a long winter

I am heading back to the US Friday, and probably won't be back out here until May. I am looking forward to a break from the cold, though I understand the cold snap that has had a grip here since mid-December has spread to the US.

We are hearing of food shortages in some countries in the region and more and more neonatal deaths due to the extreme cold. Organizations are starting to try to finance emergency heaters, but it's challenging due to shortages of electricity and gas. We're working on finding some solutions for some of our clinics.

When I came back from Ferghana, Uzbekistan where there the ambient temperature of the hospital I went to was about 35 degrees, I was telling my colleagues about my experience. No heat, no running water, no hot water....one man commented that when everyone was part of the Soviet Union, power outages/water shortages didn't exist. If power was low in Uzbekistan, they would take it from Siberia and send it over. (I'm not an electrical engineer so can't assess whether this is something that can be done.) He commented that shortages of such basic things would not be tolerated, and that heads would roll if power outages occurred. Others concurred.

I know that it's hard for people in other countries to understand why people in former Communist/Socialist countries talk about how it was "better under the old regime..." . We think about the Cold War, a police state, shortages of meat and other "luxury" goods, and think it has to be better now. But most of these countries---and definitely in Russia, there is a very, very lopsided distribution of wealth. There are a number of "Nouveax Riche" that have gotten that way through connections, graft, crime, politics, etc. And most everybody else is struggling to get by. Despite the Gucci and JLo and other stores, most people in Almaty are scraping by. And they have a lot more options than people out in the far-flung regions and rural areas of the country.

Sure, luxury goods weren't available back then (OK, with the exceptions of the political elite), but at least the masses had a moderate standard of living that left them warm, clothed, and reasonably well-fed. It's quite a statement that people had electricity and hot water in the 1950s, but they don't in 2007.

Sorry for the bummer post. It's the unfortunate reality here, however.