Blogs from Khujand, Tajikistan, Asia

Day 81 Friday 8th April 2016 – Dushanbe to Penjikent Moving day and we have nothing booked so asked reception for some advice on getting to the city of Penjikent. The hotel has its own driver who could take us to the shared taxi rank and negotiate our fare, we paid him more than a normal taxi but he sure did earn his money. All the shared taxis leave from an area called the “cement factory” (because it is next to one) and it is located about 15 minutes from the centre of town. As soon as we stopped the car we were besieged by dozens of men trying to get our fare. The driver indicated for us to stay in the car as he battled, fought and screamed at them all, before calling ... read more

This story begins with a little girl, a girl who, while her friends collected fuzzy bagworms on a dusty Oklahoma playground and put them into cute jars and tried to feed them grass, cowered in a corner, horrified. This girl can't tell you where or when or how it developed, but she suffered from a blinding fear of caterpillars. They haunted her waking and sleeping hours, covering floors with their writhing bodies in her nightmares, seeking her out like heat-guided missiles on family picnics, making her humiliate her coming-of-age self as she ran and screamed like a maniac to escape them. This little girl grew up, and in the process outgrew many things, but not this phobia. "Sarah, they can't hurt you!" her friends would say. "Sarah, they're cute! Sarah, they turn into butterflies!" But reasoning ... read more

To quote a British friend here who, on a recent night celebrating that Britishest of pre-Lenten festivities (Pancake Day? I'd never heard of it), said that it seemed we all were coming down with a case of the midwinter blues. It's been cold for a while, though I can't blame the cold for my lack of internets communication--mostly I blame busy-ness. Lots more classes this semester, lots more extra stuff I want to do, especially as I see the end of my time here swiftly approaching. I feel--and I'm sure I'm not the first one to feel it--that just as I finally get my Tajikistan-legs, my perfect personal mix of individual strength and cultural respect, of hardness and kindness, it'll be time to go back to my wonderful home, and get a new set of legs ... read more

Full disclosure: I stole that title from a headline of a newspaper somewhere describing why, alas, I haven't been able to access ye olde facebook for many moons. I would tell you why facebook is blocked in Tajikistan, but I'm a little afraid to, lest He Who Must Be Named Many Times and Also Have His Picture in All the Places also shuts down my blog. Not having facebook has made me realize how reliant upon it I am over here--maybe too much so--but checking it relentlessly makes me feel home-ish when I am home-sick. Now I must find other, more creative ways to feel home-ish. Ways such as...celebrating Thanksgiving! I've had a most memorable one--I know my family also has, and I hope friends one and all had a great holiday. Missed you all quite ... read more

Woefully behind am I—in many things actually. Absorbing, emailing, writing much of anything, unfortunately. After a first couple of days in Khujand trying to figure out where to buy food and how to get the minibus to stop so I wouldn’t end up miles from my destination, I have settled into the closest approximation of a routine I think I’ll get here. Every day brings something new, and lots of somethings at that (insert here my lame excuses and apologies for being lax in blog-age), all of which involve many minds starving for English. It always tugs at me a little to know that half of that starving is a starving to leave this place and go to the U.S. I don’t know yet how to tell the wide-eyed students that knowing English alone does not ... read more