How genius thinks in the wee hours

For the past couple of months, twice a week I’ve had to make a roughly 6 mile round-trip journey on foot to get to the local high school where I observe and occasionally ‘teach’ lessons. As an avid walker, I usually enjoy these walks, though setting out at 6am on a cold winter morning isn’t the most ideal time for this kind of fun. By the time I get to school, it takes me about 15-20 minutes before I can properly utter a coherent word seeing as my jaw and cheeks are so frozen. Temperatures at that time of morning have lately been in the 15F/-8C range, which is more or less what I’m used to from the past few years of living abroad, though until now I’d never really walked quite so far at such an ungodly time of morning.

This morning, on my way back from school for the last time, I was walking along the pavement, minding my own business in a residential neighbourhood, when a man came out of his house. The following dialogue then took place:

Man: ‘Hey, can I help you find anything?’
Me: (a bit perplexed) ‘Um, no.’ (I certainly didn’t look lost at all, and I wasn’t weaving and stumbling into the road or anything.)
Man: ‘Are you lost? Do you need directions?’
Me: ‘No, I’m fine, just on my way home. Thanks.’
Man: ‘No problem, just want to make sure you’re okay.’

It took me a few minutes for this exchange to register, but then it got me thinking (what else am I supposed to do on a 50 minute walk?). In general, outside of bigger cities in America, people generally don’t walk to get places, especially when longer distances are involved (Yes, you’ve heard this one before, it’s yet another one of my diatribes about the lack of public transportation and how nobody around here walks – but bear with me here, this is important!). This guy had probably seen me a few times and thought I was casing the neighbourhood or something: they’re not used to idle walkers round here.

The first time I showed up at the school, when signing in at the visitor’s desk, I left the spot for license plate number blank. The secretary noticed and asked me to fill that out. When I told her I didn’t have a car, she was absolutely astonished: ‘Where do you live? How did you get here? You walked? All that way? Are you crazy?’ Whilst walking home one day, a classmate driving by noticed me and offered a lift: ‘Where’s your car?’ he politely inquired. Three teachers, on separate days, have all asked me: ‘Was that you I saw walking this morning?’ whereupon, instead of answering ‘Yes, you numpty, thanks for offering me a lift!’ I meekly replied ‘Yeah, so what’. Cue same incredulous looks and cross-examinations.

So, generally, people in these parts (by that I mean the US, of course) tend not to walk long distances unless they are doing it for purely exercise purposes. I constantly see people, often two plumpish middle-aged women, power walking, clad in their pink and lime green designer workout gear with reflective patches interspersed amongst their outfits, feverishly waddling their hips and swinging their arms. Then there are the frequent joggers as well. But I never see people out for casual strolls. This was one thing – there weren’t many, mind – that I liked about San Sebastian, the couples, the families, the groups of friends, out meandering aimlessly along the promenade or boardwalk with no real purpose in mind. I realise that I don’t exactly do that when walking to and from school, but there’s still a certain overlap in MOs here.

That’s not all. Today I had an amazing revelation. This is what an over-active/over-analytical mind does to a man; either that, or the lack of sleep and the bone-chilling cold and the hazy state of mind. All that, combined with the fact that I’m an aspiring social studies teachers, and I suddenly started ruminating and drawing all sorts of parallels between the power walkers/joggers – not something nearly as prevalent in other countries, I’ve found – and the pace and frenetic nature of the American way of life in general. To crudely generalize, and without going into too much arcane detail, America is certainly more hectic and cutthroat a society than many other countries, and I’m thinking business-climate here. Everything moves at a faster pace, everyone is in a rush and life will quickly pass you by if you stop and linger for too long. It didn’t take me long to bring politics into this, and the thought popped into my head that in America, politicians run for election, whereas in Britain they stand for it. What fascinating and profound insight! How on earth this popped into my head, I don’t know, but that’s what tends to happens to warped masterminds like myself.

I’m not making any connections to Britain in this case, but it was just the first thought that sprung to mind. And now, dear readers of other tongues, I ask you this: what verb do you use in your language in the context of running/standing for election? I genuinely don’t know what other languages use, but I’m suddenly dying to find out. I want to know what the rest of the world uses, so I’d much appreciate it if all of you could let me know. I shan’t sleep until I find out.

I just had to share this within 12 hours because otherwise I would’ve banished it to the back of my brain where it would have rotted away for an eternity, lost to the world forever. But there you have it: the power of early-morning, over-active thinking. Try it sometime. At the very least, it’s good exercise. For the legs anyway.

So what have the losers got to say?

