January 6, 2012

There was no greater accumulation of snow on the ground when I looked through my window this morning. It was only 25 degrees and thus the snow had hardened overnight on the sidewalks and alleyways. I packed my laptop and decided to take the marshrutka as the weight of the computer would make my walk even more perilous. I stuck to walking on the streets next to the parked cars until I got the underpass, a brand-new construction where some genius decided to use polished granite on the floor and steps thus providing the conditions for pedestrians to skate as best they can when it rains or snows.

Corrie started out her presentation on using the Internet to stay connected with colleagues and to share ideas and materials. All the males were familiar with the Internet, but few of the women raised their hands when asked if they knew how to use it. Even I learned how to create a new group on Facebook and a few other ideas on creating groups online. We stayed at the hotel for lunch and joined three of the male students at the bar when the server agreed to bring our meals there so we didn’t have to walk outside to enter the restaurant per se. My soup petit was the usual watery broth with chunks of beef and some slices of potatoes and carrots. When the conversation turned to comparing world cuisines, I had to ask why it was that seasonings, except for salt apparently, seemed to be absent from Tajik dishes. Of course, I was asking the wrong audience as none of these men cooked and they all concurred that Tajik cooking was their favorite and seemed to have no idea what I was talking about.

When we regrouped, Caroline asked participants to reflect on what they had learned during the conference and to make a list of what had been most useful so future participants could also benefit from them. Power went and those of us that had brought our laptops, quite a few in fact, started to work on our own projects while waiting for the ambassador to show up so he could hand out the certificates of participation. Sandy and Tahmina showed up first and made small talk with the participants until the ambassador came in and an official photographer took an individual photo of each participant accepting his/her diploma. We then took a group photo and he was gone. It was time to pick up and pack all the materials. No one bothered introducing him to the EFLs.

                                                         Time for a group picture

One of the participants, Botir, offered to upload Skype again on my laptop. He also confirmed that Tajik men chew on something called nos, the root of a plant that is ground and mixed with an alkaloid, and has a narcotic effect, probably similar to the coca leaf preparation in Bolivia and Peru. Another participant, Jamshev, confided that his wife had left him to go to Russia and he filed for sole custody of his one-month old baby boy and won it. I gave him some electronic materials to prepare him for his upcoming TOEFL as he plans on applying for a scholarship in the United States this summer.

On the way home, I stopped at the bazaar to buy a few more staples so I don’t have to go out during the weekend. I ran into Bahruz and Zoir there. It was bitterly cold and not the place to chitchat. My sore throat had kept me from sleeping well the last two nights and so I stopped at the pharmacy in Ryan’s building. He remembered me well and remarked that I was probably not to happy with all the snow on the ground as he remembered I was from Florida. He didn’t have any cough syrup with codeine, for which he said no prescription was needed, but hoped to have some on Saturday if I wanted to venture out. He gave some tablets to help me sleep through the night.

I had the leftover sambusas for dinner and watched an eye-opener documentary on the BBC channel about racial integration in that country that started in the early 1900s but really took off after WWII and how it was mainly white women who chose to marry men of other races and the abuse they were subjected to for doing so. It was all too similar to what was happening in the United States’ South during Jim Crow’s laws.