July 13, 2012

I was too antsy to sleep through the night and got up before 4:00am to get ready for my last presentation in Dushanbe at the ETM conference. At least I didn’t have to create another PowerPoint presentation since Carol had asked me to use the same one I presented to the teachers last April. I sent my revised itinerary to Georgetown hoping that this time; they will issue me my ticket for the leg of my trip between Germany and Florida. I emailed my supervisor requesting approval for the last expense report submitted and thanking him for his support during my fellowship.

The day had turned hazy and hot even by 7:30am when I walked to Rudaki Avenue, got into a taxi and rode to the hotel where the ETM was being held. Carol was waiting for me in the lobby and we had a few minutes to chat before the participants started arriving and greeting me. I was shocked to find out that the workshop was being conducted without the aid of a computer or LCD projector and that I had brought my flashdrive for nothing. She asked me to talk about my presentation on the importance of mentoring new teachers, but without having even looked at the topic recently, I didn’t have that much to say. The discussion lasted for about an hour and I was dying from being placed on the spot totally unprepared.

We then had a tea break and another chance to dance as one of the participants had brought along his organ and played several Tajik songs. Carol then presented some board games for which she had prepared the actual boards and dice encouraging the teachers to create their own according to their needs. Lastly, she had then write a story based on a single photograph with the participants collaborating in putting together the details about the person on the photo and then allowing them to write their own stories based on the sketch provided already. I had planned on having lunch with Carol, but she had brought along a packed lunched as it was too hot for her to venture outside. We sat in the empty classroom and discussed our mutual experiences while teacher training with Carol talking about the four years she spent in Kyrgyzstan.

I returned to the apartment as Dili was coming by to pick the bag with the remaining teaching materials I wanted to send to the teachers in Shahriston. We chatted for a while about the job she had recently received making 500.00 somoni a month after spending a fortune getting her degree in the United States in economics. She’d rather stay home than work in a place where her brain might rot for lack of intelligent things to do.

Although I had planned on visiting Mariam and Nilufar for a couple of hours to say goodbye for good, I couldn’t contemplate the idea of going there without someone to interpret for me as neither one of them speaks enough English to hold a conversation. Ryan returned from his trip to the Tatarstan region and took the kids shopping while I got ready to attend Dilbar’s wedding.

It was being held at a restaurant not too far from where Corrie used to live and I felt weird going there on my own as Manzura informed me she was one of the attendants for the event and needed to remain at Dilbar’s side the entire time. She reassured me that other PedInst students would be and I could sit with them. There was a receiving line and I mentioned Manzura’s name to a burly guy and was taken to a long table where several stout women were attacking the spread of food array on it. A few minutes later, a former student, whose name I couldn’t recall came and sat at my side wearing a gorgeous outfit, her face made up as if for a photo shoot and wearing such high heels she could barely walk straight. I noticed the absence of any men and she told me this event was only for women and that the actual wedding was to take place on Saturday when both sexes could attend.

I was urged to eat when the samosas came around, still warm, and then soup, and finally something that looked like a kibbe, or quipe, as Dominicans call this concoction, served with a side of white rice. In the meantime, Manzura and another former student of mine, entered the hall on each side of Dilbar while she, looking gorgeous in every outfit, stopped at each table, had her photo taken with the group of guests and bowed her head repeatedly in a sign of respect. She sat at the dais for a bit and then groups of women proceeded to dance in front of her while Dilbar bowed her head every so often. She went through two changes of clothes, I didn’t know the significance of this and my student was unable to explain. By 8:00pm, most of the women started to leave and Manzura asked to dance with her, which we did to the consternation of the older women who couldn’t believe I was able to make a decent effort at dancing just like them.

I presented Dilbar with a gift of cash, gave Manzura her photos in a CD along with the CDs of Latin music and tangos she had requested and left at 9:00pm when the event was over. Ryan’s dinner was over when I got there and I went to the bedroom to catch a few winks before leaving for the airport. He arranged for the taxi and went with me and a teenager from the building to help out with my heavy bags. I was so glad to have left one bag at Ryan’s as I could barely maneuver the two I had brought along while going through security and then the check in process.

I was told I was carrying 18 kilos of excess baggage and at 5 Euros per kilo, needed to pay $117.00 before they issued me a boarding pass. Disgruntled, but knowing I had no choice, I went to the window to pay and proceeded through immigration. I still had almost three hours before the flight took off and thus settled down to begin reading “A long way Gone”, a book about a child soldier from Sierra Leone who gets to escape that hell, comes to live in the United States and gets to write about his ordeal in very eloquent manner.

The flight in itself was uneventful, but I was not able to eat the dinner they presented us with: boiled chunks of beef with some overcooked pasta on the side, no sauce of any kind for either one, cold salad, hard roll and so on. I had some apricot juice, try without success to inflate the pillow I had brought with me, as none were provided by the airline, and then went into a fitful sleep for the next seven hours of the flight.