“It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of Wind.
That the permitting this Air to escape and mix with the Atmosphere, is usually offensive to the Company, from the fetid Smell that accompanies it.
That all well-bred People therefore, to avoid giving such Offence, forcibly restrain the Efforts of Nature to discharge that Wind.
Were it not for the odiously offensive Smell accompanying such Escapes, polite People would probably be under no more Restraint in discharging such Wind in Company, than they are in spitting, or in blowing their Noses.”

Benjamin Franklin, A Letter To A Royal Academy, 1781

According to my good pal Jeff, there are two universal truths in life:
1. Girls are sexy.
2. Farts are funny.

But this begs the obvious question: why are farts so widely thought of as impolite, foul, fetid, unpleasant, ill-mannered actions? Why is it so taboo to even discuss farting in polite company? Fortunately it’s not like this in all societies. When I lived in Germany, our landlord used to call round to our house and in her heavily-accented English, politely inquire of us on many a morning, “Now, how is your stool?” Fine, thank you, oma! That’s politeness and consideration for you.

However, it’s not my intention to delve into the pros and cons of farting in public, and I’ve already digressed from my main point here. I’m more curious about the above quoted passage from that finest of American statesmen, Benjamin Franklin. This is not a side most American schoolchildren are exposed to in school. We instead are taught that Ben was a fine statesman, orotund (and rotund) orator, magnificent inventor, and charming raconteur known for his acerbic wit (somewhat the ladies man, too, allegedly). It just saddens me that there’s another side to this great individual that very few of us are fortunate enough to have gained wind of. This is surely a heinous crime.

[and yes, of course that pun was intended!]

I recently had to take a social studies certification exam for my course. Because the scope was so wide and varied – from US and world history to economics to geography to civics to sociology – I had lots of brushing up to do in many areas. Including American history, which I hadn’t really studied in any great depth since high school.

It’s one of the oldest adages that history is written by the victors. There are, of course, notable exceptions in English – the Spanish Civil War springs to mind – but for the most part, we’re left with the winner’s versions. So I thought it would be interesting to read The Penguin History of the USA, written by Hugh Brogan, a former Cambridge historian: what a terrific find. Though the prose is somewhat turgid and bombastic in parts, and though Brogan has a puerile proclivity for ridiculing the early American colonists as pettifogging and petulant whingers, the book presents a fascinating take on American history. I certainly learnt a lot that I hadn’t before. (And no, I don’t think he’s bitter or anything.)

Booze, burning and bacchanalia

There are a few recurring themes in American history, one of which is the mighty impact of booze. Whisky, for example, ‘was regularly adopted to cheat [Native Americans] of their land and fair payment.’ Alcohol was a regular part of early American society, a fact to which the author devotes considerable attention. Boston was a major exporter of rum, in direct competition with the Caribbean variety, primarily because ‘it was much cheaper, which was a decisive consideration with the poor and frugal consumers of North America’. Apparently, Bostonians ‘sat tippling and sotting for whole evenings, or perhaps for whole days’. Aren’t these the guys who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Burning as a punishment was widespread, the reasons varied. Many years after the Salem Witch Trials, insubordinate slaves were often burned to death. This is generally glossed over but in this case, it was the footnote that caught my eye: ‘The British must not make too much of these incidents. As late as 1763 a white woman was burned in England for murdering her husband.’ Well in that case…

A bit of tarring and feathering for a laugh

Sometimes his disdain for America’s founding fathers is subtle, at other times glaringly blunt: he doesn’t mince his words. John Hancock, Boston’s richest merchant and leading smuggler, was a ‘mixture of vanity, pique and cowardice.’ Samuel Adams, that purveyor of fine beer, was ‘incompetent at just about everything’ he did, except for politics; that somehow isn’t very comforting. And here’s a side of America we never get to read about in the textbooks. In the days just before independence, there was all sorts of squabbling amongst the colonists. Adams said that justice and liberty in America were being subverted by ‘pensioners, placemen and other jobbers, for an abandon’d and shameless ministry; hirelings, pimps, parasites, panders, prostitutes and whores’. This kind of excessive sexual abuse was supposedly profuse from Adams and his cronies. John Adams once compared England to imperial Rome, both being the prey of ‘musicians, pimps, panders and catamites.’ James Otis called members of the House of Commons ‘a parcel of button-makers, gamesters, pin-makers, pimps and whore masters’. I don’t remember such evocative language in the textbooks I studied. And is being a button or pin maker such a bad thing? Maybe it’s not very manly. Accusing them all of being a bunch of hapless haberdashers would be a far greater insult in my book.

