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.