politik

in the last 2 weeks, there has been a lot of beer. and with beer, there has been a lot of politics talk. there is a war going on in the eastern part. although it is not called war. ATO or anti-terrorist operation cannot be called a war because in order for it to be called that, there has to be at least two official warring parties. there are not. ukraine is essentially fighting an internal scuffle, figuring out its own internal affair, but with weapons and with a foreign country supplying the 'enemy'. here i have to digress and explain. DNR (Donetskaya Narodnaya Respublika or Donetsk People's Republic and LNR, Luhansk....you get the idea) are fighting for their sovereignty. or independence. it is hard to tell exactly how much separation or autonomy without separation they are willing to accept. Russia is not involved, officially, and has officially has denied involvement. but...
after fighting at independence square and after the president was ousted, or rather after he fled, events happened quickly and rather confusingly, at least for me as an outsider. crimea was lost. i did not say taken over because that would mean implicating a whole foreign nation. there was a referendum and people, somehow, by like a 90% margin of vote 'chose' to leave ukraine and join russia. strange men in unmarked uniform swiftly took over military ukrainian military bases. why? why now? unclear as it was a 'democratic' vote, but this did conveniently coincide with the expiration of russia's lease on sevastopol, their black sea military base. then, DNR and LNR decided they wanted to go too. somehow, again very quickly, militants materialized. these militants claimed to be representing the people, defending people's will. somehow, the people's army suddenly had weapons, weapons big enough to blow up a plane. although wait, who is responsible for the malaysian flight remains a controversy.
the fighting continues today. ukraine calls on a mass mobilization efforts. the standing army has been on overdrive for over a year trying to contain and maybe take back the fighting separatists, which is what they are called. russia remains uninvolved. the russian news, which i have watched for 3 tajik weeks reports on the fighting daily. the reports are skewed, very skewed: the ukrainian armed forces continually, i mean, daily, violate the minsk agreement not to shoot. the evil ukrainian forces shell civilians, daily. every news reports, every station starts their segment by listing exactly how many shells, artillery hits, and agreement violations happened overnight. there are interviews with poor civilians and brave separatists. there are stories of crazy accounts of lynching and mass executions by the ukrainian army, who are presented as blood-thirsty off-their-rocker nationalists. russia remains uninvolved, despite reports of mass crossings across the border, militarization and mobilization of russian army forces along the border, captured separatist fighters who somehow end up being officers and soldiers in the russian army. volunteers, russia says, and continues to supply hoards of humanitarian aid across the unchecked border.
ukraine is doing its best. to fight the mass media hysteria put out by russia, to support its own troops, to decide what to do with the population left in DNR and LNR. the majority of people fled and ukraine is actually facing its own little internal migration crisis. it has no true enemy as russia is not involved, but somehow the separatists have weapons, artillery, and man power which is unending. the question i continue to have is why? speaking to both russian (in moscow) and ukrainians, russia does not want DNR or LNR. their claim to russian-ness, although great, does not inspire great desire to incorporate these regions into the country. ukraine does not want to let go. what would happen if it did? if these people really want to separate, maybe just let them? well, that would set a precedent, that would show weakness of the new revolutionary government. so the fighting continues. and the government? many think it is better. reforms within the system itself are happening, they are evident, people at the top are trying. but others think that nothing has changed, adn the events, all of the events, is just another well-orchestrated political move to claim power. and maybe steal money. there is something like 160 political parties registered in ukraine today. which is sort of great (and better, in some ways, than the two party system we are so used to) but also, logistically, makes it harder to get anything done. the support of EU and NATO and economic sanctions (in which the US participates) is helping to weaken Russia and its economy, but not sufficiently enough, not quickly enough to end the fighting. Is there a resolution? it is unclear, both to me and ukrainians.
life goes on despite the fighting and people, still shell-shocked are hopeful. i went to the institute street again. walked among the makeshift memorials, looking at the 'heavenly one hundred'--the name given to those who died or were gunned down in the february fighting. the oldest was 83, the youngest 17.

pedestrian observations 2.0

i take a lot of walks. i try to avoid public transportation, other than the subway, as it cannot be trusted: trams and city-buses are crowded and tend to be heated, which is a shockingly surprising discovery one makes getting on. the first day i was tricked into taking the tram, two stops, as i have forgotten how miserable it gets, until i almost did not make it the two short stops from heat exhaustion and suffocation. so never again, i walk across the city.
i visited the pedestrian artisan street. on a monday, almost empty and less crowded, it still offered its share of souvenirs, hand-crafted goods, and paintings. tuesday, i went to the center, to walk the main street of Kyiv, Khreschatik. a walk up the hill, past the old botanical garden, past the red building of the university (painted red after student protests at the end of the 19th century resulted in clashes with tsarist army and many students shot dead, hence the red color). i visited the main (and most expensive market), which was a very exciting site to see actual fruits of vegetables after the cucumbers and tomatoes of tajikistan). down the main street all the way to the main square--Ploscha Nezalezhnosti or Independence square. this is where the fighting took place in winter of 2014. the square was initially occupied after the ex-president refused to sign an EU treaty agreement. people took to the square and set up a tent city to protest the regime. it was a peaceful demonstration, people fed each other, offered coffee and celebrated new year together. things turned more violent as the police intermittently made arrests and tortured people on the street. after the students, who were also camping out there, were violently disbanded, things turned violent. people on teh square, set up tire fires on the periphery and took down cobblestone streets to protect themselves. then, on february 20th special brigade of the armed forces was ordered to disband the square. people, unarmed or poorly armed and defending themselves with cardboard, had to defend themselves against snipers and a military offensive. many died. today, the square looks almost normal, the blood was cleaned off the sidewalk. but it is littered with makeshift memorials, boards with people names and pictures. the sidewalk and flower beds serve as the reminders, with missing stones. walking up the Institute street, the street is lined with memorials: people's names and pictures, those who died defending the square. some of them were less than 18, others look like normal middle-aged men, civilians with families. there are candles lining the sidewalk, little monuments made out of scraps of metal and beat up construction hats, which people wore to somehow protect themselves. it is a sad walk up the hill.
yesterday, i took a walk through the Mariinsky park. it is my favorite park in the city. it was built around the Mariinsky palace, which was built in 186..., not to lie, but in the 1860s, in honor of Alexander II's visit. the palace was named in honor of his wife, queen Maria. the palace currently is meant for official government reception, but it has been under renovations for like the last 10 years. it is located next to the Verhovna Rada, the Parliament. the park is built around it at the end of the 19th century, the old fountains are dated 1896. the park is beautiful, old trees lining delicate alleys. the walk is quiet, peaceful. except yesterday something felt off. maybe the proximity to the parliament building and the recent and even current protests adn clashes that periodically take place outside on the street, made me feel on edge, as if anticipating violence. there were some people loitering in the park with political banners, otherwise the park was empty was usual, but with a strange air of bearing witness to violence and losing the noise of discontent in its echoes.

