Osh or plov

One of the national dishes in Tajikistan is a kind of plov (or pilaf) they call "osh."

We ate dinner in Panjakent at the Choikhona Sharof, famous for its osh.

Here's their kitchen:

The following photos show the preparation process a bit more. They're from a Navruz celebration back in March, where a chef came to the event with his stove, pot, and supplies.

First, cook meat and chopped carrots & onions--in plenty of oil.

Then add the rice.

This is what it looks like when it's done.

To serve, first put the rice on the platter and then spoon plenty of meat and vegetable on top.

This is such an important feature in Tajik meals and hospitality that the bazaars have lots of places where you can buy the needed chopped carrots and spices:

Locals prize the fat and flavor from the fatty tails of their sheep in their osh, but it's a little too oily for our taste.

Some people add chickpeas or currants too, but that may be more common in other regions of Central Asia.

Celebration meals, Tajik-style

A big celebration coming up is the Eid al-Fitr, the meal at the end of Ramadan. Sadly, we will be traveling then, on our way home, and were unable to accept invitations. But I thought it might still be good to post a bit about our experiences with celebratory meals.

Tajiks prefer sitting on floor cushions, eating from a cloth spread on the floor or a low table.

This is true at home or in restaurants. Here are some students we ran into when we visited Hisor:

In restaurants, people prefer a private room, booth, or pavillion. Here are some customers in a restaurant in Panjakent:

While I was on my trip, Lee had a farewell dinner at Toqi with some of his friends:

Poor guy--it's so hard for him to curl his feet up under him!

When Tajiks host someone for a meal, the table should be completely covered with dishes, as can be seen in the first photo as well as this one:

 The real lunch at the above table was still to follow--soup with stuffed pepper, pot roast, and raspberries & ice cream:

Wow!!

Apricots

Apricots are one of my favorite fruits and I'm happy to be in Tajikistan while they are in season. Since Isfara is known for its apricots...

...on the way back from our visit there, we stopped at some of the orchards.

(Dressed for my teacher workshop, I must have looked a sight jumping over the stream and asking questions about what they do.)

We learned that during picking and drying season, farmers come from their villages and camp out in the orchards for a month or two.

Families have a "tapchan," a platform for sitting and sleeping, shaded by cloth or plastic.

Some of the family members from one of the groups we talked to.

The "campers" can use mud to make a stove for their time in the orchards.

Animals come too--cows, dogs, and even birds.

The process of picking, sorting, drying (and sometimes sulfuring) is time-consuming.

He's demonstrating how pits can be squeezed out of apricots that are at just the right stage.

We also saw apricots being sold on the road between Ayni and Panjikent. It's a business for the whole family.

Lots of different varieties of apricots!

My only regret is that I couldn't buy a bucket of apricots and make jam. That wouldn't be a practical way to spend my last two days in Tajikistan!

Sughd trip

My last week in Tajikistan, I joined three U.S. embassy colleagues on a trip to the Sughd region, north of Dushanbe. They were monitoring and celebrating the Access program (which provides two years of extra English and leadership instruction to underserved youth) in four different towns.

We spent three nights based in Khujand, and our last night in Panjakent

I was doing three-hour workshops for teachers.

Teachers in Shahristan

Teaching in Isfara

These teachers work in small towns or even remote villages with few resources, including limited access to the internet. The weather was hot during our workshops and some of the participants were observing the Ramadan fast (no food or water during daylight hours). But they were all excited about new teaching ideas and enthusiastic about their work.

Teachers in Bobojun Gafurov

One part of the trip that was especially sweet was seeing people I already knew. I had deliberately reached out to teachers who had been part of the English Teacher Mentor program I taught in July 2013 and I was happy to meet Maisara and Dilrabo in Khujand, and Muzaina in Isfara. But it was an unexpected treat to have a young teacher in Shahristan say that she recognized me. We figured out that when she was a student in the Institute of Foreign Languages, I had visited her class in 2011 (my first quick visit to Tajikistan) as a guest of her teacher Susan Layman. She recognized herself in a photo I had on my laptop.

