Tajik Charades

I must own up. My progress in learning Tajiki has been disappointing. I’ve been diligent with the homework, I bought the book – that’s going to be a bargain for someone at the next Dunfermline car boot sale - and I’ve struggled through the lessons in the face of incredible pain……etched on my teacher’s face. But it just hasn’t stuck.

There is the “old git with a failing memory” theory, which I don’t buy. Who else can remember when you could get a night out for 12½p in today’s money? Nothing wrong with my memory. I put it down to not being able to use the language on a day-to-day basis. People expect a Caucasian to speak Russian, logical I suppose, and turn off quickly as I struggle with what I believe is their language. My colleagues mostly speak good English.

Communication challenges are compounded by the fact that there are no Tajiki/English pocket dictionaries. Where are the tourists when you need them? There is a very useful free “app” developed for the US armed forces with lots of phrases and even audio of pronunciation. It tends to be most useful in situations where you want to say things like “We are Americans, we are here to help” and “put your hands on your head and stand against the wall”. It is of limited use in negotiating the purchase of carrots – unless things are getting really fraught.

So, of course, much communication is done by smiles and pointing and gestures. A few weeks ago I wanted coat hangers. Now you tell me; how do you imitate the purpose of a coat hanger standing in a crowded bazaar in front of a shopkeeper who is convinced a washing machine hose would solve your problems? Or shoe laces? That nearly did cause a punch-up when I picked up a shoe and started taking the lace out to illustrate what I wanted. This is apparently not a normal thing to do and I’m not completely sure of the offence – but it was serious. I did find out in the end that shoe shops do not sell laces; cobblers do. Remember them? Now try the actions for finding one. Price eventually 48p; cost in time at minimum wage rate, about £300.

Looking for coat hangers at my local hardware store

Today I went for a haircut. Now I‘m not too fussy about coiffure and there’s not a lot to be fussy about. So I wanted a light trim, with layering at the sides, no attempt at a comb over and, of course, a coffee and a biscuit. I made my requirements very clear and sat in the chair.

A few initial passes with the electric trimmer seemed to do the job and I thought I might forego the coffee and biscuit and settle with that. A firm hand on my shoulder kept me seated as one of the largest cut-throat razors I have ever seen appeared. I decided it was no time for charades, unless I was pretending to be Nelson’s statue atop his column (not a good comparison as I think about it, given the problems he had with missing body parts).

Anyway, my barber wiped the razor and then poured a clear liquid over it. I thought, oh – the after shave. He then set alight to it. He then wiped it again and heated it directly with a lighter. I presume this was all to clean the blade but, as I sat there, I began to ruminate on what he was going to do with a a large sharp edge that had been so elaborately sterilised? What did he think I meant with my “snip, snip – just a little bit” mime? What did Jamie Coomarasamay say about early morning circumcision parties? Are the “additional services” provided by barbers in Tajikistan different from those offered in the UK?.....

 (There are no pictures of me doing Tajik charades; and if there were, you’d be the last to find out. So instead here’s a picture of me before I had a haircut. Still something to smile about).

Kayaking with the Taliban

It was back up into the mountains last week for a tourism workshop in Khorog. Two of the main topics at the workshop were “cross border tourism” and “adventure tourism”. The Pamiris – as the locals prefer to be identified – have ideas to combine these. Cross border tourism here means crossing the Panj river to Afghanistan and following your donkey up into the hills. Adventure means getting back.

I felt I was spoiling the party a bit by explaining that, although adventure tourism was certainly popular with western tourists, playing hide and seek with the Taliban in the Wachan and, say, kayaking in the Trossachs, fall into two quite different categories of adventure.

The bridge over the Panj at Khorog

Anyway, it was a great couple of days and tremendous to see the interest and energy. As can be seen from the photo, though, I think my Afghan trekking disguise might need a bit more work. It may take more than a scarf and a hat to persuade anyone I’m a local.

Book now, at the Serena Inn, Khorog

Coming back to Dushanbe was interesting. Clouds and snow prevented flying so I was resigned to a twelve hour shared taxi ride. My host took me to the taxi park on the edge of town where I was told to hide behind a tree. He then went off to negotiate a place in a car and a price. I’m not sure whether I had to remain out of sight because, on seeing me, nobody would take the risk of my lasting the journey or whether there would be too much jostling to have the honour of my conveyance. I prefer to think the latter.

A vehicle was chosen – a good looking 4wd with all wheels and doors etc. in place - a deal done and I was whisked aboard. I don’t actually mind the road trip; the scenery is incredible the whole way and navigating the steep dirt roads in the face of Chinese trucks and flocks of sheep provides thrills enough. Finding  myself in the company of three non-English speakers was a bit disappointing initially though. I’m pretty good on nouns for different types of fruit in Tajiki and on phrases like “stop the taxi, I want to get out” and “take me to the opera” but this didn’t sustain conversation much beyond the end of the town. We relaxed into positive noises and I tried to avoid blowing my nose.