road trips

we spent the weekend driving around to various out of town locales. first there was the ukrainian version of the renaissance fair. built in the style of old Kievan Russia circa 11th-12th century, this is a rather expansive plot of land, built entirely out of wood. an entire castle wall (with a moat), streets, houses, all wooden structures. there are catapults and rock throwing machines, a boat, and various other things created the represent the ancient kingdom. this is, of course, accompanied with small shops, where one can buy souvenirs and crafts of the olden times, old russian food-stuffs, make one's own coin. there is a huge arena for knight fights. horses and horse-riders with knightly flags, parade around, before knights with swords go into action. despite the difficulty getting there, once again ignoring the GPS, this was fun.
Yesterday, we went to the ex-presidential residency. this is a huge compound outside of kiev. unofficially, it occupies 170 hectares of land. it includes a palace, well, house, heli-pad, golf course, park, floating restaurant, a zoo. the territory was occupied the day after the ex-president fled the country, on February 22nd 2014. the people who occupied it pretty much still run it, maintain it, guard it. they also give tours. it rained, so the walk through the park was rather wet. the park is beautiful, well maintained. the chill and serenity reminded me of wandering through Berlin in the fall. we to the president's bathhouse (sauna), which has a 3-D jacuzzi. then, after waiting for the main house tour, we finally get in. there is a large group of people on the tour, it gets a bit cluster-fuck-like at times, trying to fit through narrow doorways. the man leading the tour is the one who a year and a half ago stormed the residence. he is short, wears soft traditional slippers and is draped in the right sector flag (nationalist party). he talks about the events of occupying this place, what they found, how the defended it then and continue to defend, squatting there now. he hasnt left since the invasion; stayed because he felt like he needed to protect it from looters, and there have been many. he talks about looters coming in at night, secretly, and officials coming in during the day, more officially, all trying to loot, steal, and remove whatever valuable was initially unmoved. the man has the keys to all the rooms, he knows where the secret passageways are, he is the one who hid many valuables initially left behind by owners in their flights. he has made lists of everything that was left, he guards the space, waters the plants, and also gives out tours, while waiting for the government, or a private organization to decide what to do next. it would be a shame, he feels, to destroy this, the house continues to live--there are plants that need to be waters, furniture, and pillows that need to be dusted. and because it was never officially claimed by the government, the ownership of this place remains unclear.
the house is ridiculous. millions of Euros poured into a mansion, stupidly, for no reason other than there was money to be wasted. gold on gold, handcrafted wood on wood. we walk through marble rooms, snake-skin furniture, pearl shell floor vases. there is a dining room table that costs 100,000 Euro. one of the guys in the group asked me if i ever felt 100,000 Euro. no. we gently pet the dining room table together. there is a white grand piano autographed by john lennon. there are silk rugs, and hand-made chandeliers, crystal, silk, money everywhere. half of this stuff the ex-president has never seen or used, half of it he overpaid for, with his personnel pocketing the difference. the decor is not tasteful, rather, it is in the taste of money: wherever we can dumb more cash into, whatever costs more, is more flashy. the presidential palace in tajikistan, equally unnecessarily stupid, was at least open to the public, made as an official governmental structure. this is all private, just for one person. 1700 people worked there daily. more than half of it security. the lake on the bottom of the property was guarded, reportedly, by submarines. people were not allowed to use large surfaces of the water-space for fear of assassination. now all of this stands still, people who work there, who occupy and care for the space, do it out of their own will, charging money from visitors for both upkeep and their own food supplies. it is unclear what will happen to this place. technically, its owner remains alive and at large, somewhere in russia. he may claim it back, some private owner may claim to for himself. maybe the government will step in and claim the park for public use. what will happen with the house, the inside decor, remains unclear.

buki

i did not know what Buki was: maybe a village, maybe a park, maybe a park within a village that had a fountain. but we decided to go.
it is about a 2 h car ride, as i am told. packed in the car, we pick up my cousin's daughter and drive off. starting off on what seems like an interstate, we follow the GPS, sort of. for some reason, despite GPS's stern pleas to make a right turn, we do not turn right. we further ignore any attempts to redirect us and make a U-turn to go back and make a right. we are following the GPS, but we are no longer following the GPS. down an interstate, through the Ukrainian country-side. we stop at a Shell to pee and eat hot-dogs (coffee for me), to continue on the road of not following the GPS. it is unclear which direction we are headed, somewhere southwest, towards Odessa. the ride is bumpy, interrupted by GPS's annoying reminder that we are exceeding the allowed speed limit. are we there yet? i take a nap, maybe two. are we there yet? the GPS is guiding us through back roads now, we drive through a small town, ignoring pleas to make a right. are we there yet? the mid-day sun is getting hot, we are driving through vistas of fields. are we there yet? I have no hope left of reaching our destination altogether, but somehow, 3 hrs later we made it.
Buki is really an estate owned by an agrarian businessman and build for his family/the public. there is a church, a river, and a park. you can walk around the grounds, celebrate wedding here, or just relax on the weekend. we take a tour around the property. there is a alley with magically carved sculptures, there is a sculpture of a lady who brings good luck and fertility. there is a zoo. the zoo is super sad, especially, since i hate zoos. a cage with 2 bears, a cage with a lion, a cage with 2 other bears. i had to walk away. and the tour itself is littered with references to the owner: this is how old he is, this is when he bought this, this is what he did for his foster kids who live on teh property. it is odd as you realize you're walking through someone else's backyard, someone's very expensive backyard. after that we head back.
the decision is to stop by yet another village. but the gps, stupid gps, starts taking us through the back roads. we drive between village homes, chickens running across the street. i start getting nervous: it already took us 3 hrs to get here, and we are seemingly aimlessly lost again, despite the fact that multiple shirtless men stopped on the side of the road point us in the same general direction. after a while of sharing the road with farm animals, we decide to head home, ignoring the GPS, now because we actually found the right interstate. i am smelly, i need a shower.

pedestrian observations

so this happens a lot as i make my nightly pilgrimage to a wi-fi spot somewhere. my apartment is on the main street, sort of across the street from where the president works. as i'm walking down the street, around 6p, suddenly there are an increased number of cops, like every block on both sides increased number. they are whistling and making a lot of noise, basically, clearing the road of traffic. so like, making some cars move through very fast, forcing others to pull into side streets. the road clears, then suddenly three police cars, at intervals speed down the street in the opposite lane. suddenly, a convoy of three two police cars, and a black mercedes with one ahead, one in the back, and two mercedes SUVs with lights flashing flanking it, are flooring it down the street for about 3 blocks. they stop abruptly and turn onto a side street. this whole incident takes a total of 3 minutes. the roads were suddenly empty for half a minute and then traffic was restored, in slow moving pace. for a second i get nervous: should i be walking, or should i duck for cover in case there is shooting? but there are women with children on the opposite side of the street so there is no way i would be a shooting target. i guess the president also goes out for a walk.
Some of the women I have interviewed talked about ‘chinese napkins’. From what I can gather, this is spermicide and the women swear by it. After consulting with my co-workers, it is decided that I must procure some and bring it back, so I embark on the procurement mission. While planning this, I realize that acquiring contraceptives over the counter, in a conservative muslim country may be tricky. So I specifically decide to go to a pharmacy where I know the pharmacist is a woman, since I do not know what I’m looking for and imagine my interaction would sound something like “umm….do you have these napkins? They are chinese and someone recommended them to me as very good”. This pharmacy is quite a walk, and after getting there, all sweaty of course, imagine my surprise when I find a man behind the glass window. Shit. I proceed to have a full on 15-year-old-teenage-girl-buying-tampons-for-the-first-time moment. I cannot bring myself to ask this man what I need. I literally stand there, looking through the available product in the window giving myself a pep talk: you’re an adult, you’re a doctor, you do this all the time with your patients. Finally, I ask him if they have any chinese napkins. “would you like wet or dry?” dry??! That seems uncomfortable, until he brings out tissues. Oh, no, no, I am looking for like napkins to like not get pregnant? ‘we have this”—he brings out spermicidal suppositories. Ok, but maybe like in napkin form? Oh, yes, hold on. He climbs from behind the glass and opens another glass door to hand me pads. No, no, this is not quite it. Then he informs me they are all out. probably seeing my sad face, he gets on his phone and starts making phone calls. I’m sorry, the other pharmacies in Dushanbe are out too… damn, chinese napkins!
My last day. After transcribing for a while I am ready to walk out of the office. jonbek suggests we go out, since it is my last day. We hail an ueber-city cab to take us down the street. Except, the cab stalls in the middle of the street and will not start. No fear! Jonbek gets out of the car and pushes it (along with me, lady with a child, and the driver desperately trying to get his vehicle to start) down the street, the main street, until whatever gears catch and the car starts. We then walk towards the newly built presidential palace (I’ve counted this as the fourth one). We pass by a river, more like a trickle of muddy water, which Jonbek describes is the place where women who have been left by their husbands, jump into to drown themselves. I raise an argument: given that this ‘river’ is like 2 feet deep, I doubt anyone can successfully commit suicide by drowning in it. I mean, the stones will hurt, but drowning?? No it gets really deep in the summer!.....it is summer? The dispute is settled when jonbek points out that it is way sadder when the women take the kids with them. We pass the zoo (there is a zoo?? Yes, there are lions and bear…lions??? Well, lion and he is skinny and hungry, but yes he is there) on our way to the palace. After the tour, which for money is open to the public, we drink beer on the veranda overlooking an amusement park (‘the rides remain from the soviet era.” “have they been fixed since the soviet era?” “no”), listening to tajik sad music (it’s all about love), and talking about dating, which really means Jonbek telling me stories about his friends misadventures in multiple partner dating, and me acquiring prices of local sex workers.
On the way to the airport, there is a roadblock: the road to the airport is closed, and police cars are blocking traffic. Since the cab cannot get through, apparently my option is to walk, with my luggage. Which is when jonbek hires a cop car as a taxi to drive us to the airport. I am out.

