Crossing the River

I’m leaving for Afghanistan this afternoon. 

I’ll be crossing the river, driving four hours into one of the valleys and then hiking 4km to a village.   I’m going with our team (Engineer, GIS specialist, Social Mobilizer and Driver).  They are conducting a training for communities on how to prepare  against natural disasters.  And I am monitoring it.  

Roxy was supposed to come with me but she didn’t get her visa in time.  I’ve gotten used to traveling with her pretty much everywhere so this will be new for me.   Luckily, the social mobilizer speaks a bit of English, so I’ll be able to communicate somewhat with my colleagues. 

I’m excited.  And a little nervous. 

But really looking forward to spending a couple of days living in an Afghan village.  It’s an amazing opportunity.  

I plan to use my broken (read: non-existent) Tajik and a lot of gesturing to communicate with people.  I have no idea what the dynamic will be like.   

That whole religion, gender, enemy combatant thing. 

Wish me luck. 

 

Afghan VISA

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An ancient history – Part 2

The Civil War

In 1992, the civil war broke out.  The causes of this war were complex and relate to some extent to the ethnic and regional tensions that emerged from the formation of the new Soviet Republic in 1924 (once again artificial lines on a map – created by outside forces – lead to conflict!) and to premature attempts to liberalize the Tajik political system.  

At the end of the Soviet period, power in Tajikistan was tightly guarded by representatives of the Leninabad district in the North.  Other regions of Tajikistan were demanding:  equal participation in the political process; and the communist party to abandon its monopoly on political power, in favor of a multiparty system.

The refusal to share power coupled with a lack of political maturity on the part of the opposition- led to civil war.

The war was devastating.  

It compounded the economic disruption caused by the break-up of the Soviet system and the people of GBAO  (the Pamirs) and Karategin/Rasht found themselves virtually isolated from the outside world.   People were starving.   The mountainous terrain that protected them from the majority of the violence also contributed to their inability to access food. 

Many had lost family members during the war and the country was crippled economically.  Jobs were almost impossible to find. Public services, like schools and hospitals were in a shocking state and business nearly non-existent.  The feeling of unease was perverse –with gunmen openly walking the streets, murder, robbery and kidnapping rampant.  Gas , electricity and water were often cut and the winters long, dark and cold.

20,000 people died (of a population of 5 million) and around one in ten had fled their homes. 

The organization that I work for is well respected in this region not only for the projects that they currently fund but for the humanitarian assistance they provided during the war.     The crisis was largely ignored by the rest of the international community: few had heard of Tajikistan and many considered it Russia’s problem.   

Help was not on its way.

Peace

In 1997, a peace agreement was reached.  And to date, the peace process had been very successful. A result of the war has been a push for promoting cultural pluralism.  

The economic situation in Tajikistan remains the most precarious of all of the Republics, however, the high level of literacy and the secular education achieved under the Soviet Union coupled with the political maturity of the parties since the 1997 peace agreement, offers hope that Tajikistan will prove more stable than its neighbors.   

 
The People of the Pamirs

The Pamirs has been mostly protected from outside influence and occupation due to its isolated geophraphic location.   This mountainous area, a large part of which is located in Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, is one of the most inaccessible in the world.  

Local tradition holds that the Pamirian people descended from the leaders of Alexander the Great’s invading army, who reached the area in fourth century B.C. 

This may in part be true but their ethnicity can also be traced to the tribes that lived in Eastern Iran.  Today, the Pamiris live in southern Central Asia, primarily in southeastern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan.

The Pamiris are not a homogeneous group.  They are composed of people who speak the Pamiri languages, (some are quite similar, others not easily understood among the different groups) the indigenous languages of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan region and in the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous province in Tajikistan, and adhere to the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam (followers of the Aga Khan).  Aside from the Kyrgyz-speaking people in Murgab (more on this later) most people that live in the GBAO are Ismaili.

The Pamiris share close linguistic, cultural and religious ties with the people in Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan, the Sarikoli speakers in Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang Province in China, the Wakhi speakers in Afghanistan and the Wakhi speakers in Upper Hunza Gojal region of Northern mountainous areas of Pakistan.

During the Tajikistan Civil War from 1992–1997 the Pamiris were targeted for massacres, especially those living in the capital Dushanbe and Qurghonteppa Oblast.

In the early 1990s there was a movement amongst Pamiris to separate Gorno-Badakhshan from Tajikistan. This did not happen but the Pamirs remain an autonomous region of Tajikistan (you need a visa to get in).

 

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The two-pail system

Navigating the office environment is fairly easy at home.  Understanding and respecting the cultural taboos and norms comes naturally.   

Here, however, I likely do something to offend someone in the office on a daily basis. People are generally just too polite to say anything.

 My office has two cleaning ladies – one on the main floor and one on the second floor.   They don’t speak English but we say hello and even joke around – as well as you can with sign language and expressive facial expressions. 

Yesterday, I noticed that  the cleaning lady on my floor was giving me the cold shoulder. 

I tend to interact with her a fair bit since there is usually no water in the office and I drink mad amounts of coffee and usually need to use the bathroom at least twice a day.   No water = no toilets.    I’ll do the – I really gotta go dance – and she’ll magically appear with a huge bucket of water.  

 Those of you who’ve traveled a lot or lived in the developing world (where water shortrages are common-place) know that dumping a large quantity of water into the bowl from a high enough distance makes the toilet flush.

Anyway,  yesterday she barely acknowledged me.  And she’s usually quite friendly. 

So it got me thinking  – what did I do now ?  

Roxy – my colleague – happened to mention to me the other day that Tajiks seperate their garbage.    Apparently, a lot of people around here own animals – cows, goats etc., – which  I was actually pretty surprised to learn  considering that we live in a town and not a village.   I’ve lived here for two months and never so much as heard a mooh.   

Where would you even keep a cow?  We live in houses and apartments…  

But last week, I was walking down Lenin Street – on my way to the park- minding my own business and a brown cow strolled right past me.  No  joke.   Down the middle of the street – and straight into oncoming traffic - without a care in the world. 

Anyway, the point of the two garbage system is to seperate the food for animals from regular waste.  But no one tells you these things – you’re just supposed to know them.   Persia and I have been dumping all of our garbage together for the past two months- we leave it outside and the landlady’s kids take it to the dump.    A couple nights ago we discovered that the kids had been secretly seperating our garbage!  Roxy confirmed that in fact it’s a great insult to waste food here – especially when animals could eat it.  

Putting all of this together, my cleaning lady’s cold shoulder finally made sense. Last week, I had thrown some mouldy raising and nuts in the garbage – along with regular paper.  I wasn’t even thinking – just tossed it in the pail. 

She was quite offended.  But I’ve since apologized and we are back on good terms.

And Persia and I, now have a two garbage pail sytem (sorry still no recycling -    non-existent here).

I can only imagine what I’ll do  to offend tomorrow.

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