Winding through the Panj valley

The one thing I felt a bit daunted by, with no English speakers present, was how I’d get on at the inevitable police and army checkpoints en route. Travellers on all roads in the country are subject to checks but, as more than half the 600 kilometre route from Khorog to Dushanbe follows the Panj river valley – which is also the border with Afghanistan – then the checks are a bit more frequent and edgier.

Sure enough, as we pulled into Qalai Khum, a small town on a bend in the river, my heart sank. An army officer ushered our car off the main road into a dead end. We were then hustled from the vehicle down some metal stairs and on into a small, windowless room, where ………....... lunch was served.

Unbeknown to me, I was travelling with some quite high ranking military officer (in “civvies”) making his way to the capital. The local commander at this half way point had laid on lunch for his superior. Tajik hospitality would not allow the exclusion of anyone travelling in the party so I felt obliged to join in fully as we made our way through shurbo, (soup with mutton), osh (fried rice with mutton), choi, non (bread), fruit and, of course a bottle of vodka (the cap of which can, in all good form, never be put back on). I’m not sure what we were toasting, perhaps the resurrection of Stalin, but it all seemed a good idea at the time and it certainly helped to shorten the journey. Before I knew it I was shaking hands all round as I alighted in the familiar streets of Dushanbe.

I think I prefer lunch with the General to kayaking with the Taliban for my Pamir adventure.

Down to Business

I don’t want to give the impression that developing tourism is just gadding about the country eating, drinking, enjoying the scenery and testing exotic bathroom arrangements. That’s the tough part, of course, but there’s also sharing experience and trying to influence key stakeholders to adopt new ways of doing things.

The goal of VSO is to eliminate poverty and I believe that efforts to achieve this must be directed first and foremost at host country governments. It’s no good treating the symptoms without attacking the cause. There has been a lot of excellent work here to support the growth of tourism going back more than ten years but little of it has lasted. It has often been narrowly focused on specific regions or groups, effective so long as a project has been in place and grant funding has been coming through, but then allowed to peter out. This is partly because there have not been any supporting policy changes from central government. Regional marketing and product development projects, for example, are going to struggle if access to the country is difficult and expensive.

To address this we now have a comprehensive national Plan for the industry covering access, marketing, quality advice, visitor information, signage, tourism infrastructure and – generally – how to cope with those very difficult, demanding and capricious people we call tourists. Within this there are detailed plans for reforms in areas like the visa regime, air access and small business financing.

   

There is hardly a dissenting voice to the Plan, but that is deceptive. Changes threaten vested interests and a person's public position of country before self is very rarely wholly borne out in practice. We can expect some turbulence.

Anyway, the Plan will go to the newly-elected President in December and we are optimistic. One advantage of a “streamlined” democratic process is that, if approved, it can proceed fairly quickly to implementation.

Somon Palace : The Seat of Power

There has been one ray of sunshine already. Tourist visas for trips of up to 45 days are now available for £20. This is a marked improvement on the standard visa rates - which meant spending £60 to £80 – and also comes with a waiver on the need to register with the security services when in the country. So I’m expecting plane loads of Brits clogging up my trolley bus and favourite choikhona  any time soon.

As well as developing recommendations with government I have been acting out the professorial bit with lectures, presentations and workshops. Last week I was back in the town of Garm, in the east between the Fan Mountains and the Pamirs. 

Late Autumn in Garm

I was working with a group of youngsters who are interested in bringing tourism to the area. Their English is quite good but their grasp of economics and business comes from old Soviet textbooks…. This, as well as endearing local culture, showed through in some of our exchanges.

Me : “We should do some market research.”

Them : “Why?”

Me : “So we know what people want.”

Them : “Why do we want to know what people want?”...

Or

Me : “If we attract lots of visitors where will they stay?”

Them : “It’s OK we’ll find families who will take them.”

Me : “But we have to organise this on a commercial basis.”

Them : “No, don’t worry. Just tell them to turn up and we’ll look after them.”

Or

Me : “What can visitors do when they come here?”

Them : “We’ll take them to a Tajik wedding.”

Me : “Wouldn’t the bride and groom and their relatives want to have a say in this?”

Them : “Why?”..

The new Tajikistan marketing campaign - "Just Turn Up"

 Next week I’m off up into the Pamirs again for another workshop. I have a feeling that it’s me who is getting educated about hospitality and tourism.

Peace and Bread

You could let your life revolve round Rudaki. That makes Rudaki sound like a euphemism for a hard drug, but regular readers will know that Rudaki is our favourite son, the founder of modern Persian literature, whose name has been appropriated for every major road in every town and city in Tajikistan. So Rudaki in this context is the six lane, three mile long avenue that runs from north to south through Dushanbe.

There are tower blocks and supermarkets and restaurants and bars and government offices and choikhonas and parks along its course. Many people, I suppose particularly expatriates, feel no need to stray much from it. But this is a city of 700,000 people and most do not live, work and shop on Rudaki. Step 20 yards off on either side and you can enter a different world, perhaps one that is a bit more representative of Tajikistan. It’s a bit more run down - actually it’s quite a lot more run-down behind the stylish facades - but full of life.