Brogan takes an especially keen interest in the Mormons. Amongst all sorts of lucid description of Mormon religious practice is this valuable nugget of insight: ‘Looked at in detail, the intricacies of Mormon polygamy strikingly resemble those of twentieth-century American divorce, especially as to wife-swapping.’ I’m not sure what kind of light that paints wife-swapping in.

And what of the South, and its magnificent standard of education in the 1800s? ‘The colleges of the South remained jokes until the twentieth century. Instead of science and Greek, the young gentlemen learned to hold their liquor, or at least not to mind getting blind drunk; how to use a knife in a brawl; how to handle dueling pistols and to play cards; how to race and bet on horses. They were provincial, ignorant and overbearing: excellent cannon-fodder, as it turned out.’ I now feel somewhat cheated with my college education. All those loans, all that debt, and for what? I’ve got no idea how to duel.

If we fast-forward to the 1950s, to the height of the anti-Communist hysteria, we see many suspected of having red sympathies being given the old heave-ho. In New York City, a public washroom attendant was dismissed for past membership of the Communist party. ‘No doubt he would have corrupted his customers with Soviet soap or Communist lavatory paper’. (This brings to mind the old popular Communist-era joke: Why, despite constant shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germany/Czechoslovakia/Hungary always two-ply? Because they had to send a copy of everything they did to Russia. It also recalls fond, yet painful, memories of toilet paper in many parts of the developing world, especially the former Soviet Union: that brown, sand-papered consistency stuff that leaves you in a constantly chaffed state. But at least it’s dirt-cheap.)

And the old curmudgeon takes a few pot-shots at 60s youth: ‘it is easy to be unkind about youth in the 60s…these ignorant, provincial, conceited young people…[who] turned out to be quite as unpleasant and as stupid as what they condemned.’ Though it ‘was nevertheless a great mistake to dismiss them all as no more than middle-class hooligans’.

And did you know that in 1760 King George II ‘died at stool in his closet’. The author handily provides a translation in his footnotes: ‘In modern idiom, on the lavatory.’

This stuff is important kids. It’s history! And it will be the kind of history that I will no doubt focus on; my students are in for a real treat.

Not much of a choice, really

As far as recommending the book, initially I’d say yes, though with a few caveats. There’s no doubt that Brogan’s heuristic approach is a major draw; once I was sucked in I couldn’t stop reading. But his attitude towards America at times is convoluted, soaked in layers of optimism and obsolescence, hubris and delusion, and it’s hard to discern his actual attitude. I was never sure whether it was one of calculated condescension or bemused indifference (and yes, that does make sense), and this bugged me for one reason or another. There’s no way in hell something like this would ever be used in an American high school classroom, though I would argue that certain excerpts from it could be used as a counterweight to your average, soporific high school textbooks. The problem with all textbooks, and the ones taking a survey approach to American history in particular, is that they are drenched in provincialism. But I think that reflects more on American education than American society, and these textbooks are evidence less of provincialism than of the intellectual orientation that downplays the importance of aesthetic criteria. It doesn’t matter how it’s written – though the blander the better – as long as it presents the [sanitised] facts in an orderly, coherent fashion. To my mind, this only demonstrates that indifference to aesthetic value inevitably shifts the whole culture back into provincialism. Thus, what we read in school, and the way it’s written, does matter.

But really, what do I know?

Time for a quick multiple-choice exam

Which of the following would you consider to be the most quintessentially and stereoptypically modern American phenomena?

A. Nascar (or, for the uninitiated, stock-car racing). A truly eye-opening, revelatory experience was going to a Nascar race, the New Hampshire 500 back in September. The amount of Confederate flags was staggering and I’m surprised I didn’t get assaulted for wearing a Stone Roses t-shirt adorned with the Union Jack. Honestly, what was I thinking?
B. The other day in the high school, I overhead two students discussing their weekends. I heard ‘five-pointer’ and ‘six-pointer’ and I started thinking, when did they change the scoring in basketball? when it dawned on me that they weren’t talking about basketball, but about hunting, and who had bagged the biggest deer.
C. Cars honking their horns at me as I walk along the parts of the road without any pavements, one guy shouting out the window, ‘where’s your car, buddy?’
D. In a coffee shop the other day, a woman, adorned in a fleece top, seemed flustered when complaining to the woman behind the counter, ‘I’m in a bit of a rush, I have to run and get Caitlyn from soccer practice, pick up my dry cleaning and then get home to get the stuff for the bake sale, then go to the P[arent] T[eacher] A[associaton] meeting.’ I didn’t see what she was driving but if I were a betting man, I’d say an SUV.
E. Not only attending a post-Thanksgiving Day holiday parade, but actually participating in one. While my father was a huge hit in his converted fighter jet go-kart, which he spent weeks working on, I was inveigled into following behind in the support vehicle - his minivan - wearing a Santa hat, Christmas music blaring from the speakers, while hundreds, if not thousands, of people lined the streets of Salem, NH waving at me, wishing me a Merry Christmas (they don’t go for the politically correct ‘Happy Holidays’ around here).

