road weary

Just flew back into Dushanbe this morning. I was in Khujand for a few days, where we stayed in the best hotel and largest city in the region. The price we paid for that luxury (despite the "hot water" being slightly warmer than freezing cold) was that we had to bump and jog along the road to cities in the sticks like Konibodom and Isfara for an hour-and-a-half each way, each day. And because the only available flight back in today was in the AM, we had to hit three hospitals in two days. Which made for some very long days. (Thank goodness for Baltika beer. It hits the spot after a 14-hour day.)

I have calculated that I have been on the road 60% of my time since I got to Central Asia, and am definitely feeling road weary. This last trip was nearly three weeks, and Tajikistan was a bit rough on my psyche. Women's options are very, very limited here and it's hard meeting really sharp, strong-willed, hard-working and very competent women and know that they can only achieve so much. Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive to male chauvinism, but it appears that the men here pretty much have carte blanche to treat women like crap. That bothers me. And that I can't do anything about it bothers me even more.

But I won't bore you with my culture pains.

Out in the boondocks of Tajikistan it's very evident just how poor the country is. The first hospital we went to was built in the 1960s and hasn't been touched ever since. You don't want to imagine the structural, sanitation, and modernization issues there. Or the maternal morbidity rate.

Wintertime they only have electricity about two hours a day. Can you imagine running a maternity hospital under such circumstances? Yet the women we met working there were so kind, generous, and giving. I was telling them how delicious I found their fruits and vegetables and they gave me a watermelon to take with me. And they kept feeding us. And feeding us. After lunch, we came back and they had a huge dish of plov waiting for us. Literally expecting us to eat just after lunch! Mercy mercy.

So if the winter is especially cold, people are essentially freezing 22 hours a day. It's rare to acquire a generator, and even if you had one, gas is expensive when you're talking about a salary of about $30 US a month.

The regional maternity home was way better, but it's also a much newer building in the main regional city. They even had AC there.

I saw lots of Soviet-era stuff there still standing: Lenin statues, monuments to WWII, monuments to Soviet astronauts, general big Soviet monuments and lots of Soviet-era buildings. Alas, it was all out of the back of a moving car. I did manage to get some gorgeous aerial shots of Khujond and the mountains separating Khujond and Dushanbe. I also got some shots of some Tajik Air planes.

The flight into Khujond was on a small, old two-prop (AN-45, I think). There was no safety briefing, no cabin announcements, no assigned seating, and 4 pilots in the cockpit. The motors on the engines smelled like they were burning out as we were sitting on the runway and taxiing. People were talking on their cellphones during takeoff and landing. Not to worry--the plane was so old that there was no way that the cell technology could interfere with that instrumentation. The best part was that the seats were collapsable. If you pushed the seatback forward, it would totally fold over like a lawn chair. Once we did that to the seats in front of us, if I had put my feet up on the seat in front of me, I would have more space than a first-class seat in the US. *snork*

On the way back we were in a shiny new 736. Everyone here considered "BO-veeeng" (Boeing) the best so my colleague was happy about the "Boving" back. The two-prop feels a lot more like flying, though. On this flight, we got announcements from the crew in Tajik, Russian, and even English. I was definitely impressed. And on this flight, I knew better than to ask for a window seat. (When I asked on the outbound flight, I couldn't understand why the airport staff gave me a funny look. It's because there's no assigned seating. This time I knew the drill and didn't make the same faux-pas. By the by, the Tajik Air ground crew make the men wait to get on the plane--they say "Women first" and the men stop in their tracks.)

Tomorrow I have an early-morning flight back "home" to Almaty. In 12 days Steve arrives and I need to get ready for his being here! I am going to take the two weeks that he's here off, so have a lot of data to finalize before then. I will definitely get some sightseeing in and cultural events in while he's here, so soon enough will be able to post about something other than pregnant women, data, and maternities! I am sure that will be a pleasant change of pace for you, my dear readers.... and I'll be able to post some good photos, too!