It was great to see more of the country too, including scenery, history, every day culture, and people.

Driving on M34 between Shahriston and Ayni (Khujand to Panjikent)

At the Abdulatif or Kok-Gumbaz mosque in Istaravshan, with Tahmina, Sitora, and Lucy.

The region around the town of Isfara is famous for apricots.

It's watermelon season here in Tajikistan! At Panjshanbe Market in Khujand.

At the Sughd Historical Museum I met these school girls who had won a trip there. (Because of fundraising they'd done? The reason was lost in translation.)

There are more posts and photos about the trip and my teaching at https://www.facebook.com/tesoltrainer/

Farewell meals

It's the bittersweet time of farewells.

The embassy asked the Fulbrighters still in town (three English Teaching Assistants and me) to lunch on Thursday at the Bukhara.

(Nice atmosphere, but we waited a long time for the food and then each person's meal came out one by one.)
Tonight the teachers I've worked with at Moscow State University Dushanbe invited Lee and me to an early dinner. A few were unable to attend--one is eight months pregnant and only says yes to must-do work assignments; another is fasting for Ramadan.

They took us to Chorbog Restaurant, perched on the banks of the Varzob River, on the north edge of the city.

(Here our food came out so quickly I wanted to tell the staff to wait, that I wanted to linger more with my dear colleagues.)

I couldn't resist one final bit of fun in English--a game of Categories--with prizes (suitable for taking home to their kids or grandkids).

They surprised me with a gorgeous gift (and I had some small gifts for each of them).

Thank you, dear friends!

Valentina, Tahmina, Shanoza, Sanovbar (absent: Gulnora, Daler)

Contrast #5 - fashion

I was struck by the fashion in this boutique in the center of Dushanbe.

It's a nice combination of traditional Tajik design and contemporary style.

But there are also dressmakers which advertise this kind of fashion:

And we can find everything in between too.

That reminds me of some wedding dress contrasts I've seen...

A bride in the Botanical Gardens (from, or marrying into, a religiously conservative family):

Another bride:

and one of the wedding dress store windows near our apartment in the center of town:

How interesting to see what is considered beautiful.

Conference

On Friday June 9th my department (Linguistics) held a conference at our university (Moscow State University Lomonosov, Dushanbe Branch).

This was another source of cross-cultural learning for me, as it wasn't like the TESOL conferences I'm used to. (Perhaps more like a Linguistic Society of America or International Association of Applied Linguists meeting?) It was labeled an "international scientific and practical conference" titled "Current problems in Philology and Linguodidactics." Yes, that's the English translation. How the Russians love their long words!

Some talks I translated from the program with the help of google include: "Comparative analysis of participles in Russian, English, and Tajik," "Some questions about the psycholinguistic analysis of statements in the Russian language," "Semantics of words derived from the concept of 'beauty' in Tajik, Russian, and English linguaculture," "The Concept of 'Spring' in the poetry of Marina Tsetaeva," and "Classification of Euphemisms in Political Speeches." Four of the talks were in English, two in Tajik, and about a dozen in Russian. I know some random words in Russian, like "spring" and "word," and I can guess the cognates, like semantika and klassifikatsiya, but for most of the day I had to let the language roll over me.

I was asked to do the opening plenary. 10 minutes like all other talks (except that time wasn't too strictly enforced). I'm not sure my "Balance in Language Teaching"--practical as usual from me--set the right tone for the rest of the conference. However, they've heard me speak all semester and know my style.

I'd also coached two of the teachers who've attended both my methodology and my academic writing classes in doing and writing up some action research. They boldly tried presentations different from the others--one on jigsaw reading in his English for geology students class, the other on improving students' presentations in her international relations class.

 Given that many presenters gave no visual support to the audience and read their papers, I was proud of these faculty members.

Here are some other photos from the conference: