Happy Independence Day Tajikistan!!!

September 9th is the day Tajikistan became independent from the Soviet Union and is an official public holiday. We had the day off from building and our schedules suggested we would walk the center of the city to celebrate, sight-see, and do as we please. Before doing anything else we started our morning like normal at Café Merve. Because it was our day off we got to meet up a little later than on build days, which was great initially until we found out we were invited to attend Independence Day celebrations at Sitora. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but we went with it. The mayor of the Rudaki district (also the district we were building in) wanted to introduce us to a ton of people we didn’t know and well let’s just say overall confusion.

So after breakfast we head off to Sitora. Upon entering the main of Rudaki District it seems as if Dushanbe suddenly transformed into this fairytale like town. Tree-lined streets with people strolling along laughing and catching up with one another – something in the air or just on this particular day made everything feel so alive. I’ve found Dushanbe pretty boring with the exception of our work schedules. This was a nice change of scenery. After making our grand entrance (our line of cars were the only ones driving through the blocked off streets) we walked into Sitora and noticed a table loaded with fruit, beverage and food was soon to be served. None of us were prepared to eat a second meal less than an hour after breakfast. Considering we still had some sick tummies in the group it felt overwhelming and unexpected. Surely if we had known a second meal was on the way we wouldn’t have eaten that much at breakfast.

Anyways, we took our seats across from people who seemed very important, but still no clue who they were. No matter though, next thing I know vodka for toasting is being distributed and I’m quite uninterested, but you can’t refuse a vodka toast. I took the first one and decided no more. I didn’t want the liquor to dehydrate me and mess with my running. More and more drinks came and I took tiny, tiny sips of them all so not to be rude, but not to get pissy drunk either. I think it was happy medium especially with some drunk individuals already in the room. (No one on the GV team.) When we were asked to dance the keyboard player/singer started showing his true colors and acting a fool. He started dancing with me and twirling me and was having a real ball, however some other people told him to cool it and he didn’t which got him excused from the keyboard and the lunch. It was the alcohol, I understand. Dancing was fun though and I really began to work up a sweat as I tried mocking the moves of a very gifted Tajik dancer. She worked her shoulders and with a graceful jerk of sorts would turn the opposite direction, but not without flashing her gold teeth in a huge smile. I wanted to sign up for lessons, but I enjoyed the moment and settled back in my seat promising no more dancing, yet I was summoned to the floor once more by our volunteer friend Khushvakht.  The dancing part was my fav…

Me and the creepy piano player
Me and my new creepy piano playing friend.

Piano guy, me, christina, and mayor of rudaki district
A dynamic group of four…

Learning to dance Tajik style!

Ann looks like she's wigging out.
Ann wigging out or acting like it…tehe

Fab, Me, Rocky
Me and our two fantastic volunteers. They look nice, but they’ll crush your knuckles if you mess with me or any of my Habitat pals. I’m only kidding. They wouldn’t hurt a kitten.

Group dancing…

Dancing with Tajik man – he could really move!

(Short video from Christina’s cam.)

What turned out not being my favorite part was a shared feeling throughout the group. This mayor fellow decided it would be cool to show us his horse stables where there were also deer and let us ride the horses. I probably would have been interested if I had the right clothing on, but I was wearing my cute little orange dress and these were sport horses. Diego, being the Texas cowboy he is, jumped right on board. He took the horse around about three times before getting off. We left the horse stables and went to see the locked up Tajikistan wolf and tethered browns bears. This was sad. The bears were the first thing we saw and there was one large one and one baby bear. The baby bear was moaning and making so much noise from lack of water and the heat. Surely the chain was causing him some trouble. Having a bear in Tajikistan is a status thing and they obviously weren’t aware how unimpressed our group was in seeing these bears treated like such for their personal pleasure. Same thing went with the wolf. An older woman and a young boy about 11 or so opened up this shed and the boy tugged on the chain to pull the wolf so we could see it. The wolf didn’t wish to see us. He probably didn’t want to see anyone with a life like that. We were happy to leave.

Diego on horse
Diego gets ready to ride off into the wind.

big bear
The larger of the two brown bears chained up… Sad.

small bear
The smallest was the hardest to watch.

wolf
A very unhappy Tajikistan wolf.

I thought we were heading back to our apartments by this time for sure, but we had one more pit stop at the International University. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t overly exciting. We chatted with some folk for a short time and finally left to go towards the apartments.

Time was of the essence now because our long day was nowhere close to being over. Furkat managed to get us tickets last minute to the HUGE Independence Day celebration at the stadium. We had about an hour tops to rest and soak in everything we had done already before hitting the road to the stadium. I was taxed, but ready to see how the country celebrated in one central location. The scene at the stadium was like a madhouse. Crowds of people were hanging around the gates either waiting to get inside or not go inside at all. We stood back until Furkat instructed us to proceed. On the inside we found our seats, which were behind the major action, but I found there was major action for all at the stadium that day. Their firework show was one of the most impressive I had ever seen and I’m sure Russia could hear the explosions. Other points of interest – the Pres of TJ and Iran were both in the house; I generated quite a large number of stares and later told some cute Tajik kid that I was Alicia Keys. Nats almost died of laughter, but the kid had no clue who Alicia Keys was. (Note: Alicia Keys – time to extend your fan base to Central Asia.) Times at the stadium were fun and eventful and by the end of it all I was just pleased to see the bed in the apartment.

Trying to get a shot of the raining fireworks from behind, but it was too late.