Trash, Bribery, and Rat Traps Well, it’s now Friday—my last day in Tashkent. I plan to take all of my Uzbek colleagues out to lunch today. I turned down the offer of a “proshal’niy vecher” (farewell evening) in light of the odd time I have to depart for the airport—the Lufthansa flight leaves at 3:45 in the morning, but registration begins at 1 a.m., which means I have to head out around midnight. It’s been a difficult week—I’ve had to do a lot of yelling (not my typical management style) and threatening with cautionary tales to try to motivate my Uzbek colleagues to take responsibility for their future. It’s like having a robin that not only doesn’t want to leave the nest, but expects that, if he sits there forever, his mother will continue to bring him worms every day. I don’t know if this group will survive. There is a core group of disabled people who depend on this organization for their employment, but the leadership seems to lack initiative altogether. Yesterday, I decided, in utter frustration, to make some command decisions for the group, and I headed out with my driver to buy things that the local managers swore up and down were “very difficult to find and buy,” including fans, a coffee maker, a sewing machine, etc... Within a couple of hours, Melissa and I’d scoured a local market and found the notoriously hard to find items. When we returned, victorious, the reaction from the local staff was as if we had just found a miraculous pot of gold. It’s so utterly frustrating, particularly since I know that I’m working with a bright and capable group of men and women...they’ve been raised and molded under a system that squashes drive and ambition. Hell, these guys were amazed that I could “assemble” and work the Braun coffee maker I’d just bought for them. Four men, ranging in age from about 45 to 65, sat like eager schoolchildren, gripping the edges of their seats, and watched breathlessly as the water dripped through the filter into the coffee pot. And, when the concentric circles from the last water drop had finally flattened out, they all sat back, amazed and silent until one of them jumped up, grabbed for the pot and poured the water back into the top of the filter. “Let’s see that again!” he cried, and the others nodded furiously in agreement. In this environment, I just don’t know if we can let go of their hands without them all falling down. I’ve been going through a lot of Tylenol this week... On a more pleasant note, the dumpster that has been wafting awful odors through my bedroom window is being emptied right now. With the temperatures soaring to the 50 degree Celsius mark this week, it’s been pretty ripe. Garbage men came by around 7 this morning, but they refused to take the trash (which has been piling up, according to neighbors, for almost two months) until they received a bribe of 1,500 som (about $11 on the black market.) A neighbor woman has been going door to door to collect 100 som from each apartment to get the men to cart away the aromatic rubbish. When she came by this morning, I gave her 300 som—100 for the absent tenant, and 200 from the grateful guest living above the dumpster. Even at 7, this woman looked exhausted—it turns out that she runs the small trailer-shaped store in the alley behind the building. (I went into the store only once, politely bought a round of bread and left quickly, chased out by a sea of flies. Not very appetizing.) She told me it was in the best interest of her business to volunteer to collect the money—no one really wants to shop for food in a store permeated by a foul garbage stench. It’s time for me to sign off —before finishing work today, I want to go to Chorsu, the central market of Tashkent that’s been in existence since the 12th century. Unfortunately, the old market was swallowed up in a catastrophic earthquake that virtually wiped Tashkent off the map in 1966. The new market is very Soviet—hideous, but functional. My mission this morning: to find rat traps to leave as a “hostess gift” for Melissa. At another market, a wrinkled prune of a man (who was selling the most wonderful fresh spices, dried fruits, and sugared nuts—ah, if not for that agricultural inspection area at the DC airport, I’d bring a whole suitcase home!) told me that you can find excellent rat traps at Chorsu—according to him, “guaranteed to kill.” The old gentleman said he used them himself and had caught a dozen rats around his home. Well, can’t pass up an endorsement like that! My driver just honked for me—he’s the uncle of Rafshan (the poor guy from the Samarkand trip.) He told me yesterday that Rafshan’s repair bill is over $1,500. He’s in a vicious circle—he needs to work to make the money for the repairs, but he’s a driver. He needs his damaged (and now undrivable) car to work, but he can’t work because his car is damaged. I cringe whenever I think of it. Rafshan’s uncle just shrugs and says, “Eh, it’ll all work out. I told him not to buy a foreign car...” <<Previous chapter | Return to Main main | lamps | clothing | Uzbek fans | about | sizing links | feedback/ordering info | travel stories Copyright © 1998 Compass Rose Studios Site design and HTML by Qdesign of Bethesda, Maryland. If you experience any problems with this site, please let us know.