Dushanbe Life

Back in Dushanbe, this is the northern bus station. The vehicles in the front are tangems ('tang-gem' with the second 'g' pronounced hard). We take these things all over town. They fit six people, and don't overcrowd like marshrutneys. The fare in town is about 20 cents. Many drivers are young men, and within that group probably the ones that insurance companies in the States refuse to cover. In other words, they drive 'aggressively'.

I was stuck in a traffic jam in a tangem one day, and the driver decided to pull up onto the sidewalk, honking for people to get out of his way. We drove on the sidewalk for several hundred meters, but that didn't get us past the traffic, so we turned into a mess of buildings and drove between them for some time on something that can only be called a path, passing underneath hanging clothes and hitting dangling trousers, crossing a footbridge over a small drainage canal, eventually coming back out onto pavement, but not before surprising two guys who obviously didn't expect to see a vehicle coming up behind them on the sidewalk. I thoroughly enjoyed this diversion, and was happy to reach the city center much faster. Those who have had the good fortune to be my passengers might be nodding their heads in understanding.

Inside a tangem.

In the past couple of days there have been some earthquakes here. They appear to be aftershocks of a 6.4 earthquake in northern Afghanistan. As I write, there is trembling in the building, and last night there was a sudden jolt which prompted us to leave the aparment momentarily. Our building is a 'Stalin' building, however, which has walls nearly 1-meter thick and was built more sturdily than 'Brezhnev' buildings, which are quite thin and prone to things which buildings should not be prone to. Ummm, thanks Stalin?

ps I might have the Brezhnev buildings mixed up with Khrushev buildings, check the Wikipedia article if you feel like it.

Our yard.

This is a picture of our building.

The exit to the street and our beautiful trash pile on the left.

Buildings near our apartment lit up at night.

This is a picture inside a cafeteria. This kind of eatery exists all over the city and offers cheap

standardized dishes at cheap prices. This one in particular has posters, portraits and banners of Lenin all over the walls, though.

A new office building sits empty with a 'for rent' sign at the entrance. The financial crisis didn't

destroy savings here like it did in the states, but it froze up capital so construction and business

came to a halt.

Look at the woodwork above the entrance to this Havli (house). The detail may not be visible in the picture, but it was very impressive, and stood out all the more set against the drab wall and simple gate. This kind of woodwork seems to be done for a lot of houses when they remodel.

A street sign, Mirzo-Rizo.

The car of the owner of the new house across the street. There is money in Tajikistan, it's just not spread around very evenly, largely a result of the U.S.-backed policy of charging towards capitalism without paying attention to the need for regulatory bodies. Try 'Globalization and its Discontents' for more.

An exchange point. The dollar is dropping, unfortunately :(

This shop in the bazaar sells smokestacks and rain gutters. It just looked like an interesting collection of metal to me.

In the bazaar. The seat in the foreground appears to have a hole cut in it and a bucket placed beneath. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, there are normal porcelain sit-down and squat toilets in this country. Perhaps this is for the winter when one wants to avoid using an out-house???

In Shoh Mansur bazaar. Shoh means 'king', probably recognizable in its Farsi form, Shah. In Tajiki the a's often turn into o's. The cart on the right is useful for doing a lot of shopping at one time so you don't have to carry 20kgs of potatoes around on your shoulders or back. It costs 50 cents to rent while you shop. At least, this is what we pay, I'm sure the regular price is less. Sometimes men, but mostly boys, push the cart and watch your groceries while you shop. This bazaar is huge, maybe almost a football field in area. In different sections there are fruits, vegetables, electronics, household goods, clothes, construction and hardware materials--everything you could ever want (except for Gouda cheese and Red Bull, which you have to get at the supermarket).

We shop here at least once per week, to get fruits and veggies at 1/3 the price of the supermarkets, and about 1/5 the prices in the states.

Per kilo we pay:

apples $1,

pears $1.25,

carrots $.20,

grapes $.50,

sweet peppers $.75,

eggplant $.20,

cauliflower $.50,

pomegranate $1,

loaf of bread $.30-.50

just to give you an idea of how far money goes here.

In front of the bazaar.

The entrance to Shoh Mansur bazaar.

The building next to ours lit up at sunset. Not the most spectacular piece of architecture, but it was nice in the light.

Unfinished construction.