Hello, Everyone:
So far, my "official" reports back home have dealt
primarily with academics, journalism, journalism education
and press freedom issues here in Uzbekistan. This week, I'll
share some observations about the places and cultures I've
encountered.
First, the Chorsu Bazaar:
Exotic and legendary Central Asia meets practical, day-to-day
needs in the sprawling Chorsu Bazaar.
Need fiery orange cayenne pepper, toilet paper, a cow's head
with the skin still on? Need eggs, a belt, a pair of knock-off
designer jeans? Cheap.
Thousands of vendors cram into the bazaar, one of the largest
in Tashkent. Most sell from stalls, arranged in a labyrinthine
pattern of narrow aisles crammed with shoppers.
This is not a place where tourists flock in search of antiques
and valuable rugs, or crafts and souvenirs. Instead, its clientele
is overwhelmingly local, people who need a bowl or a few teacups,
underwear for their kids, fresh oranges and scallions, oilcloth
for their kitchen tables and soap for their bathrooms. It's
where people come to get their shoes resoled, their keys duplicated,
their stomachs filled - cheaply.
Need dried apricots with or without pits, a lottery ticket,
a rusting rake without a handle? Need mutton fat, a toddler's
plastic tricycle, a kerchief or two? Cheap.
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Man with coats - Chorsu
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At first, the Chorsu Bazaar is overwhelming. It's easy to
get lost, but soon there's evidence of a system, more or less.
The shoe repairers and their equipment occupy one section,
the women's clothing stalls cluster in another spot, toys
are more or less together, and so are spices. Shoes, mostly
black and mostly shiny with square toes, stretch on and on,
and so do dry goods and clothes. Hardware, auto and plumbing
parts cluster near one side of the bazaar.
And socks. How many people sell socks here? They're everywhere,
whether a few pairs or a full table's worth.
Scattered are health and beauty aids and household products
- from shampoos to lotions to detergents. So are vendors of
the ubiquitous sunflower seeds, a few pennies for a packet,
their off-white shells all over the ground.
Smells of cooking meat and burning charcoal waft through
the air. Throughout the bazaar, people grill shastik, a popular
mutton kabob with chunks of fat. Large enamel pots simmer
with osh or pilau, the omnipresent mix of rice that can contain
chickpeas, raisins and vegetables, topped with chopped mutton.
There are the aromas of meat-filled pastries and buns. Eat
lunch for under $1.
And there are sounds. Music blares from the audiocassette
stalls. Butchers, clutching paper-wrapped bundles of fresh
meat, importune shoppers. There's the chopping sound as a
man hatchets away at a carcass. The amplified voice of a bingo
caller blares over the bazaar.
Need a pocket calculator, a how-to-learn-English pamphlet,
a pack of cigarettes or even a single one? Need a bottle of
oil for your car, a block of butter for your table, an umbrella?
Cheap.
Eventually you'll find what you're looking for.
Towels were the priority on my first visit to Chorsu on a
sunny mid-winter Saturday. I skipped the stalls where garish
colors and designs turned me off. I stopped at one stall to
finger a burgundy flowered one hanging on the side. I pulled
out my calculator and gave it to the woman so she could punch
in the price: 3,400 sum, about $2. I shook my head and she
punched in 3,300. Then I punched in 3,000, and it was her
turn to shake her head.
I walked on a short distance, asking why I was quibbling
about saving a few hundred sum, maybe 25 cents, on a towel.
And I did need a towel. I returned with 3,300 sum in hand.
She folded it neatly - no bag - and I thanked her in Russian.
Later I spotted another towel prospect in a different booth,
one woven with narrow stripes of green, raspberry, purple,
teal and white. Out came the calculator - 2,500 sum, the man
punched in. Deal done.
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Woman with dresses
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Not all selling takes place in stalls or at tables. Along
one stretch of the bazaar, women stand shoulder to shoulder,
each with an armful of coats or dresses on hangers. Along
another, women stand shoulder to shoulder with bunches of
dry herbs. Next to them, women sit shoulder to shoulder on
stools, each with a small inventory of oranges, of apples,
of garlicky sour pickles in front of them.