My old man doing the community proud

[P]arting thoughts from Ben

He that is conscious of
A Stink in his Breeches,
is jealous of every Wrinkle
in another’s Nose.

Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1751

A tale told by an idiot, signifying absolutely nothing

Dear friends and readers: don’t get your knickers in a twist. This will be an oh-so brief posting where I grovel and beg for forgiveness for not posting in so bloody long. Believe it or not, I’ve well and truly been a busy man over these past few weeks and I’m quite frankly rather worn out at this stage (‘frazzled’ is a word I’ve been overusing lately). While the undergraduates of Keene somnambulate their way from class to class, elegantly slumming in their resplendent sartorial sleepwear, your dear author, in his usual tatterdemalion state, has had his head his buried in a deluge of books, working diligently for perhaps the first time in his life. “Cultivated idleness seems to me to be the proper occupation for man”, said Oscar Wilde, and I couldn’t agree more. Someone else once said “hard work never killed anybody, but I figured why take the chance?” also springs to mind (author? I think it was Reagan, but I’m not certain).

But alas, that cannot always be helped, but now there’s light at the end of the tunnel. After a few frenetic weeks of - no, not frottage, as tempting as that would be to say – projects, assignments, school observations, and a whopping big social studies certification exam, which I’ve probably failed, the idiot that I am – I’ve now got a bit more free time to devote to more idle and frivolous pursuits. Such as this long-neglected blog.

Thus, over the next few weeks, leading up till Christmas, I’m going to ambitiously attempt to post at least once a week, instead of admonishing myself for being a lazy cretin. Yes, believe it when you see it, but I think I can manage it. Mainly because I have 3-4 posts that have been in the works for some time, and are anywhere from 75-90% completed – I just need to add on the gloss, the finishing touches. To whet your appetites, amongst the upcoming topics are

* a recap of what I learnt and discovered whilst studying for this ‘big exam’ – trust me, this is far more exciting than it sounds, and I guarantee that afterwards you’ll know loads of interesting, useless tidbits about American history, probably more than you ever cared to know.
* a trip down memory lane, where I dwell in nostalgia and recall a handful of experiences from my salacious past, sharing some recaps and tales of life in Nigeria, Ukraine and Latvia.
* a story about political incorrectness in extremis from Kyrgyzstan.
* at long last, my treatise on how football explains politics, how politics explains football, and how society and culture are somehow intermingled within both, inspired by a visit to a Keene soccer match. You await with bated breath, no doubt.
* my recent late-night visit to a fraternity party, where I recall nothing more than what my friends told me the following day.

Three guesses as to which of the above isn’t true (and the first two don’t count).

The denouement of this little ditty

As it’s Thanksgiving in a couple of days, I’d like to wish all my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll take this time to share a bland, meaningless tradition that I used to partake in that thankfully died a merciful death 3 years ago.

My friend Todd, who I’ve tragically failed to acknowledge as being one of the prime instigators in getting me to start this wretched blog (thanks pal!), and I had an interesting Thanksgiving experience in London way back in 1996 when we were studying abroad for the semester. It was his first Turkey Day away from home, and him being homesick and at a loss as to what to do, we figured there was no more appropriate way of celebrating than by going to that bastion of Americanness, McDonald’s. What a terrific idea it seemed at the time. Now, while these days I wouldn’t dream of stepping foot in that ghastly place (whose fragrances wafting in the night sky Grant once compared to a men’s locker room), back then I was a more regular visitor.

That ‘tradition’, for me anyway, seemed a one-off since my next Thanksgiving abroad wouldn’t come until 2002 when I was studying at Edinburgh. But sure enough, I saw fit to rekindle the rite and treated myself to a glorious Big Mac Meal, toasting my Coke to good old Ben Franklin, who tried in vain to get the majestic turkey classified as America’s national bird over 200 years ago. (It was a very close vote, but the turkey lost out to the bald eagle and only narrowly finished ahead of the magpie.)

From then on, whenever a McDonald’s was in the vicinity, in my maudlin state I visited it and looked fondly back on that foggy, rainy London day in 1996 when Todd and I scarfed down Big Macs together. There were a couple of gaps in the chronology, like in Nigeria, one of the last remaining locales on earth which has yet to be graced with a McDonald’s, where I had to settle for a Chinese buffet at a local hotel instead.

