Some days are just fucking irritating. I took Jeni to the airport, because she’s a friend and because she’s carrying a carpet to Tashkent for me. Well, not for me, but for this woman working in Dushanbe that I met last October. (just part of how annoying the day was.) At the airport, I stopped the car just long enough to take the luggage out of the car and load Jeni up to go to her plane.

When I drove off, the police officer who had been standing by the car stopped me and demanded my papers. He claimed I had stopped for too long in a no stopping zone and he had to give me a ticket. I’m pretty sure that’s what he said, anyway - he was talking really fast and using a lot of words I didn't understand. He tried to get me to follow him somewhere to get my ticket, I think. I didn't understand, and said so. Then he got into my car and had me drive him about 100 feet down the curb, and then asked me for money. I ended up paying him 100,000 manat (about 5 dollars) and he let me go. Asshole. The whole thing was completely bogus – I stopped for no more than five minutes.

Coming back from the airport, I was stopped by the cops for a second time. They were better. I gave them my car registration, my Florida driver’s license, and then my passport, just to make sure they were overwhelmed. They decided all my documents were in order and let me go, although one officer did tell me that my car needed washing. I need police to tell me these things.

I finally convinced the landlady to get someone in to look at my leaky washing machine. She was convinced that it was leaking because I used the wrong soap. People here seem to believe that fabric softener is for the health of the washing machine, not your clothes. The landlady claimed that the washing machine was leaking because I didn't use fabric softener. I eventually made her to get a repairman in, and the cause of the drip (obviously) was a leaky hose connection.

On Sunday, Gulia called me from the office. She said she’d been thinking about security, and for $30 a month, the office landlady would sleep in the office every night. I find myself wondering what kind of robber would get thrpugh a steel gate, a steel door, and bars on the windows but then be completely intimidated by a sleeping middle aged woman.

From my news list:

"ELECTIONS" IN TURKMENISTAN

Ashgabat, TURKMENISTAN. On the morning of April 6, day of elections into the People’s Council and local administrations in Turkmenistan, members of election commissions began door-to-door calls on their fellow citizens, urging them to take part in the elections. In the latter half of the day members of the divisional election committees decided to take ballot boxes right to people’s homes, persuading people to cast their ballots.

5,500 deputies were to be elected into local councils. The People’s Council, the supreme legislative body in the republic chaired by president Saparmurat Niyazov, comprises about 3,000 seats. The majority of seats in the People’s Council is distributed among representatives of various echelons of power, and only 65 deputies are elected by the Turkmen population. 144 candidates contested these seats. All of them were nominated from above, following a close scrutiny of their loyalty to the president’s policy. Turkmen election commissions also checked whether the candidates or their families had ever been prosecuted, whether they were Turkmen by origin, etc.

Although most of Turkmens knew nothing about the elections scheduled for April 6, official sources claimed in their initial reports that the turnout for the elections reached 97%.

PRIMA News Agency [2003-04-07-Turcm-07]

It’s true, too. They came to my house and told me to vote. A man and a little boy. The little boy even told me in English when they realized I was a foreigner. I was supposed to go to school #24 at seven in the morning. I wonder what would have happened if I’d gone and tried to vote?

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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.