Need plastic carrying bags, cleaned cow's intestines, a handmade
short-handled broom? Need flowers plastic or fresh, fabric,
onions? Cheap.
On the literal fringes of the bazaar are stoic vendors living
on the edge of survival, with their pitifully small stock
- a handful of used clothing, a few empty glass jars or unidentifiable
odds and ends of hardware spread on a shabby piece of cloth.
As I walked by, I wondered how many go home without selling
a thing? How do they face a hungry night? How do they get
the energy to return to the bazaar the next day?
As a Westerner, beggars posed a dilemma for me. Some stand
or sit with outstretched hands, either silent or mumbling
their plea. A young girl, maybe 8, crouches over a younger
boy, perhaps her brother, as he lies on a dirty blanket. She
weeps and wails, keeping an alert eye on the passersby. An
act?
On that visit, a dirty-faced boy of 7 or 8 approached, following
me, hand open, I walked away, shaking my head, saying "nyet,"
until he turned away in search of somebody more generous?
More softhearted? More gullible? I felt uneasy. Did I do wrong
to pass them by? Did I do right?
Then during my trip home, a girl knelt in the Metro car and
chanted loudly. She rose and walked from passenger to passenger,
silently. A few reached into their pockets for change. I ignored
her, pitiful as she looked. And then I shifted my plastic
bags filled with spices, apricots and towels so I could reach
into my pocket and pull out three coins worth 25 sum, a few
pennies. She took them and moved along the car.
Did I do wrong? Did I do right? Would my apricots now taste
sweeter, my cayenne more piquant?
Next Chimgan:
The mountains near the town of Chimgan are only a two-hour
drive by bus or car from downtown Tashkent, yet many of the
Uzbek college students I traveled with were making their first
trip there. It was a sunny late winter Sunday, and we were
equipped to picnic on blankets spread atop the snow. (This
is where I learned that the English word "numb,"
as in what your bottom feels like when you're sitting on the
snow, sounds the same as the word for "wet" in the
Tajik language spoken in parts of southeastern Uzbekistan.
Both meanings applied.)
Thermoses of tea, the flat round bread called non, shredded
carrots and cabbage pre-cooked meats, boiled potato slices,
bottles of soft drinks. Apparently they packed whatever was
available in their refrigerators into backpacks or plastic
shopping bags for our day-long escape from the city.
This piece of the Tian Shen mountains is more chaos than
resort. Some visitors come to ski - though it's no competition
for the Alps, the Adirondacks or the Rockies, or even northern
Michigan's slopes - but most are happy to merely toodle around,
renting small sleds, riding horses (we did) along a loop trail
with great vistas of the snow-covered mountains or taking
the chairlift (we didn't) up and then back down.
The owners of our horses asked 2,000 sum - about $1.25 U.S.
at the black market exchange rate - per rider, but one my
students negotiated the price down to 1,500 sum. But when
they learned we couldn't ride well (or at all - some students
had never been on a horse) alone, they needed to walk alongside
us, a task they felt was worth an extra 500 sum each. My student
bargained that down to 200 sum. The owners seemed satisfied,
and we didn't fall off or get lost.
The most popular activity among the crowd was sledless sledding,
generally using sheets of plastic or large plastic bags. Some,
people however, are content to slide downhill on their bottoms
with nothing but their pants between their bodies and the
snow. With or without sleds, with or without plastic, it's
a haphazard sport in which tumbling out of control or collisions
are the norm. Even with the inevitable crashes between those
sliding down and those climbing up, laughter is far more common
than shrieks of pain or anger.
We got there on a creaky old bus that left from the front
of the journalism school. The first half of the ride follows
a main road through residential and industrial areas and past
hydroelectric plants along the Chirchik River. The remainder
is a climb along a sinuous road, the bus engine straining,
the transmission grinding on the downshift. We passed a dry
streambed that will soon run fast and frothy with the spring
melt. Sections of the road appear precarious, without shoulders
and with crumbling pavement. "It's under reconstruction,"
one student reassured me. (But I knew the work wouldn't be
done by the time we drove downhill a few hours later.)
