It’s 3:45 pm, and I am lying on a twin bed in the hotel Kazakhstan watching Russian music videos. The transition from Dashowuz to Almaty is so jarring that it leaves one feeling dislocated. In Dashowuz there were cows in people’s yards and box shaped concrete houses surrounded by mud and isolation. My hotel in Almaty is next door from a Thai restaurant and up the street from two or three sushi restaurants. I am going to dinner tonight with my boss at a Korean restaurant unless I change my mind and decided that we should have Tex-Mex. I just got back from buying cream cheese for Dorothy and making an appointment to have my hair colored.

Almaty is mind boggling for the likes of me. I was reading the Almaty city magazine (well, kind of reading - it’s in Russian) and I am actually intimidated by the number of ultra-hip bars and clubs. I am not well dressed enough to be here. If I stay with this company after my stint in Turkmenistan, Almaty will be my next stop. I’m not sure I’m up to it. I may have been in the sticks for too long – unfit for life in the big city.

For one thing, there is too much to buy here. Pretty much everything you can get in the US is available – all kinds of cheeses, spices, convenience food, salad dressing, candy, whatever. How do you face that kind of choice every day in the grocery store? I guess I did it in the US, refused to buy most things I wanted because if you buy everything you want you’ll go broke. But in Ashgabat, there’s not that much stuff I want and most of it is cheap. I pretty much get to buy what I like. Not here. Here I would be right back where I am in America – keeping a notebook of what I pay for groceries to make sure I always get the best price.

I guess it would be good preparation for grad school. But I think I have come to enjoy and depend on the enforced asceticism of my life in Central Asia. Making do and doing without because you simply can’t get the things you want is a challenge that can be enjoyable. Constantly refusing things you desire because they would add up to too much expense (individually they may not cost so much, but there are just so many things to want) is not especially enjoyable. I suppose the compensation is that everything you want is available to you when you are ready to spend the money.

Yeah, I know. Welcome to modern life, Violet.

So, Dashowuz. It is well-know as the poorest district in Turkmenistan. I was told that the economy there is largely cashless – farmers grow cotton, and their harvest goes to the government. In return, they are given wheat, which they can plant, sell, or grind into flour. I was in Dashowuz to observe a training that we are supporting, and also to get a sense of the area.

The training was fine. The participants were really enthusiastic, the trainer did a good job, and they were using the participatory adult education methods that we advocate. I spent the morning at the training, and then we went out to see the city. Gulia got a taxi to drive us around and show us the sights, despite his initial claim that there were no sights. These were the sights we eventually located:

1. a mosque. Not especially attractive.

2. the city hall and district capital building (same building, typical soviet blue-tile tower)

3. several parks, one of which contained a dangerous-looking Ferris wheel. They were recognizable as parks not because they had grass or trees, but because they had no buildings in them

4. the KGB building

After out tour, we went to the bazaar, where Gulia engaged in one of the passions of Central Asia – shopping somewhere else. Everybody is convinced that they can get better prices away from home. Tashkent residents stock up on produce when they go to Samarqand, because everyone knows fruit is cheaper there and the apples are better. Ferghana dwellers buy appliances in Tashkent.

New, as I mentioned, I’m the kind of person that keeps a notebook to record prices, and I can tell you – there’s no difference. The only differences in price between areas are random. Sometimes rural shopkeepers are less good at bargaining, and you get more of a deal. But most things are harder to get in rural areas, and that rarity drives prices up. Produce can be cheaper if you find an actual farmer with a roadside stand by his field, but even that isn’t necessarily true if you have a city accent. There’s a lot of suspicion and resentment between rural and urban areas.

To be continued…

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.