July 23rd, 2019

Today in class we learned past contra-factual conditions. I still don’t know how to form present contra-factual conditions (should/would) however. Latin has gotten me very caught up in conditionals. We got another poem for the test to memorize, but the test is in two days!

            At lunch, another NSLI-Y Tajikistan 2018 alum joined us, he was in Dushanbe for the opening of the library. He is on a gap year and has spent it wandering the Eurasia. It was fascinating to hear about. One funny story he shared was getting college health forms filled out while in Kazakhstan and not really been able to communicate. At the hospital he went to for his height they put down 160 centimeters, even after they used a fancy measuring device. This young man is easily 6’3”.   

            He also told us about a group of students from an American university doing HIV research in Tajikistan. They are interviewing HIV positive migrant workers. For workers who contract HIV, Russia will not help pay for the medication that will prevent the HIV from taking their lives, so they are forced to go back to Tajikistan. It sounds like they interviewed some very interesting people. But what the alum told us about their research supports what the country director for the WHO said. We asked for the researchers to be invited to lunch. Their research sounds really interesting. I hope they come to lunch. I have previously read about HIV in Tajikistan in an article about these folks who are classified as MSM (men who have sex with men) but use Russian female pronouns when speaking Russian and refer to themselves as women in some scenarios. I will try to upload a pdf of the article. I can’t remember which university the author of that article was form, but I wonder if they are form the same university. I get imagine there are a lot of people doing research on HIV in Tajikistan. For what it is worth, HIV positive live happy health lives managed through anti-viral medications and today medications like PrEP limit the likelihood of transmission. But I don’t know whether  (and doubt that) prophylactic like PrEP are easily/cheaply available in Tajikistan. Even in the United States they are very expensive.

            After class we went the Mehrgon bazaar. It was totally massive. It was mostly food, but I bought some more presents there for my family and friends. I got to practice bargaining again. Our RD also told a couple students they got ripped off yesterday at the market, and she remained us that we should be careful as foreigners when at bazaars. I think I have exchanged a total of $170, but my stipend was $135. I don’t foresee myself needing to exchange more, so the stipend as covered almost everything I have needed to buy including presents, phone minutes, and water. 

            My host mother is sick. She had a two-hour-long nose bleed. I really hope she will be okay, but she is pretty old. She got all this medicine from the doctor and needs her blood pressure checked regularly now. She had to go to the hospital, but they don’t have primary care here, so it’s probably not as bad as what you go to the hospital for in the US.