2005 was actually the year this tradition ended, and thus Lviv will go down as the location where I bade farewell to McDonald’s on Thanksgiving. I had every intention of keeping it alive and well, but the following year in San Sebastian this banal tradition came to its denouement when I was stricken with an awful case of gastroenteritis. As my dear grandmother would have said, “that’ll learn you!”

In 2007 in Riga I seriously considered revisiting my old haunt and reigniting the love affair, but thankfully for me, Michael and Bryony talked me out of it, and I instead enjoyed a Latvian version of fish and chips at one of our favourite local cafes, the very same place where many months later, a waitress I’d asked out on a date stood me up and then acted as if everything was hunky-dory the next time I saw her. But I shan’t get into that now.

And that’s that. Turkey Day at the Golden Arches is dead and buried, thank heavens, and for now it’s back to the proper way of celebrating, which for me isn’t very exciting: I won’t be eating turkey, I don’t like cranberry sauce, I loathe pumpkin pie, stuffing fails to tempt me…in my cantankerous ways, I just look forward to not having to shave, shower, get dressed and instead lie around all day in my own filth, recharging my batteries after a hectic past few weeks. I think I deserve it.

But fret not, dear readers, for I promise (gulp) to try my best to get out a missive a week until 2009 comes to a close. Feel free to hassle me if I fail to do so.

In the meantime, I recall Oscar Wilde one more time:

“It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure.”

Amen. (and I guess that wasn’t so brief after all – oops)

The Great Pumpkin Onslaught

Last weekend the town of Keene was apoplectic with hysteria: it was the 19th annual Pumpkin Fest, the annual highlight for this bustling metropolis of just over 20,000 souls. The locals had been talking about this event for weeks, getting themselves in a frenzy for the invasion of thousands upon thousands of pumpkins. Their goal is the same every year: to better the previous record – apparently a Guinness one - of pumpkins that pass through the town gates. And what a success it was! Some 29,068 pumpkins passed through Keene, many of them being smashed and shattered in the Saturday night revelry that followed the day’s events. Before the destruction occurred, Main Street was taken over by food and drink booths, kids in a costume parade, live entertainment and the crowning of Miss Pumpkin 2009. I’d love to say I witnessed all of this, but alas, I couldn’t. After one hour in the morning, and before the crowds had fully descended, I’d had enough and escaped the hustle and bustle for quieter confines. I honestly failed to see what the fuss was about. If this is all the locals have to get excited about…God help them.

Maybe some of the testimonials from the locals will convince you otherwise:

“I just think this exemplifies the New England spirit.”

“It’s a great event. It’s just the hometown spirit. I guess that’s a dying thing these days.”

“I’ve always loved it. I fell in love with the area when we visited for the festival.”

I’m not convinced. But then I’m a cynical old curmudgeon anyway.

Look at those whoppers

Keene before the carnage


It’s not exactly the United Nations here

I saw a black man on campus today. Not such a big deal if you live in, say, an area that is more than 99.5% white. But for Keene? A rarity.

I’ve recently been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about the university and the town. There are oh-so-many things (most of them are merely minor foibles that nevertheless perturb me), but I nailed it recently: the complete lack of ethnic diversity. This is something I’d always taken for granted in the past (western Ukraine was more cosmopolitan than this!), but I’ve honestly never felt such discomfort in a place as I have here. Being surrounded by white guys wearing backwards hats and girls in their pajamas and ugg boots is downright terrifying and unpleasant. I’ve clearly become even more of a grumpy old man than ever before, but I feel trapped inside a bubble. The worst part is, I’m willing to bet no one else cares, let alone thinks about this. I’m sorely tempted to ask students for their opinions, but am scared lest they think I’m some sort of bigot.

Keene in a nutshell

Some of my loyal readers asked for descriptions of Bishkek while I was there and I’m afraid I let you all down. I was lazy and let the photos (both here and on Facebook) speak for themselves. I can hardly describe Keene (let the Pumpkin Fest speak for it), but I now feel vindicated by having recently read Milan Kundera’s The Curtain:

‘Description: compassion for the ephemeral; salvaging the perishable.’

I find this so utterly apt. I’m not planning on being here any longer than I have to be. And I won’t be shedding too many tears when it comes time to say goodbye.