the night at the opera

Technically, it was the night at the symphony. Jonbek, I think, took pity on my boredom and agreed to take me to the symphony. We headed to the main theater, the ‘national theater of opera and ballet of tajikistan named after Somoni Ayni”. On the inside, the theater is well decorated, but as it turns out, it was rather empty. Like 30 people total, including 15 boys that showed up as a class field trip. The orchestra played Mozart, played well actually. After the concert, since it was still early, we went out for a drink.
There is a café in the park, complete with fountain and a summer stage. The performers ranged from an older very blonde very white lady in a tight black outfit singing kitschy Russian songs, to a fatter middle age dude singing tajik hits, to traditional dancers. The dancers were really talented, it was clear they were professionally trained and Jonbek thought they were likely local art institute students or teachers who were making money on the side. as the night progressed, the dancing progressed from really elaborate covered up costumes to less covered up short outfits, with bared midriffs, danced to the beat of the tajik heartthrob enrique iglesias.
The dancing around the stage progressed as well. There was a group of dudes drinking and dancing intermittently. There was an older Russian lady dressed in heels, leggings, and a tunic, who sat alone, and because she sat and drank alone, jonbek deemed her a sex worker. The lady would intermittently get up to dance too, either to attract clients, given her purported occupation, or just to relax. She, despite her older age, was beautiful, and I made a mental note that i would totally pay to hit that. The main entertainment though was just to the left of our table: a couple, a dude and his date, older and dressed in a traditional dress who danced just for him. Her moves were amazing, rivaling the dancers on stage, traditional, graceful, elaborate, and only for him. This went on for hours, and became progressively more risqué: the traditional dress started to slide up, the moves got lower and lower, the lady spread more and more towards our table. I wasn’t sure who he was, her date, her husband/boyfriend, but whatever it is he was paying for, an apartment, her kids' education, one night--it was all worth it. Then, at some point, she dragged jonbek onto the floor, which sent me into a bout of laughter as he tried to decline and apologize and tell her that he could not possibly. Then, as revenge for my laughter, the lady pulled me onto the floor. The bitch was strong: I slid, literally slid across the pavement as she pulled and tossed me upright. Suddenly, my face was covered with kisses and I was made to dance. After a little bit, I finally got away and sat down. This was now dangerous, we had to leave! The lady, then walked over, kissed me all over again, and told us that she is widowed, that she has grown children, and she just loves to dance. She then held our hands together and wished us happiness. And gave me more kisses. The Russian quasi-SW lady joined the table with the dudes; it was time to go.

marginalized populations

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. It first started out as things I disliked, other than the heat. But I think there is maybe more to say.
While talking to women I hear a lot of stories about cultural practices, about how women are not allowed to walk outside, about husbands forbidding them from going out during the day, even if with girlfriends. I walk around the city all the time, granted, I am only in the center. I try to keep it modest and while my shoulders (and sometimes my cleavage) could be more concealed, my knee caps are always covered. Regardless, I get cat-called all the time. Actually, cat-calls are not really cat-calls, they’re more like clicking noises that men make at you, a noise which is similar to what I imagine is a noise one uses to make the mule walk faster. Cops on the street, turn away from checking the documents of whatever poor soul they just pulled over in their ‘routine’ traffic stops to make noises at me. Cops! I gave up on covering my shoulders precisely because it did not matter. Men stop on the street just to stare. Straight up, stop dead on the street. Passer-bys frequently share their thoughts and tell me I look like a princess. Today, I got my first ‘nice tits!” comment from some jerk walking in the opposite direction. It only took two whole weeks!
I met this british doctor here. For the last 5 years he has been biking (!) across asia, all sorts of asia—eastern, southeastern, and now central. He started out working in volunteer clinics, but then became something of an ethnographer, working with marginalized populations: lepers, MSM, PLHIV. Someone thought he should connect with me, we connected, and I shared my migrant women and helped translate for him when he asked them questions about migrant life. He wanted to hook up with local organizations working with HIV positive people in Tajikistan. While brainstorming how to get to marginalized population of Tajikistan, Jonbek mentioned that women, in reality, are also marginalized in Tajikistan.
So what have I learned? Everyone, well, maybe besides like 2 women I interviewed had arranged marriages. The majority of them did not meet their husbands until their wedding day. Women fear not being able to bear children because their husbands may leave them. They are forced to bear children when they do not want to. They are forced to stay inside the house, they are not allowed to work or study. Not all of them, of course, but some. Enough to make one think.
If you happen to find the courage and strength to leave, as a divorced woman you can rarely remarry. And being divorced means being financially unsupported and fully screwed. Leaving your husband’s and his family’s house, means going back to your own parents, who may not let you back in. best case scenario is that you have some sort of higher degree and can work, best case scenario is also tht your husband forever has turned you away from men and marriage. Worse case scenario you become a second wife. According to one of my participants, it is better to be a second wife, far better than being 3rd or 4th.
But frequently there is no work, not here. At night, the street sweepers come out. The street sweepers are women, who with giant brooms literally sweep the streets of the city. They sweep at night to 1) avoid the heat, 2) avoid the dust from passing cars, 3) because they have families they have to take care of during the day. You can hear their brooms at night, like sound machines in rhythmic sweeps, back and forth. This is the job you can get as a woman. And being a street sweeper is not as bad as being a weeder. Weeders are also women who come out at night or early morning. Weeders squat around the city’s flower beds (there are many), and by hand, pull out weeds. They usually cover their faces, not because of modesty but to keep the dust out, because they are, after all, squatting in the dust. That is another job you can get as a woman, slightly worse than sweeping, when your husband is not there to support you.
After all, the tajik word for prostitute is ‘widow’.

