Trip to Gharm

Wednesday and Thursday I went with some embassy staff to the town of Gharm, a four-hour drive east of Dushanbe in the Rasht Valley.

The drive took us through green hills and craggy mountains, past little streams, and beside rivers both red and brown.

...along straight smooth stretches, and along roads where the only maintenance seems to be an occasional guy moving stones to one side.

 

It’s the season when shepherds move their flocks up to higher mountain pastures, so we ran into a lot of sheep:

 

We also drove past the Rogun Dam construction site. 

For more on this massive project (controversial, expensive, but set to make Tajikistan an energy exporter) see this from the BBC and and this from The Diplomat

Gharm itself is a pleasant looking town, cooled off by nearby snow peaks and rivers, and easily walkable from one end to the other.

It has a nice bazaar where we saw evidence that the Rasht Valley people are wonderful farmers.

We walked through a park with a restaurant perched over the river. It would be a nice place to eat—but because of Ramadan, most places are closed during the day, so I settled for a photo.

(Those in the group who weren’t fasting ate a good dinner and breakfast in our guest house.)

The reason for me to go to Gharm was to do a workshop for teachers at the American Corner. I had ten guys in the workshop, ranging from an instructor in the local pedagogical institute (who’d been all over the U.S. during his time as a Tajik language instructor in Kansas), to several of his students (one of whom just started teaching a week ago), to an alumnus of a Teacher Mentor Program I taught in July 2013.

Listening to my English for three hours (during the Ramadan fast) and participating in an interactive workshop that demanded they use English was tough for some of them, but they cheerfully persevered. Hope they can pass on good things to their students.

On the way back to Dushanbe, I got to find out one of the things Jeff the Information Officer at the U.S. embassy does. He asked the driver to pull over when he saw a bunch of bee hives, and proceeded to ask the beekeeper if he wouldn’t mind being interviewed, recorded, and published.

In his fluent Tajik, Jeff started off along the lines of, “Here I am in the beautiful Rasht Valley, talking with…sir, what is your name?” and proceeded to ask a few questions about the bees. He told me later that the goal is communicating with the people of Tajikistan that the U.S. is a partner who appreciates and respects their nation. 

It was fun to see the bees and where the keeper stays while he’s away from his village.

There were also three boys (the beekeeper’s sons?) playing in a nearby stream. With his clay model, the guy on the left might become an architect instead of a beekeeper.

 Of course we had to buy some honey at a stand down the road:

And speaking of roadside stands, our final stop before returning to Dushanbe was next to an orchard:

What a great trip! You might wonder where Lee was. During these two days he had some board meetings which entailed being on skype late at night. Since we weren't sure of the internet in Gharm, he decided to stay in Dushanbe. Ironically, the internet at home went out and he couldn't participate with the board as planned. You just have to laugh!