an old guy, who gave it to this young man. The first guy had a bad childhood because a guy shot his dad. Around 12, Mikaela came over and we made mantu!! We studied a bit before eating the yummy mantu.
The 4th of July party started at 4 (Independence Day: рӯзи истиқлолият). It was awkward, since we were supposed to socialize with the kids from Tajikistan too. We did the two truths and a lie icebreaker!!
I can figure skate.
I have been to Estonia.
I like tomatoes.
(I hate tomatoes, I have rudimentary skating skills, and I went to Tallinn last summer.)
After that, I talked with a Tajik girl also named Anisa (it’s my Tajiki name!!). We gave her advice on school in the US, and asked her about her life here. Anisa grabbed some pizza before heading to English class. We tried to dance: some classic songs (Cha-cha slide, Cupid Shuffle, etc.), but beyond that, everyone was not feeling it. We did play games with the soccer ball though! Also, our local coordinator “tested” me or something by asking me to start dancing spontaneously to see if I’d say yes (and I did). It was thoroughly embarrassing. Yannick said he was waiting for me to go off. Thank you. Anyways, I then played with the cute kitties at American Councils!!
At 8 pm, we walked home, but the stray dog hanging around the office followed us again. On our street a delivery dude had two large dogs that met the stray dog and caused a stressful dog situation - Abby saw her life flash before her eyes.
I went home, updated my family on what I did (Ман возӣ кардам - I played games), showered, felt a headache coming on, took Motrin, wrote this, still felt the headache. Isn’t it great when your health deteriorates before your very eyes? Warning: Tajikistan isn’t for the weak.
Stay tuned for my special post for Week 2! spoiler: I get betted on by Tajik men.
P.S. bonus photos from 7/1, the Hazrati-Mavlono shrine!