ADL: activities of daily living

so i figured it was time to share a bit about my daily surroundings.
the apartment.
I am renting an apartment, a pretty fancy newly remodeled apartment in the center of the city. it is a two room, huge kitchen, two bathroom (why the hell do i need two bathrooms??) apartment in a new high-rise on the main street. there is air-conditioning and satellite tv. there is a queen mattress in the living room, pillows and bedsheets, which i, at first, wanted to drag into the corner, but the rest of the furniture is set so oddly, against the wall, that this bed has become my life. i work on it, watch tv on it, drink coffee on it. there is a questionable McBurger joint downstairs that makes my apartment smell like meatloaf, despite the apartment being on the tenth floor. the height also doesnt help street noise. my sleep is completely wonky: i start with air conditioning on, mostly because i have to close the windows due to noise form crazy cars driving by, i wake up in teh middle of the night, to turn ac off and open windows because i'm chilly, i then wake up at 5am daily because of roosters. i waste the first 2-3 hours watching various news sources--Moscow, euro, al jazeera. whenever home, water must be boiled, boiled and consumed because it is hot, always. then i get ready to head and wait for Jonbek to call and tell me there are women waiting at the office.
the office.
the office is located up the street, about a 10 minute walk. it's actually not that far, but i think i walk slow because it's hot. it is in an old soviet building that belongs to the consumer union of Tajikistan. the office is on the fifth floor, the elevators frequently stop working due to power outages, there are signs on the elevator doors that warn against more than 2 people riding the elevator at once as it may get stuck. the office itself is a two room place, down a winding hallway covered with worn out carpet. the office is equipped with ac, but no overhead light, as i found out one night. there is no wi-fi and my attempts at stealing Aga Khan foundation's connection (which is located one floor below) result in nothing. there is tea and coffee and a water cooler, for visitors and workers (that's me and Jonbek) alike, but one must drink carefully: the bathroom is a bit tricky. it is unisex, three stalls behind doors, no toilet, but a hole in the ground. when going to void, one must lock the door behind to make sure no dude busts in on you, and then cautiously aim into the hole, in complete darkness, while avoiding any contact with anything but the floor, and under no circumstance letting go of your skirt. the bathroom is off to the side, slightly hard to find at first (certainly took me two tries and detailed explanation from jonbek), but due to its unisex-ness and the 40C degree heat, you can pretty much smell it around the corner.
nightlife
at night i make a daily pilgrimage into the center of the city. there, usually at the public pub, i peruse the interwebs, delete emails (god, so many emails) and write silliness in my blog. at night, the walk back is cooler. there are families and hoards of women walking with their children. there are also teenagers strolling the streets, and men in groups catcalling.

field work.

today was a long day, 7 interviews completed. we started at 8:30, took a city cab to the outskirts of the city where a local doctor, Shohira, hooked me up with a participant. Shohira helped me run a seminar in 2008, at the time she had two adorable daughters--maybe 6 and 8--who made me bead bracelets before i left. the clinic is part of the 'epidemics center" and is located on the first floor of what looks like a residential building. from there, a MA lead me to this woman' apartment for an interview. we sat in her living room, carpeted with no furniture, except for a small TV stand in one corner and a coffee table in front of a seating mat in the other. there was green tea that we drank out of 'piala', a traditional drinking bowl, sugar biscuits, local flatbread, and honey that the woman's brother in law makes in the mountain and that is 'ecologically clean", meaning organic. the honey was deliciously sweet on the chewy adn dense flatbread, which is like ciabatta but with less holes. the woman is a gynecologist who talked about the delivery of her son, with mild shoulder dystocia, her work in moscow and in afghanistan. she talked about having to live under shari'a law, working in a war-zone with shelling all around, working in terrible health-depraved culturally conservative conditions, where women delivered on the floor of a dirty hut without sanitation. then, back to the city cab and back to the office, where more women are waiting. this driver was amazingly skilled, weaving through crazy traffic, speeding, while shelling pistachios out of the window while talking on the phone to the beat of arabic 'super hits'. at some point you had to let go of the possibility of dying and just trust in the manual transmission and the faith that the 5 dudes behind that this guy just cut off are going to break just in time.
the women are already waiting. they are supplied by Nilu, who is a woman i interviewed earlier and who is now my pimp, supplying me with woman. after 3 interviews, Nilu, who helps to translate when questions get difficult, invites me to Kulyab, her hometown in the south of teh country. umm..maybe next time, considering Nilu just left her hometown because she did not want to be forced to wear a burqa.
after this we go to lunch. this is actually the first time i get a chance to have a lunch during work day, so Jonbek insists i 'meet' Tajik pizza. We walk to the pedagogical university, between the office and my apartment where in the back, out of a small courtyard kitchen, tehre is a traditional cafe. when jonbek said pizza, he really meant shakharob, which is a traditional vegetarian, and only vegetarian dish there is. it consists of layer of thin plain yogurt, layered with crusty flaky bread, layered with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and liberally sprinkled with chopped dill adn served in a giant wooden bowl. despite my dislike for chopped dill it is actually pretty tasty. now, full of shakharob, we go back for more interviews.
the women i interview are different. i have interviewed doctors, teachers, language professors, economists, and many others with barely a high school diploma. they share their stories, their stories of migration, of giving birth, of sleeping with their husbands. i listened to a 20 minute story about terrible severe preeclampsia went undiagnosed. i listened to stories of abusive husbands and the courage to leave them, even though one may likely never marry again. i listened to stories of homelessness in moscow, and lack of money, any money, and needing to support one's kids. there are stories of not wanting to let go, 25 years after the soviet union fell apart, still having nostalgia for the tajikistan of one's childhood. there are also stories of stupidity, or what i, probably incorrectly and arrogantly, think is stupidity. like wanting to have a child with your husband, who abandoned you and your children, without having any means to support this or any other child, just because you want to have a child. today, i listened to a very colorful woman (both in personality and in her bright orange hair and coral lipstick) who intermittently launched into a monologue about her husband, the artist, and his artistic creativity, which i awkwardly had to interrupt to ask silly questions like "so tell me about your second abortion?"
it's late and i'm celebrating a long day with a beer. i have so much transcription to do....