I’ve been roaming the back streets for a while. I love walking around cities and Dushanbe is one of the best. Firstly it’s one of the safest cities I’ve ever been in – so long as you avoid crossing any roads. Traffic lights here are seen more as decorative than functional and, if heeded at all, seem to bring out the taurean in us all – red means accelerate and charge. There are stories of people making it to the central reservation of Rudaki and then having to be airlifted out because they couldn’t continue. Actually that’s not true; there is no central reservation on Rudaki. Oh, and two other essential rules of the road here : never drive without talking to someone on your mobile phone and always test your car horn every 15 seconds...

Anyway, all that digression aside, walking around Dushanbe is great. There is virtually no street crime and people don’t stare or panhandle. Some of the kids sometimes seem struck dumb by the oddity of a lone, grey foreigner but we always agree to live and let live…

Shouldn't he be in a museum?

There are lots of narrow streets lined with rough and ready walls punctuated by grandiose gates. There is an obsession with tall, ornate gates; obviously a message to the world about what lies behind. And what does lie behind is usually a house built around a small courtyard which is home to an extended family of maybe ten or twelve people.

Nice gates...

In contrast there are also Russian apartment blocks, built around large communal squares, where the children roam and people cook huge dishes of plov and bake in large, wood-fired kilns; where the women gossip and men pretend to be repairing things. Reminds me of the Glasgow tenements.

Sometimes I think I'll just hit her with it

It would be easy to get sentimental about this communal living but I’m sure there are stresses, feuds and rivalries fit for a Shakespeare play. Nevertheless, people seem generally happy.

That Othello... He's a right one!

Why are the streets safe? Why are most people apparently content with the re-election of their Presdient for a fourth term of office (yes, my wild prediction of the result was correct)? Why is there poverty with very little begging and very little – apparent – resentment? The answer seems to lie across three things. 

1. 1.  A high police presence. There are certainly a lot of policemen down Rudaki, but they are unarmed and mostly concerned with entrepreneurial endeavours. There are few in the back streets.
2. 2. Religion. This is an Islamic country where the emphasis is on peace, hospitality, sharing, duty and family.
3. 3.      Trauma. The civil war between 1992 and 1997 took at least 50,000 lives and made a great many more homeless. To this day nobody can quite explain what it was about but there is unanimity that it mustn’t be allowed to happen again.

As I was told, “we are happy because we have peace and bread.” This could be a philosophy worth reflecting on.

Election Time

It’s the Presidential elections next week so, even whilst trying to be apolitical, it’s too much of a subject not to comment. Anyway, being on the KGB popularity list is at least still a bit exclusive; having your phone and email bugged by the CIA is just so common and unfashionable..

There are six candidates including the incumbent President. Apparently all five challengers have already said they think the current government is doing a good job and one is reported to have advised his supporters not to vote for him but to vote for the incumbent. Now I may be a bit naïve politically, but these strike me as unusual tactics if you want to replace the current head of state.  Perhaps they are just being brutally honest and want to avoid the manufactured partisanship that characterises most democracies and has recently brought the United States government to a complete standstill. Perhaps…

Most would agree that the election is a foregone conclusion. The incumbent President, Emomali Rahmon, will be elected for his fourth term in office. There are stories of shady dealings and the use of the State apparatus to neutralise any real opposition, which are probably true but such measures  hardly seem worth it. Most people have never heard of any other politicians and, most dispiritingly, there is little faith in the democratic system anyway. Few see the solutions to their many problems as lying in free elections and voting for someone else. And who can blame them?

Subtle reminder at the University

The “triumph” of liberal democracy has turned a bit sour, at least in central Asia. The much heralded benefits of the free market economy and political freedom have not arrived. The old elites are firmly in control, richer and stronger than ever, having taken democracy on board sufficiently to get greater than ever legitimacy for their rule. In so many countries of the world, it has not proved too difficult for the powerful elites to shape democracy into just another system to meet their own ends.

What people want is security, fairness, justice, health care, rights to property and the freedom to better themselves. Democracy doesn’t in itself deliver these things. It’s perhaps the vanity of politicians all over the world that has persuaded us that it should and could. I don’t know what the alternative is; as Churchill said following his post war election defeat, “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I guess the issue is that positive economic and social development is not just about the system of government. It’s more complicated than that but it’s tempting to think there is just this one simple answer.

Snow on the hills creeps towards Dushanbe

Meanwhile, life in Dushanbe goes on, saved from the dreariness of being battered by political campaigning. The snow is on the hills around the city and the price of tomatoes is rocketing. I feel a kind of nostalgia being in a country where fruit and vegetables come and go with the seasons. It reminds me of the treat of “new potatoes” arriving in the shops in Scotland back in my youth. Nostalgia aside however, it’s a step back for the economy. Despite being 93% mountains, the country has some rich fertile land and good quality production. The Soviet systems of cold storage, packing plants and distribution have all been allowed to collapse, though, and so we move from surplus to scarcity as the seasons change. For our landlord and his extended family that has meant an industrious period of peeling, cooking and pickling everything that has been around for the last month or two. I’ve seen the cat move with surprising alacrity recently; obviously doesn’t want to end up pickled in a jar for winter…