Maybe that’s why I felt so letdown by Pumpkin Fest (I say this tongue firmly planted in cheek). I have so little excitement here, and the everyday fails to excite me:

‘The everyday. It is not merely ennui, pointlessness, repetition, triviality (yes it is); it is beauty as well (where?); for instance, the magical charm of atmospheres (rotten pumpkins?), a thing everyone has felt in his own life: a strain of music heard faintly from the next apartment (all I can hear is thumping classic rock); the wind rattling the windowpane (mine doesn’t move); the monotonous voice of a professor that a lovesick schoolgirl hears without registering (I’m giving a lecture soon, I’ll try and keep it monotonous); these trivial circumstances stamp some personal event with an inimitable singularity that dates it and makes it unforgettable.’

I’m probably just in the wrong place to appreciate such aesthetic beauty.

Oddities and creepiness

1. Every day for the past month or so at 4.20pm there’s been an informal ‘pot protest’. A hundred or so of the town’s hippies and out-of-sorts gather in central square to light up while the police mill about looking disinterested. I’m not sure what the purpose of this ‘protest’ is. We’re so close to Vermont that in effect, smoking dope is more or less de-criminalised here. This occasionally makes the front page of the Keene Sentinel. I wish I were making this up.

2. The other day I noticed a group of 20 or so black-clad people standing rigidly and kneeling in what appeared to be a séance or ritual prayer. Upon first glance, they looked like Satan-worshippers or at least some sort of messianic cult. There were low murmurs and humming. I turned to see what they were facing and it was a Planned Parenthood clinic. In their hands were anti-abortion leaflets and a few held placards. I’m not passing judgement on them or anything, but they certainly didn’t look as though they came from any mainstream religion.

Yesterday I walked past Planned Parenthood, where a solitary woman was standing with leaflets. There was no one else in the vicinity, and I thought I’d try a little experiment (I’m that desperate for excitement that I had to resort to this). I walked up to the clinic, feigning interest and staring inquisitively at the entrance, a few feet from this woman. She approached me, handed me a flyer and said, “Abortion kills. Don’t go in there.”

I wish, I wish, I damn well wish I could have thought of some sort of riposte to that. But the best I could come up with was, ‘Don’t worry, I was just looking.’ I want to insert some sort of joke here but hardly know where to start.

What happened to that lovely New England autumn?

It has got quite cold here in a hurry. It’s only October but temperatures have recently been in the OC/32F range with occasional snow flurries. The bedroom in my flat doesn’t get heat and so it’s thus frosty in here already. This reminds me of my epic flat in Lviv, where the winter temperatures in January and February 2006 reached a bitingly cold -38C. I had no heat in the kitchen. One day I poured myself a glass of orange juice and set it on the counter. I then left it to perform my various morning ablutions before returning 20 minutes later. The top centimetre or so had frozen – not solid, mind, but it was icy enough. From that point on, I kept the fridge open to heat the kitchen. I may have to get a small fridge for my room here.

The natives are restless. And paranoid.

There seems to be a general paranoia sweeping the student body. Since early September, people have been panicking about swine flu and if you dare sneeze in public, everyone in the vicinity dives for cover. There are hand sanitizer dispensers every 50 feet and there is often a queue to use them. People avoid touching doors, instead preferring to nudge them open with their shoulders or elbows. The librarians wear rubber gloves (or as my father calls them, asshole gloves) and surgical masks. Okay, I made that last part up, but you get the idea.

But the paranoia goes well beyond mere swine flu. Everyone seems so on edge.

Today in the university library – a wretched place where the cacophony of students nattering to one another, chattering on their mobiles, farting and belching makes studying nearly impossible – serves as a particularly good example. I noticed a girl next to me was reading Cod by Mark Kurlansky, a book I read a few years ago. I was curious as to what she thought.

“Sorry to bother you, but what do you make of that book?”
“Um, I have a boyfriend.” (said valley-girl style, with rising intonation)

And for once in my life, I did actually have a snappy response to hit her back with! I was so proud of myself.

“Congratulations. I take it you don’t like it then.”

It’s not much, but it was the best I could do.

Not long after, a little ways away were two massively-built meatheads being quite disruptive and having a conversation that revolved around how much they could bench press (in the 335-350 pound range), how much protein and carbohydrates were in their energy drinks, how high their pain threshold was for injecting steroids into their backsides and the size of their…pecs. Anyway, just above their heads was a clock. I glanced over from time to time. Sure, they were annoying me, but like I was about to say anything. Finally,

“Hey man, you got a problem?”
“Uh, no. Just checking the time.”
[beefcake #1 looks over his shoulder]
“Oh, all alright then.”

Time for a rethink?