the wedding

So I got invited to a wedding—as a guest, not as a bride. Do you remember that Anthony Bourdain episode, in his 3rd season I think, when he ends up at a wedding in Uzbekistan? I had flashbacks of similar cultural disaster, so I protested: I did not bring my wedding outfit, I did not get a gift, piss-pot or otherwise. But I was told it didn’t matter. Nora, the bride, intermittently works with Prisma, so she invited Jonbek, who in turn invited me. This was a Pamiri wedding.
We took multiple shaky run-down ueber-like cabs, no seat belts in site, to the outskirts of the city, where in a restaurant called “Russian court” the wedding was to take place. The actual marriage (traditional Muslim marriage contract called Niko) took place earlier, at home. The couple was lead into the reception hall following a crowd of dancing female relatives. The band chanted what translated as ‘the king has arrived” (that’s the groom, just to clarify). The bride was wearing a beautiful western wedding gown: strapless satin with lace and sequent overlay, bell shaped skirt, veil covering her shoulders. The couple was seated at the head table facing the guests, accompanied by maid of honor and best man.
Somehow, we were seated at the table closest to the couple. Unassigned seats were taken at random. The table was covered with meats of various cold cut variety, questionable salads disguised by layers of mayo, fresh vegetables and fruit, smoked fish and roasted chicken. The servers walked around and poured juice, whether you liked it or not. At some point someone took pity on me and switched the plate of meat in front of my face with watermelon. Then, more meat appeared, in stew form. The servers dished out plate after plate. Someone put a plate with meatloaf-shaped form and fried potatoes on my plate, I carefully put it to the side. Immediately, another one appeared. The servers were determined to feed me. Dinner was accompanied by speeches, made by relatives, and ‘important’ guests. These distinguished people, like professors, former KGB officers, a ‘real’ general (real because, as Jonbek explained, nowadays, anyone can buy a rank, this man actually really earned his) all made their congratulatory remarks toward the couple, who stood listening and thanking the speakers. At some point, someone pointed out that as a foreigner, I may be requested to make a speech. Absolutely not!
The band played traditional tajik music and tajik ‘hits’ the whole time, the only interruption, besides the speeches, was made to channel Antonio Banderas for a great cover of “desperado”. Everyone danced, the whole time. Women, men, danced to honor the couple, who stood thanking their guests. The leading TB doctor of Pamir—a bald man of about 60—was, according to Jonbek, the best dancer on the floor. Now, Jonbek tends to be sarcastic, but in this case, I had to agree. At some point the band played a traditional Pamiri song and everyone got up to dance, from grandmas to teenagers, the floor became one beautiful graceful twirl. Jonbek made it his goal to finish the bottle of vodka that appeared on the table, and since I was the only person drinking with him, I had to nurse my shots. After mission was accomplished, Jonbek took to the dance floor. Now, this entire time I have been battling him in attempts to get me to dance. My inability to dance to this music, or Tajik type of dance, lack of shoes, or whatever else excuse I came up with, was not good enough. There were attempts to trick me into providing the type of music I would normally dance to, so a request with the band can be made. No, no, I was determined to hold a pack of no dancing and no speeches, like Tony (Bourdain).
Guests, women, were dressed in both western and traditional dressy dresses, quite pretty. The couple sat at their table and listened to speeches and watched their guests dance. I’m pretty sure they did not eat, or maybe even enjoyed their own wedding. They finally danced the last dance, together just the two of them and the videographer, whom I would have killed, as he stayed about 2 feet away from their faces, with the bright camera headlight on focus the whole time. There was a guy who sat across from me. He ate a peach, a pear, a nectarine, watermelon, another nectarine, and grapes, in that order, carefully peeled and sliced, nothing else. I no longer felt alone. He later came over to talk to me. “oh you’re here for business. Have oyu seen anything outside the city, like Vorzob?” “Yes, but not this time.” “Oh, this isn’t your first time, when were you here?” “2007 and 2008.” “Also on business?? And I thought we were straight out of high school!!”….well, shit, I think I just dated myself. After the couple’s dance, the bride was whisked away to be changed into a traditional wedding gown. The groom and his party proceeded to dance. The bride arrived covered from head to toe in a large shawl, face hidden and led by her female relatives, as in this traditional dress is how she will enter her husband’s house. How do you know it’s the right bride?? No one seemed to offer a logical answer. And after arrival of the bride, the guests, parents, and the wedding party walked the couple out to the car. The wedding was beautiful, and I managed to escape without speeches or dancing. Take that, Tony!

dress code

It is relatively hot in Tajikistan. And when I say relative, I mean, it is pretty hot. The average daily temperature reaches around 37-38C. If you were a patient, I would tell you to call the hospital because it would indicate you’re running a fever. And in terms of dress code, people tend to dress modestly.
Some women wear western clothes, which means jeans and a blouse with full or elbow length sleeves. The majority of women, though, wear traditional dresses, which my colleagues lovingly refer to as potato-sacks. They are long and pretty shapeless, although in the past, women have assured me these dresses can be tailored. I know little about sewing, so I’m not sure how one can do that, given the overall square-ness. The dresses are full length and they come in two seasonal varieties: summer elbow sleeves, and winter full-length sleeves. Dresses come with pajama-like pants that one wears under the dress, with matching pattern. They are worn with flips, sometimes socks, sometimes stockings. They come in different colors and patterns, although most popular is either traditional design or leopard print. Leopard print! Who knew! And because leopard print is hot right now (I mean, popular), I have yet to find a leopard print made out of any sort of reasonably breathable natural fabric, so polyester galore.
Where am I going with this? It is hot. I am finding myself in a state of chronic sweat. I feel uncomfortable; I look uncomfortable. I have come to sweat in places i did not know could sweat: it is the most uncanny feeling when you realize the backs of your knee caps are drenched. And although I keep my knee-caps covered, I have thrown all cultural apprehension to the wind and wear tank tops, baring shoulders and all. Tajik women, however, bear the heat in a lot more and longer layers, wearing not only full lengths garments, but also, most of the time, covering their hair either with a full-on head scarf or a scarf loosely tied behind one’s hair, resembling a pony surgeon’s hat after a repeat Csection x3 and a macrosomic baby. So as I drag my sweaty ass around the city, I am amazed watching Tajik women walk around in the heat, seemingly unscathed. I guess Tajik women are just better women than I am.

bureaucracy in action

Day 1 and we embark on an adventure. Today is the day that we go to the visa registration office to register my passport. I have to say, the last two times I’ve been here the passport registration looked something like this. A man named Alisher, who owned a car and worked as a hire driver for random Americans (and was probably someone’s cousin) would show up at my apartment. He would take $30 and my passport and would return the next day, without $30 but with my passport that contained a hand-written piece of paper with someone signature on it. That was my registration; this time, we do it officially. We take a hire-cab, like an Ueber one can hail on the street, that for 3 somoni (about 50cents) runs up and down the main road and picks people up. We go to the bank to pay the visa registration processing fee. Can we pay at the actual office? Maybe, but only under the table and they will charge more. So we go to the bank. The bank has no power. Can we go to a different bank? No this is the one. When will the power be back? Maybe, lunchtime; maybe, after lunchtime. We are told to wait. As we are waiting my research assistant start filling out the necessary ‘form’ to process this fee. He has to redo it 3 times, due to making some errors in filling it out. There is still no power. Rather than waiting, my research assistant (let’s just call him Jonbek, well, because that’s his name) tells me we’ll do an interview. I was not informed of this, I am fully unprepared, but whatever. We meet two women, they cannot be interviewed together, so one agrees to wait.
The interview takes place in a park, which I think I used to come to last time I was here. Then, we do the second interview, because there is still no power at the bank. This interview is inside an office in a giant, newly constructed office building. According to Jonbek, this building was built by some oligarch, who announced he was forming a separate political party. Within a week, he was accused of multiple whatever crimes and was never seen again. After the interview, we grab lunch and head for the visa registration office because, apparently, the power had been restored at the bank.
We come to the visa office and head for a tiny window. According to the man behind the tiny window, we are missing photos; there must be photos of me to process the passport registration. We are sent to talk to the supervisor in the back of the building, but the security guard will not let us through to the supervisor without said photos. Conveniently enough, the photo office is located in the residential building next door. I swear, someone just cut a door in the outer wall of an apartment and called it an office. I find myself inside a small room, two desks, two desktops. My picture is to be taken against 8 white pieces of paper taped to the yellow wallpaper as the ‘screen’. This process takes 5 minutes. We head back to the visa registration office and are told, from the man in the window that they are only accepting passports after 3p. why after 3? It is unclear. And because Jonbek earlier claimed that Tajik tomatoes are the tastiest in the world, we are off to the market to procure some delicious tomatoes.
The market of course is a zoo, as expected. While picking up some fruit, a small boy with a giant wheelbarrow runs over my foot and causes an eruption of yells from all the stall vendors who are all closely watching me buy fruit (no worries, foot is ok). Then, I am stuffed into the ueber-like cab to be taken home. The thermometer reads 37C.
Interestingly, the cab runs along the main road which is lined with cops, about every 2 block interval, who randomly stop passing cars, likely to extract bribes. The cab driver, whenever nearing such a post, would pull down the number of the dashboard indicating he is a cab. Not sure if it was to avoid having to pay money, or because this activity is illegal. Regardless, I’m home, with interviews and no visa registration. Stay tuned for tomato verdict.

