A Land Cruiser Lover?

As I waited for the paperwork to be completed in order to purchase a SIM-card and my small $4USD connection to the world, the 40C sun beat down on my back and the dry air sucked the last droplets of sweat from my skin. Parched, I purchased a 50 cent litre of lukewarm water and settled in to watch life on the streets of Dushanbe pass me by.

To my surprise, what passed me by were not simply women in an array of coloured moo-moos (the Tajik National Dress is in the family of nighties or moo-moos). Instead, white Land Cruiser after Land Cruiser raced down Rudaki Avenue. All seemed to be speeding to the next important meeting, from one Regional Office to another – bearing the logos of each and every international Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) one could imagine. I’ve seen the Red Cross/Crescent (ICRC), Mercy Corps, Caritas, Convoy of Hope, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), CARE and Oxfam tooting around town, but today something was stirring down a small alley to my left.

One after another, the logo-ed Land Cruisers of UNHCR (Refugees), UNICEF (Children), UNEP (Environment), UNDP (Development), and the World Food Program pulled in beside me. My curiosity was sparked, but I was the only one. These big white beasts are as regular in Dushanbe as watermelons in the summer – only what comes inside better than juicy red fruit to local entrepreneurs. Typically, a well-paid foreigner emerges with dollars to spend, despite the falsified inflation.

I couldn’t help but have a bad taste in my mouth at the white caravan of creatures the Aga Khan Development Network (and ALL of it agencies) had parked in the back of our building. Sporting red diplomatic license plates, I wondered why we didn’t simply drive cars around the city or why the SUVs needed to be white. It all seemed very pretentious and part of the international community’s game. White saviors in white caravans, here to offer help and hope and save the poor innocent souls. I didn’t want to be a part of it.

The man on the other side of the small opening in the wall handed me my cell phone and new phone number, the AKF Cruiser pulled up, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the cool air as I slunk into the backseat. I had no choice but to resign to my fate as the next White girl in a white Land Cruiser. We were getting ready to go out to the field and there was no doubt that this would be our form of transportation.On Thursday, July 10th I took up my assigned spot in Habib’s 4x4 ready to see what Life Outside the Dush’ was made of. This country needed to offer me more than Land Cruisers, moo-moos, water fountains, and old Soviet apartment blocks – and I was certain it was all to be found outside the city limits.
About an hour from the security of our paved roads we hit the windy and rocky cliff passages through an all too eerie no-man’s land. The mountains, which had sat in the distant horizon of the capital, suddenly jetted up just meters from our vehicle on the left and plunged straight down into the Sourkhob River rushing below us on our right. We steadily climbed thousands of feet to a region that was in fact very far from the middle of nowhere. Small clusters of homes appeared around rocky corners, hillsides contained herds of goats, and valleys fields were dotted with neatly piled bails of hay waiting to be collected. The mountain village communities are where over 80% of Tajiks spend their lives – and the reality is, this is most-man’s land.

Our three-day field visit would be an adventure as we traveled to three regional offices and over twelve different project implementation sites. At the furthest end of the Rasht Valley, our Land Cruiser hadn’t seen pavement for kilometers and the 4-wheel drive had been engaged continuously. Many times we could not see the road in front of us, as the incline was so steep. At one point, opting to go threw a small stream, rather than over a potentially faulty bridge, the passengers (myself included) let out yelps of excitement and snapped pictures for proof as we plunged forward.

As we passed the third Lada broken down on the side of “road” I turned to my co-passengers and finally exclaimed: “I LOVE our Land Cruiser!” I still wish it wasn’t white, but outside of the Capital nothing, particularly the roads, are certain. Soon enough, the rainy season’s landslides and the snowy season’s avalanches will make some wait and others turn back, but in our Land Cruiser we will go forth…

Fountains, Fauna, and Fruit: Arrival in The Dush'

As shocking as it may be to everyone who knows me well, little sleep, last minute over-packing and high-speed racing to Pearson Airport defined the beginning of my 3-day journey to the middle of Central Asia. Our arrival was less climatic, as we flew into the capital of Tajikistan at 3am and a few single bulbs dotted the landscape. It took an hour to clear customs with forms written in Cyrillic and another hour for our baggage to be unloaded from the small Turkish Air bi-weekly flight into the country. And with that, the sun had risen on July 3rd, 2008 and 5 young Canadians with their 15 bags piled into a white Land Cruiser marked “Aga Khan Foundation.”

Within minutes we were driving down a clean urban street, boasting neatly demarcated car lanes, traffic lights, and lined with tall leafy shade trees. As we passed a massive golden statue-archway into the city and numerous 4-6 story freshly painted crisp cement buildings and water fountains garnishing the properties, I turned to one of my fellow interns and said “I thought I signed up for a developing country placement?” It remains difficult to avoid comparing everything (people, customs, resources, processes, development) to my recent experiences in India, as the differences between the two nations are so vivid.
Our Land Cruiser stopped minutes later at another large building that was our hotel. Richly coloured wallpaper, thick wooden floorboards, and ornate gold and silver chandeliers created an overwhelming décor of both the lobby and our private rooms. Is this popular here now or left over from the former Soviet days? I was too tired to contemplate it further, turned up the AC, and began the multi-day process of letting my body adjust to the new time zone (GMT+5 or 9hrs ahead of Toronto).
Our first few days remain a bit of a blur as we were swooped in and out of potential apartments, met many people with names I’ve never even heard before, and ate obscure foods at odd hours of the day (including an abundance of fresh apricots, watermelon, and cucumbers). One particular evening, our collective eyebrows raised at a 24-hour grocer, full of international supplies. The wall of shampoos and soaps (Dove, Pantiene, etc) was next to the wall of vodka around the full shelves of pasta, ketchup, and imported chocolate. I made a mental map of the location and could no longer imagine how living in this city or this country would be very difficult.

The problem?

This is actually not what I signed up for. Moving from the sweat, complexity, corruption, density, difficulty, and absolute poverty of rural West Bengal, India to a swanky expatriate apartment on the central strip of the capital city was not what I meant by “I’d like to be somewhere isolated, rural, and challenging.” In my mind, understanding the plight of the poor and the complexity of sustainable development is not merely a 9-5 office job.

And so, another intern and I set out to carve a different type of lifestyle for ourselves and understand this remote Land of the Tajiks (Stan = Land) to the best of our abilities. Former interns, AKF staff, and other expatriates warned us that water and electricity would surely be unavailable outside the city-centre in the Winter, transportation would be an issue, Muslim families were too modest for our liking, we’d miss out on the fun of the expatriate happenings, and that the more difficult our chosen lifestyles were the less able we would be to fulfill our work duties. The latter seriously concerned me, but after some contemplation, a great conversation with Parker Mitchell, and a fierce determination to find a balance that would be morally and professionally acceptable, we decided to begin the search for a Tajik family in the neighbourhoods of my new colleagues to agree to take me in.

A fellow Sarnian AKF Intern (crazy as it sounds!), Holly Shrumm, and I found exactly what we were looking for, as we now share a room smaller than my one in Brandon Hall in an apartment with an ever-changing number of related residents. From sharing the icy cold water in our single bathroom to eating daily fresh bread and running for the jam-packed micro-buses each morning, I have managed to begin to find that balance I was searching for. Over the last 2 weeks I have already have gained numerous insights and a handful of stories about life off the main strip… but I’ll save those for later!

Thanks for reading… keep an eye for my upcoming notes from the field, as I venture outside the capital into the mountains ominously lying on the distant horizon.