I had my first school observation yesterday. This term I have to spend a few hours a week observing in a high school before I start student teaching in January. It was quite an eye-opening, revelatory experience. One of the classes was a bit of a nightmare, with disruptive students talking back to the teacher, kids throwing things, teasing one another, not listening, sleeping on their desks, being disrespectful...general disobedience and insolence really. Just as I was thinking ‘what have I got myself into?’ one girl, the only seemingly serious student in the class, turned to me and said, ‘If you wanna teach high school, this is what you get. Are you sure you wanna do this?’

Uh, no.

Local Pillars of the Intellectual Community

I recently had an interesting conversation with my good friends Asif, Jeff and Yuhan regarding this very blog. They all seem to enjoy it and have much useful, constructive criticism to offer. One of the more perceptive comments – from Asif – regards my ‘orientalist’ tendencies and what he calls my ‘tolerant disdain’ for whatever subjects I happen to be banging on about. He was specifically referring to the way I talked about the Kyrgyz. I like this expression, tolerant disdain, and I do stand guilty as charged. As for me being orientalist…I can’t deny that, but it’s definitely more subconscious. I’m not going to say that I hope I haven’t offended anyone because I don’t care if I have. Damn, I’m ruthless.

But in the interests of fairness, I’m going to take this tolerant disdain that Asif thinks so highly of, and apply it in my discussions about life at this ‘university’ of mine. I’m going crazy here, having a terribly difficult time adjusting to college life once again. The problem is, at 33 I feel like quite an old man when surrounded by 18-21 year old whippersnappers. There’s no proper postgraduate programme here, so I definitely feel like an outsider. And although I’ve yet to learn a great deal in the classroom itself, I take heart from the old Oscar Wilde adage, which has always been one of my guiding principles in life: ‘It is well worth to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can ever be taught’. With that in mind, I’ve learned loads from my fellow classmates. All of the following I’ve overheard in passing these past couple of weeks:

That eating meat means no periods: ‘You know, I was a vegetarian for 4 years and then as soon as I started eating meat again, I didn’t get my period for a while.’

That college men are not nice: ‘I know he only got me drunk so he could sleep with me…’

That there is something seriously lacking in the New Hampshire education system. In class the other day:
Professor: ‘Who can tell me something about the Holocaust?’
Class: silence
Professor: ‘Does anyone know how many died in the Holocaust?’
Voices in class: ‘One million?’ ’50 million?’ ‘100,000?’
Professor: ‘Does anyone know the names of any of the concentration camps?’
Class: silence

And this college has a Centre for Holocaust Studies.

[I can’t even insert a witty comment here, this is just disturbing and tragic.]

That there is something seriously lacking in the New Hampshire education system, part II: In class the other day, playing a game in teams, where each member of the team had to go up to the chalkboard where there was a blank map of the 50 states. One at a time, relay-style, each team member had to fill in the name of a state. There were 3 teams. After each team had about 15 states filled in, people were stumped. They got the northeast, Texas, California, Florida and that’s about it. There was me, the nerd, filling out the rest. Before the time ran out, our team (or, I) had 34 of the states, the other 2 teams didn’t get above 20. (and yes, I would have been able to fill in all 50 if I’d had another minute. What can I say, I spend my free time looking at maps for fun.)

By the way, I’m doing a teaching certification course in secondary school social studies. That’s right readers: these are the future geography teachers of America! The motto of this tale? Don’t send your kids to school in New Hampshire.

That Sarah Palin’s daughter apparently attends Keene State. The other day in the student centre, where there are flags from various countries hanging from the ceiling, me being the geography nerd that I am, and also wanting to see what kind of reaction I would get, I asked two girls if they recognised a particular flag. I genuinely didn’t know which country it belonged to.
Me: ‘Hi girls, I know this is going to sound weird, but I was wondering whether you know which flag that is’, pointing to the flag.
Girl: ‘Geez, I don’t know, Africa?’

Let’s see if you know, because I had to look it up. Here’s the flag: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/flags/flagtemplate_wa.html

That clever, witty and somewhat subtle comments go unappreciated in the classroom. Or maybe I’m just not that funny.
Example number one: when discussing the use of rules in the classroom, it was decided that telling a student not to do something only leads them to doing it. For example, if you say to the students ‘No chewing gum’, then they’re more likely to chew gum. If you say, ‘don’t soil your trousers’, then they’ll more than likely soil their trousers. This is logical and makes sense. I then chimed in with, ‘sounds just like abstinence-only education in some parts of the US’. There were one or two chuckles in the classroom.
Professor: ‘I’m sorry, can you repeat that?’ I did. Professor: ‘I don’t see what relevance that has to this discussion’.

Example two:
Professor: ‘So, you must learn to use plenty of additional resources besides the textbook. The textbook should not solely be used to cover the material. Leave the covering of the material to cats.’
I burst out into riproaring laughter. The rest of the class was silent.