first impressions

oh toto, i dont think we're in Kansas anymore. This was clearly evident when on the layover Dubai flight, the entire airport listened to an evening prayer call over the PA system. then, there was a scuffle on the plane: two tajik women argued over the placement of oversized, overpacked duty free bags. the bickered back and forth about how to stuff multiple bags into the overhead compartment, straight on, sideways, clearly exceeding the allotted number of bags both individually and as a group, rearranging other people's bags, yelling at other passengers over the placement of their bags. it was quite amusing during boarding. it was less amusing when they tried to collect the bags on landing.
We landed at 230am. no issues with my passport, and upon exiting into the arrival terminal i was accosted by taxi monsters. "young lady, do you need a ride? need a taxi? where can i take you?" one particular character decided that i was his and parked himself next to me and my giant luggage intermittently offering both a ride and his phone to call, free of charge of course, because what's the point of waiting. he faithfully waited until my research assistant came.
I couldn't sleep. i tried but it didnt happen. but i learned an important piece of information. You know what happens at 5am in Dushanbe? Rooster! Roosters crow. evidently, across the stress from my apartment is a private sector, where roosters live. and crow at 5 am. which is great for them, not so great for me. there was an unexpected disaster: the apartment company left me a lot of things, like a vacuum cleaner and an extra bed. they did not however, leave me a towel. and although the country is pretty hot, air drying was still odd and chilly. so then, i had a mission in the morning: to locate a towel. after locating local currency and drinking an espresso at a 'korean bakery' which mostly sold prepackaged pre-wrapped french pastries, i searched for the towel store. couldnt find one. every potential towel store ended up a 'fashion house' which sold dresses, not towels. I finally found one in a grocery store, god bless. interestingly, same grocery store carried two choices of toilet paper: green apple flavored and something else. not sure why anyone would want their butt to smell like green apple, so i went with the other one. it is TBD, so stand by.
my attempts at taking a nap also failed, so i went looking for a market. i was super proud of myself for remembering exactly where a market had been, except once i got there, there was no longer a market. it had been redeveloped into some new construction. there is a ton of new construction all over the city, more than i remember. although i am happy to report that Emamoli Rahmon is still the president. the father of tajik democracy is going strong on holding power for the last 18 years, as far as i'm counting. his face, with small little quotes and inspirational messages, appear on posters and walls of said new construction. my research assistant who met me for his lunch and my coffee, tried to coach me on Tajik survival. his pointers were: traffic is bad, so even if it's your green, make sure the cars are actually stopped; and when men approach you on the street adn try to ask you out, it is not sexual harassment. good to know. he seems to think the recruitment shouldnt be hard. but then again he tried to convince me that tajiks are mainly vegetarians, really.
i'm currently sitting at an irish pub, "the best irish pub in Dushanbe" called public pub. there is wifi. there is also veggies on the menu, as a side dish, of course. the flies are sharing my dinner, i'm pretty certain, as i find myself oddly reminded of lord of the flies. i am looking forward to my long walk home, which will be slightly cooler. and then melatonin induced sleep.

the prologue

I wanted to write this as an introduction, a prelude as I anticipate a surge in blog-diarrhea.
I guess this all started on the interview trail. I told fellowship directors that I wanted to continue working with my Central Asian migrant women population, but instead of focusing on HIV/STI prevention like I have been, I wanted to expand the field and look at their contraceptive practices, which i thought were likely to be minimal.
This whole thing was supposed to happen in Moscow. The way the project was originally developed, conceptualized, and approved, I was going to interview Central Asian migrant workers at their highest concentration point: looking for migrants, one must go where migrants are, and migrants are in Russia. But after attending a conference in Moscow and receiving an email from my contact organization on-site threatening imprisonment and deportation if I show up, drastic changes had to be made. You see, Russia is undergoing a population crisis: as the country drinks itself into early cardiovascular disease faster than it reproduces, Russia's birthrates are plummeting, and fueled by emerging totalitarianism and a modern nationalist xenophobia, research about contraception, especially, among marginal migrant populations is less than favorable. So back to the drawing board, resubmitting the proposal, the budget, and the IRB for re-approval, Tajikistan has become my emergency contraception to the one-night-stand with Moscow I had in January.
So Tajikistan. It is a small Central Asian country, one of the 7 stan's (technically, 8, but Kurdistan is yet to gain its sovereignty), just north of Afghanistan. Population of about 8 million, the majority of people between the ages of 18 and 50 are working abroad. Because the unemployment rate is high, something like over 30%, and every fourth person in the country has at least one family member working abroad, mainly in Russia. In fact, 50% of the country's GDP is from remittances (that's money sent home by people working abroad). Tajikistan has ranked as the second largest sending country to Russia since 2008 (second only to its neighbor Uzbekistan). This, I guess, sort of makes Tajikistan a perfect setting to study labor migration. Except that labor migrants are, by definition, laboring elsewhere. The project team I have assembled has assured me that the migrants, migrant women to be exact, will be found--located, recruited, and delivered to me, for an exchange for research participation fee. Which is yet to be delivered into the country. Which has been an ongoing battle with the Northwestern (go'cats) accounting services, and in combination with various political unrests, it has been a source of chronic indigestion for some time. The battle rages on, as my departure nears. My boss, in his attempts to cheer me up and calm me down, has argued that all of this--changing and redeveloping the project, resubmitting the IRB, fighting the IRB and accounting services--is part of learning, part of the whole experience of running your own research. Sigh. I guess, at this point it doesnt matter. This will be my third trip to the country, in fact, during my weekly coffee date with my mother, she handed me some old leftover Somoni (that's Tajik currency) to take with me. I'm all maxed out on maxi skirts and i'm getting on a plane, so whatever isn't finalized or packed will just have to be figured out. Now the challenge is to find me some women!

the news

i have been watching a lot of morning news shows, or rather morning digest ala 'good morning america', mostly because my body decided it wants to be awake in both hemispheres. the channel one news magazine is slightly different from what you'd expect. it is more of a DYI meets martha stewart meets BBB. it features short little segments on how to organize your nuts adn bolts drawer; how to sew your own trendy coat. it has reporting on some poorly functional bureaucrat in a tiny village in siberia who is failing to respond to some grievances put forth by the tenants, it then offers crafty 'expert' advise (actually titled expert in whatever household goods, but likely just a chief janitor offering his opinion) on how to go about getting your complaints addressed. it teaches proper driving by showing a segment of some police camera recording traffic violators. the consumer reporter teaches you how to buy best quality cottage cheese and how to spot overpriced sausages (did you know that you can tell how thick a lemon's skin is by the stem attachment little button?! did you know that if you stuff your shoes wiht newspaper, you can keep your feet warm?) there is a daily horoscope, there is a new diet and trend part. all of this repeats about hourly, interrupted by actual news segment about every 10min. the actual news. did you know there is a war going on? the fighting in Eastern ukraine has not been on the news. people have forgotten about it. the fighting, however, continues. the separatist forces continue to assert their rule, the authority and sovereignty. the DNR and LNR (that's Donersk national republic and luhansk national republic) continue to exist and hold fort. the fighting has recently escalated, when the ukrainian forces began shelling, some of it along civilian areas, in order to secure the donetsk airport. then, a bus was blown up, evidently by artillery fire. listening to the russian news, all of this is coming from ukrainian national force, the army, which by using artillery and long-distance missiles, is harming civilian sites. remember, this is skewed and russian perspective. it is very possible that it is correct, however, it is skewed. it shows poor separatists as trying to preserve their little regions' independence in light of angry, violent, almost fascist ukrainian nationalists, who are just so evil they'd rather shell civilians than engage in open adn fair combat with the separatists. again, not sure whether this is correct. what is interesting though is that russia, which is known internationally to be backing separatist forces, not just with military force but also with man-power, is not saying anything, anything! along those lines. whatever fighting is going on between the separatist and ukrainian forces, whoever is at fault or responsible for civilian deaths, the blown up bus, there is zero mention of russian involvement. none. every conversation, though, throughout the city involves ukraine. people on the street are talking about the fighting, are talking about the two regions wanting their independence and evil ukraine not letting them have it. ukraine is blamed for being nationalist and fascist, for being responsible, solely responsible, for all the violence. russia's involvement is not mentioned. at all. the guy who drove me to the airport spent the whole time talking (more on taht later) adn of course we got to discuss ukraine. he supported the region's independence from ukraine adn i asked him if russia would ever just take them in. "oh no, we dont want them." so this becomes even more confusing to me: initially the whole separation came about as a result of the february uprising. people revolted against an oligarch, who coming from eastern ukraine supported russia adn russian ties, whereas the rest of the country, the people, wanted ties to the european union. this resulted in violence and the oligarch, the president, was overturned. but the anger resulted in some harsh sanctions against anything pro-russian, which unfortunately affecting the currently fighting regions. they felt slighted, oppressed even, and started fighting asserting their separation. this has been going on for a while, although the western media, or rather american media, has stopped caring or covering anything along ukrainian lines. and the fighting continues. ukrainian government has made serious concessions, basically taking back all the scary things that made the region want to separate in the first place, allowing them a certain degree of freedom for staying as part of the country. but i guess that's not enough. what's confusing, yes, sorry i'm getting to my point, is that if separatists want to be closer to russia and russia doesnt want them, what are they thinking?! it's like Minnesota declaring independence, all by itself. the tour-guide who took us around the kremlin, touched upon the fighting as well. her opinion was that eastern ukraine should belong to russia, because centuries ago catherine the great conquered it as part of her path down to crimea to defeat the turks. logical, yes, but also, by this particular logic, india should be returned to england because, you know, it once controlled it. or poland should just permanently become part of germany because it controlled it several times and mostly, conquered it on its way somewhere else. this logic i do not understand. in the mean time, fighting continues and i'll have to hunt for some news sources.

the culture of excess

is what my boss referred to as this musical dinner celebration thing he attended, while i was at the bolshoi. he prefaced it by pointing out that he does not mean it in a negative way. but this is kind of what i mean. following the lavish first night dinner, we arrived at the conference a little after 830. we were herded into the queen's office to drop off our coats. there was a line of people outside the door. as it turned out, it was her birthday and all these people were the clinic staff awaiting to wish her a happy birthday. the office was filled, overflowing, with flowers, all from colleagues. it felt like a flower shop, and you had to compete with space with beautiful baskets, arrangements, and bouquets. a ton of flowers, in the middle of january in moscow. the flowers migrated into the conference hall and now line the staircase down to the podium. the snack table made laid out for us while we're dropping off our coats? gets replenished daily. it is full of snacks, nuts, and chocolates; blinis, caviar, and fruit. although i'm pretty sure the fruit bouquet is not faring so well as i think i spotted a moldy strawberry. for lunch, we are herded into the tiny clinic cafeteria where simple mortals are fighting to quickly grab a pre-made and undoubtedly stale piece of bread with a slab of bologna on top and coffee in a plastic cup. we are served a 3 course meal, shitty, but three courses, complete with wine, appetizers in the form of head cheese and blinis with caviar. this morning, my boss tapped me on the shoulder on the bus and said "guess what they served for breakfast? a large bowl of caviar!" now, the thing is I dont think it's a purely caviar-centric obsession. I think it's just part of that thing where you treat your guests well adn show off by offering the best-est. so then i started thinking more about excess in russia, or in russian culture more specifically. watching 'boris godunov' the opera, i was amazed at the brilliant period costumes. i mean, shiny gold sparkle everywhere. joseph and the amazing technicolor coat has nothing on this. and the thing is it's likely true to life. this opulent shiny rich garb of the tsarist russia, the pelts of the boyars. peter built a new capital and a navy, on a whim, to compete with european capitals. he succeeded and people died, but who cares. st. petersburg adn the court culture it created was on par with the courts of europe, if not more, since russia continued to have serfdom well into the 19th century. but fine, maybe all of that can be chucked to monarchy and autocrat rule. maybe, like the kings of other european countries, it was just supposed to be. ok. let's move out of the monarchy, but even in the twentieth century, the soviet union just continued the trend, if not excelled in it. the powerful soviet empire, wiht happy fulfilled citizens portrayed on the world stage, who exceed at sports, the arts, adn such, come from socialist equality, where basic necessities, the daily things of life are hard to procure. i'm not talking about a full explosion of consumerism, i'm talking about recycling old clothes because you physically cannot find new ones in stores. today, the russian economy is tanking. my dollar is worth so much more than last time i was here. as we were driving to the conference this morning, one of the delegates pointed out that the city was eliminated. it is still dark at 8:30 and the city is truly lit up with christmas lights, lanterns and other such things. the conversation went along the lines of how in this economic crisis, moscow still can afford to light up the city. i suspect russia is not short on fuel, but still, the question remains, and the culture of excess continues.