As me climbed, the largest hydro plant lay below us, forming
a lake of multihued blues behind its dam. Here, the snow of
the mountains and the sun conspired to change the water color,
angle by angle, twist by twist. At the base of the Charvak
dam stands a large metal statue of Farkhad, one arm raised.
He's a legendary figure who appears to protect the dam from
untold dangers. There are different versions of the tale,
but in one, he was ordered to dig a channel through the mountains
as a test of love, but a rival suitor cheated and won the
hand of the fair Shirin. A despairing Farkhad turned to stone
when he learned that Shirin was not to be his. Or, in a different
version, he threw his shovel into the air in grief, but it
hit him on the neck and decapitated him as it fell.
On Culture:
As for culture, I've been to the Navoi Theatre (ballet and
opera) about a half-dozen times so far - the best seats in
the house are 1,000 sum, about 65 cents, but the bilingual
programs cost another 400 sum. The Metro to get there is 60
sum each way. or pay roughly 10 times that amount for a taxi.
Here's an account of my first venture to local theater:
I went to a musical comedy (that may or may not have been
called "Hamrud") at the majestic Mukimi Uzbek Musical
Theatre. The plot was on the silly side (four men compete
for the love of a woman, but we all know from the start which
one she'll end up with) and the audience was small - maybe
150 in a hall that will seat at least 1,000). My host, the
university vice-rector responsible for the journalism faculty,
whispered translations and summaries, but even without her
help I could follow the action and catch some of the humor.
And I had no problem understanding "Adidas" on
one performer's T-shirt. (No, he wasn't the one who won the
heart of the lady.) I did feel humble when the vice-rector
told me her 13-year-old nephew is studying English and wanted
to talk to me during intermission. It seems he has already
read "Macbeth," "King Lear" and "Romeo
and Juliet," but I was unclear on whether or not he had
already read "Hamlet" or merely plans to. Then he
asked me if I speak Uzbek. I said no. Do I speak German or
French, he wondered? A little French, I replied. I deservedly
felt humble.
Culture takes varying forms. It includes the exchange of
U.S. dollars for Uzbek sum on the black market. I conducted
my first such venture here under the guidance of a more experienced
American Fulbright lecturer. It was done discreetly in the
woman's small shop (right across from the Navoi Theatre and
diagonally across the street from the U.S. embassy's public
affairs office) rather than furtively on the street corners
like some such exchanges. It's a bit like dealing with a favorite
bootlegger during Prohibition instead of buying moonshine
from the back of a stranger's pickup.
In fact, the Russian-speaking American head of a nongovernmental
organization here was once helping a Northeastern University
journalism professor consummate an informal currency exchange
at a local bazaar when a police officer peremptorily interrupted
the negotiations. After lengthy discussions, the officer returned
the U.S. currency to the Americans but kept the black marketeer's
Uzbek currency. Summary justice or mere corruption?
Finally:
My MSU Journalism colleagues read Jim Detjen's e-missive
about plumbing problems in his China flat. As a reminder,
Jim was washing laundry in the bathtub when someone came to
the door with news that water was leaking into the apartment
of the distinguished Chinese scholar in the apartment below.
My apartment has had several plumbing problems as well, but
the worst occurred one night when a hose under the kitchen
sink burst sometime between 10:30 p.m. (when I went to bed)
and 4:50 a.m. (when my downstairs neighbor pounded on my door.)
My kitchen floor was flooded a half-inch deep but a lot more
was cascading down into his kitchen, ruining his ceiling and
causing him great distress. We called my landlady, who fortunately
lives in our apartment block, and I managed to shut off the
valve. That was the second time I'd met that neighbor - the
first was briefly in the staircase a week earlier. He's a
Central Michigan University graduate who speaks good English.
I went back to sleep until a plumber could get there. About
7 a.m. came more knocking. These were the neighbors two apartments
down, complaining about water damage to their new kitchen
ceiling. I hadn't met them before, and I promised my landlady
would contact them. (There's no homeowners' insurance here,
apparently.)
The poet Robert Frost wrote that "good fences make good
neighbors." He also could have written, "bad plumbing
prevents you from making good neighbors."
