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!