conferencing

So the conference opened yesterday. The opening remarks, or rather ceremony, included a musical performance by the Spivakov camera orchestra. For those of you who dont know who they are, this a very big deal orchestra, they perform internationally, they sell out venues. They performed directly on the stage where the podium for the speakers was set up, in such a way that the partially present wind section was sitting behind the podium. The bolshoi soloist joined them for part of the performance. She sang several arias, she is gorgeous. and the whole spectacle was, well, kind of much. the conference attendees are clinicians, presumably, from all over Russia. the clinic staff are also participating, in sneak in adn out throughout the day in scrubs. since the conference is taking place in the clinic, well, the space of the medical center, there is activity going all around. mortal clinic workers going to work every morning, patients showing up for their appointments, patients who are hospitalized and are trying to walk to their doctor's office to ask a question, fully gowned in 'house-clothes' because, you know, they are in the hospital, complete with slippers, sometimes robes. now, there are no people in house shoes at the conference, but some of them are wearing shoe covers and white coats. why do you need to wear a white coat to a doctor conference i'm not sure. it seems that the russians are not very good at using their cell phones. let me rephrase that, they are perfectly capable of making phone calls, answering phone calls, texting, and taking pictures. they are, however, not familiar with the silence function of their cellular devices. the phones are going off all the time, which is annoying. what is more annoying is that people answer them. pick up, have full conversations, all the time. the important scientific presentations are constantly interrupted wiht "hello? who is this? i'm at a conference". damn right, you're at a conference, hang up!! there are side conversations, not in whisper but full volume. someone's alarm went off for a solid 5 minutes (alarm, not pager). i sat next to a lady who ate a cough drop q15min. individually wrapped, crinkly cough drops, every 15 min. crinkle crinkle crinkle. crinkle crinkle crinkle. the conference is simultaneously translated. in exchange for some valuable, like a passport or a shoe, you can pick up a transmitter at the entrance to the conference. what people dont realize is that simultaneous transmitters are like walkie-talkie: they emit radio waves, radio waves that sometimes cause interference. so you get a lot of cshhhh noise. cshhh crinkle crinkle. additionally, what people dont realize is that if you think you're simultaneous translator transmitter is too loud, it probably is. in which case, the best thing to do is to locate the volume control and turn it down a bit. because wearing it around your neck or putting it on the chair next to you means that everyone around you is listening to the translation as well. which is annoying when you dont need to be, like, if the presentation is in english. it's like trying to listen to a conversation with two conversations going on, plus whatever else side-talks are happening. coupled wiht the fact that the presenters are not native english speakers adn you're already trying to decipher the musical italian, which makes everything sound like a question, or a rolling "r" rumble of mumbly french, and i swear i feel like i'm losing my mind. everyone takes pictures of the screen of the power point slides. it is actually quite an amazing site: an entire conference full of phones, ipads, and ipad-like devices, rising in unison with every change of the slide, up into the air. everything is photographed: slides with graphs, important quoted studies, title shots, the 'thank you for your attention' slides. i swear i watched a woman take a picture of every single slide of every presentation for the entire day. what is she going to do with them? organize them? label them into folders? use them for clinical practice or her own presenting skills? who knows! the podium on stage is for those presiding over the plenary sessions. irrespective of the fact that presentations are going on, that people sitting on stage are in front of the whole conference, people keep walking back adn forth up onto the stage, asking questions, delivering messages, whispering things to the queen. queen's minions (she has minions, or more like secretaries and personal assistants) are sometimes summoned by the queen to come up and receive an order. the minions wear slim skirts and tight dresses, heels and tights. they are slender and have long hair. only 50% of the minions speak english. there is also a lot of yelling from the podium. yelling in the form of presiding, which at times is almost comical. presiding directed not just as the 'service' individuals like sound guy ("we need sound! i said quickly! who is responsible! you are not listening to me! now!"), but also at the delegates ("i implore you to cease all activity! stop moving or get out of here and don't come back! raise your hand if you heard me! did you hear me?"). i literally laughed out loud at some point when the conference was ordered to raise their hand and answer a question about something. mostly, because the conference complied. the day ended with broadcasted surgery. large screen, broadcasted from the OR, multiple ORs, surgery performed by the congress delegates world renown gyne surgeons. i hope my colleagues at least got to meet the patients before they were asleep. i wonder what the consent process was like. even though i am your doctor, someone else will operate on you. the risk of the procedure, in addition to the standard bleeding, infection, injury to pelvic and abdominal organs, and death, also includes exposing your internal organs to the world as well as being recognized by your internal organs. actually, that's irrelevant because the case presentations included the patient's names. NAMES! not their birth dates, or medical record numbers. names. HIPPAA would have a field day about this, what IRB approved this. wait, wait a minute, there is no irb. but who is writing the operative report, since the surgeon doesnt speak russian?!?

"Friendship is more important than science" or how to crash an international conference

So this conference. I believe I got invited accidentally. The former chair of my department, one of the esteemed and world renowned professors, happens to sit in our division, in the office across the hall from me. He happens to know this amazing woman, the queen of russian gynecology. I also happen to speak Russian. The combination of these things is what brought me here, on a whim, as an invitation from the queen, but really because of my boss. My presence at the conference, although entirely coincidental, is quite astonishing though. The conference has not started yet. but last night, as the prelude, but as a guest and escort of my boss', i was invited to pre-conference dinner for the esteemed speakers, which sort of left me feeling like a kid at the adult table, who is sent to bed early but wakes up and comes downstairs because of the noise, and is allowed to stay, quietly, to avoid a scene. So i guess we should start at the beginning. The hotel. It is old and historic. If you walk out the door, to the right is the Bolshoi, to the left is the Kremlin. The parking lot literally abuts its outside wall. In addition to many famous people staying here throughout the years, in 1918, immediately following the October revolution, the new Soviet government occupied the building when they moved to Moscow from St. Petersburg. During the Soviet era, this was an international hotel, a currency hotel, which meant that you can exchange foreign currency here, but more importantly, buy things with foreign currency and things that you would not buy anywhere else in the country. The halls of the hotel are tiny mazes of persian rugs and mirrored halls, giving it a feel of an old theater or concert hall rather than hotel. The rooms are tiny, like really tiny, but covered in this beautiful textured wallpaper. There are condoms in the minibar. The conference. This is the 38th international conference on gynecology. Last night, amidst many (many) toasts, the people present discussed meeting for the first time in 1991. That long ago. It has been held in Moscow since that first time, when it was commissioned by the party (the Soviet party for those who are not following). At the time, apparently, every representative of the regional (or district) Ob/GYN had to be present, in addition to many international delegates, and the idea was that forcing all these physicians to attend a conference would propagate knowledge and skill exchange. not sure how much it propagated as the Soviet Union collapsed later that year, but the conference, i guess, stuck. The food. The dinner at the hotel restaurant was organized specifically for us. large table is set in the back in this beautifully decorated dining room, complete with chandeliers and ceilings paintings ala old italian mansions. the room is small and there are a few other tables that are occupied but we definitely occupy the large portion of the restaurant. the table is set with ou d'orves (somebody spell it for me). the wine keeps flowing throughout the night, with waiters refilling half empty glasses. champaigne toasts, well-aged italian red. "would you like the beef or the cod as your entree" "oohh, neither, can you make something without meat or fish?" "no....well, we can maybe make truffle risotto" "that sounds fantastic!" the truffle risotto was tasty. definitely not risotto though, but mushroom barley, definitely definitely just barley. The people. Mind you, I am being paraded as my boss' protege for lack of a better word, meaning I am introduced to everyone, and the people I am introduced to are amazing. I get kisses from the queen (both cheeks). warm handshakes and curious looks from other speakers (because I clearly do no belong). you may have heard from the news of this guy who transplanted a uterus last year? yeah, met him last night, sat at the same table with him. his wife is flawless. the first frenchman was rude, the second one walks in and my boss goes: "Oh Jacques, meet Alex Golobof. She is..." "Oh mon cheri..(hugs and kisses (that's multiple) follow)..she is a...??" "...She is my fellow!" "Oh....well, she is beautiful." #nothis daughter. and by the way, this man happens to be the father of hysteroscopy. the world renown laparascopic surgeon is a short italian, who sits down and begins raving about 'his small little vineyard in Tuscany that just won 95 out of 100 points for this season's wine.' you know, NBG. and toast after toast, the dinner party speaks warmly and highly of each other, of their friendship and their professional respect. year after year, for twenty something years these people have been coming together for conferences and scientific meetings. they know each and each others' work. they address each other in multiple languages, they speak highly of each others' accomplishments. i'll just sit here quietly in the corner, then.