That only idiots like me are interested in public transportation in small towns like Keene: at the bus ticket office the other day, upon finding out that there’s no way out of this God-forsaken hellhole, the ticket agent said, ‘Dude, this is America! You gotta get yourself a car.’ Thanks lady.

That there are some main streets yet to be invaded by Starbucks. And that not everywhere in America features over-the-top, fake customer service. The other day at the Brewbaker Café, I was interested in a scone or a bagel. It was 3.30pm:
Me: ‘Have you got anymore scones or bagels?’
Girl: ‘Uh, this isn’t lunchtime, lunchtime was 3 hours ago, we’re not serving food anymore’. (there were decrepit, stale-looking muffins behind the counter)
Me: ‘Oh, sorry, I just haven’t eaten in a while. I’ll just have a coffee then’.
Girl: ‘This isn’t Starbucks you know’.
Me: ‘What, so I can’t have a coffee either?
Girl: ‘You can, you just can’t have any food’.
Me: ‘Fine, a small coffee then’. Which was lousy and lukewarm. I’m now boycotting this place. Surly bitch. I didn’t realise that Starbucks had a monopoly on selling food outside of regular mealtimes.

That there’s a massive campaign on to get people to travel outside of America. At the post office, there are signs everywhere advertising passports: ‘Apply for your passports here’ and ‘Get your US passport here’ and ‘Go somewhere with great public transportation and crap customer service, get your passport here’ and so on and so forth. There were two tellers. Three times each teller asked each customer whether they wanted to apply for a passport. I walked up to post a letter.
Teller: ‘Good morning, how are you today? Would you like a passport application?’
Me: ‘No thanks, I just want to post this letter.’
Teller: ‘Okay no problem’ (why should it be a problem?)
Me: humming nothing in particular
Teller: ‘you know you can hum all you want if you go to Europe. Would you like to apply for a passport?’
Me: ‘no, it’s okay, I’ve already got one’.
Teller: ‘oh, okay. Would you like to apply for another?’
Me: ‘No thanks, one is enough.’
Teller: ‘Okay. Can I get you anything else today? How about a passport application?’
Me: ‘No, it’s alright, thanks very much.’ I walk off.
Teller, shouting after me: ‘Wait, where are you going, don’t you want a passport application?’

That life in college is crime-ridden and dangerous. The weekly student newspaper posts a Campus Safety Report Log each week, rounding up the week’s most violent, heinous crimes. These are week one’s highlights:

31 August
11.41am: Keene Police Department requested for a Campus Safety Officer to meet him over on Ralston Street at the Hot Dog stand.
2 September
5.41am: Campus Safety received a call from a male student who wanted to report that someone urinated in his room.
3 September
10.54pm: caught subject urinating on lawn.
5 September
8.17pm: Girls called reporting a skunk in the parking lot. They were scared of getting sprayed.
6 September
12.33am: Student receiving harassing phone calls.
1.50am: Intoxicated subject in front of Randall Hall.
4.11am: Suspicious people hanging out around Randall Hall.
6.14am: Bitter, cynical postgraduate student more used to life in third world hellholes complaining outside student centre that he can't find anywhere to buy a kebab.

That was only the first week. The second featured such nuggets as ‘odor investigation’, ‘skateboarders making lots of noise outside the library’, ‘student is sick in the men’s bathroom’ and ‘female asked for someone to bring over a mouse trap to remove a mouse from the apartment’.

Does life get any more exciting than this?

That I am missing a lot by not going to fraternity parties: the following is a conversation I recently overheard between two girls in at the student centre. To my very best ability, I’ve tried to recreate it as accurately as possible (I’ve kept the actual names):
A: I was so drunk the other night, I can barely remember what happened.
B: Well, Luke and Anna were making out, they were totally drunk and then you started making out with Anna…
A: Oh yeah, that was like, totally weird. I was so drunk.
B: Yeah, so Luke and Anna were totally going at it and you just went over and started making out with Anna. Luke totally didn’t know what to do.
A: I was so drunk. I don’t think I even drank that much. I can’t believe I made out with Anna.
B: Girl, you were hilarious.
A: It was so much fun. We totally have to do that again.

Maybe I ought to start experiencing a bit more of college life outside the classroom.

Where the hell do I go from here?

Or, what have I got myself into?

After 7+ years of living abroad, I’m back in America. Small-town America. More specifically Keene, New Hampshire, a small college town of just over 20,000 people near Vermont. I’m already starting to regret this.

I won’t get into any clichés about culture shock, reverse culture shock or what-have-you, but there hasn’t definitely been some serious cultural ