September 30, 2011

I was up at 5:00am feeling my whole body sore from all the walking we did yesterday.   Tried to get the stove going so I could make coffee and nothing happened. After much fiddling with the knobs, found out it had never been plugged in.  I have the traditional Tajik stove with two burners for the electric side and two for the non-existent gas side. Tajikistan has no source of natural gas and used to import it from Uzbekistan until that country got fed up with the lack of payment and shut off the pipeline. It seems as if most households are stuck now with being able to use only half of their stoves at least until the supply is exhausted. 

                                 Police car on quiet side street

Caroline and I are scheduled to visit the embassy this morning to get our official badges and complete a host of other paperwork. We managed to get on the proper Marshrutka, a narrow mini-van that plies a scheduled route, and traveled to the suburbs of Dushanbe where the embassy was moved some five years ago. The compound has the look of an office park from afar until one approaches it and notices all the concrete barriers and guards. After a thorough search and presentation of appropriate documents, we were shown into the interior where we received a security briefing, were given our badges and were allowed access to the cafeteria, bland food again, and obtained use of the Internet. The embassy has a room with bookshelves where one can drop off and pick up books, a godsend since I haven’t seen any books in English so far. There is also a small selection of DVDs and travel pamphlets for nearby regions.

Met Hilary, a Fulbrighter doing research on border security and human trafficking, who will also be here for a year and who speaks fluent Russian. She was brave enough to rent a house to share with other Fulbrighters in the outskirts of the city and pays $750.00 a month. She was gracious enough to offer to accompany me to the market where I can find some clothing suitable for my job. I asked her if he had been subjected to any harassment for dressing in a typical western outfit of tight jeans, short-sleeve tops and flip flops and she indicated that since she’s tall, blond and blue-eyed most Tajiks take her to be Russian and would mistaken her for a missionary if she were to dress in the typical costume of most Tajik women. Apparently missionaries have a very negative image in this Muslim country. 

On to the Pedagogical Institute, a deep blue color building, where we met with the dean of the school of foreign languages and was told once again that due to the lateness of my arrival, all classes had already been divvied up and I would have to take over an 8:00a.m. class or a beginner’s class at 12:30. Choosing the latter was a no brainer as I would be able to avoid the rush hour traffic and even have lunch prior to my class. When I asked about my starting date, I was informed that the memorandum of understanding among the institute, the Ministry of Education and the U. S. embassy had not been signed yet and I could not start until the document had been officially signed and copies received by all parties.

                                     My future place of employment.

Went to the supermarket close to my apartment to provision myself now that I have a fridge and drove the clerks crazy while trying to locate things such as salt, hot sauce and butter. Apparently, Tajikistan does not produce anything packaged except, perhaps, for dairy products. Experienced the first power outage while waiting in line at the cash register; however, it returned in a few minutes. I happened to see a young woman holding a Longman’s English Dictionary and asked her what level of English she was studying; she just stared at me quizzically. Her classmate came to the rescue and said beginner to which the other one said that was incorrect and that they were at the intermediate level. The group was curious about my presence here and when told immediately wanted to know if I could come to their university as they needed a native speaker, or near-native in my case, to guide them. I responded by saying that I’d need to check with my supervisor to see if there would be any chance of my taking on an additional assignment outside of the Pedagogical Institute.  

Caroline went apartment hunting and I invited her to come to my place afterwards for my first cooked meal: rice and beans, a red cabbage salad and French bread. I haven’t been able to figure out the cuts of meat or the names of the assorted fish I seen at the supermarket. I need to hire that tutor this weekend or I’m going to be eating rice and beans for a very long time