July 17th, 2019

We learned the past progressive today in class, along with a boatload of new vocab, and it’s only Wednesday. After class we went to “volunteer” at a library that a NSLI-Y alum from last year is putting together. It was at a school in a small city about 40 minutes from Dushanbe (in the direction of Romit, but I don’t remember what it was called). The library was really just a small room with three bookshelves pushed against the back wall with books in English, Tajik, and Russian. They weren’t a ton of books there to be honest, but I am sure that will change with time. The floor was repaneled as well. The NSLI-Y alum was assisted by a few FLEX alumni who had just returned from their year-long stay in the United States. Our task was to help with the painting of a mural. On one wall the more artistic students in our group (i.e. not me) painted a tree with books hanging from it, based on what looked like a Pinterest photo. Above the shelves were clouds where inspiration words in the three languages were written. For the English and Tajik clouds, the painting went off without a hitch or spelling error. Lacking much experience in the language, the same could not be said for the Russian, where small snafus were made in both words, but in the end it looked really good. Though whether what we needed there could be called volunteering is debatable.

            While the artistic students were painting the tree (which turned out super well), the rest of us went to go talk to a group of ACCESS students. I am not 100% sure what the acronym stands for, but it’s a program funded by the embassy which Tajik students can apply for and get free English lessons. They asked a couple of questions. We recited a poem to their delight. One Tajik boy preformed a song to the delight of all present. We talked about goals and such. We mostly spoke in English. It was noticeable that there English was not as good as the college-prep program students we met, nor the FLEX alumni.

            In terms of reading and access here, it is noticeable that there aren’t a lot of books in homes. People don’t seem very inclined to read to kids, which seems very common in the US or at least in my personal experience (but I come from a very privileged background). The preference here seems to be more showing kids videos of themselves or random youtube videos. Even my host sister who is a summer English I don’t really see reading (except that one time her mother and grandmother forced her to read an excerpt of The Jungle Book to me and correct her pronunciation since they didn’t know English and couldn’t themselves).

            Today we also got to hear about the experiences of last year’s NSLI-Y Tajikistan group from the alum. Some we had inferred from the text messages left on our program-provided phones, which they had used last year. But it seems some of the rules were observed and enforced differently, which was interesting to compare. They also didn’t get to go to Varzob or Romit, since the week they were due to go there was the terrorist attack on the bikers in the south and they were confined to Dushanbe. They went to a water park instead.

            Funny moment with my host family: At breakfast this morning I was sitting with the grandmother (my host mom) when her daughter in law came in. She said something in very fast Tajik about her two-year-old having lost his pacifier to her mother-in-law and started looking around. She didn’t realize I understood. I glanced under the table as well and saw the pacifier on the floor close to me, saying “here it is” in Tajik (“vai injo act”) I handed it to her. She seemed startled, since she didn’t think I understood but thanked me. Later I was heading out the door to school, my host mother commented how I understood a lot. I admitted that I understood better than I spoke (using the new comparative constructions we learned earlier this week). I think they are beginning to reconsider what they say around me, since I understand more now than a few weeks ago.

An Update on Gender in Tajikistan

            Since I last wrote about gender, a few things have come up that I think merit an update. As we have become more comfortable in Dushanbe we have started walking in smaller groups, sometimes just one or two people (if walking from our homes to school where we don’t have to follow the 3-Buddy Rule). There is a huge amount of catcalling and generally gross and scary behavior by grown men towards the young women on the program. While I am male and have not experience this directed at me first hand, I received permission to share some of the incidents which they shared with me and have witnessed some of this behavior. Some incidents include:

-       When at Romit, several grown men made advances including offering hookah and beer to a couple of the girls on the program. When one student was sitting beside the pool there, a man said in English “Come dance with me” and “I want to play with you”

o   When the gross behavior of the men at Romit was mentioned to our male teacher, he justified the behavior saying that women in Tajikistan don’t go swimming, and men don’t see women swimming often

-       When two female students were walking a man tried to get them into his car and made obscene gestures with his hand.

-       A bus driver tried to get two students into his bus and even started calling someone when they wouldn’t, even though you are allowed to just sit at bus stops in Tajikistan

-       A man holding larger garden sheers approached and sat next to two female students. He asked where they lived and whether they would return to the park when they tried to leave

-       A man approached a small group of female students and asked for their numbers, when they said they didn’t have phones the man demanded to see their purses and check for phones.

-       In addition to people on the street men in cars frequently call towards female students walking along the food

            While I of course have witnessed catcalling in the United States, the volume here seems larger. For what it is worth almost all of these men are married, since men marry very young here. Another student also shared with me what his host brother (age 23) had said about women. His host brother made comments about in Russia at night telling women he would marry them to get them to sleep with him and then in the morning telling them he changed his mind. When passing women on the street he would check out and comment on the appearance of women wearing more western-style closing graphically. He would refer to women who were more covered as “good” women, and said that when he is married he would force his wife to only go out very covered up. The student who shared these comments form his host brother with me also expressed how he wanted to call out the behavior and the comments, but we are also not supposed to challenge any part of the culture here.

            Our local coordinator also explained to us that smiling here is seen as flirtatious, and if a woman smiles too much she is considered very promiscuous or like a sex worker. If you smile at your wedding it is especially bad.

            In terms of homophobia, when walking with my host mother to a market we passed a rather flamboyantly dressed young man, and she made some comments I didn’t quite understand about how you shouldn’t talk to that kind of person because I something I didn’t really understand. It might not even have been homophobia. This was a while ago, so I don’t remember all of the details.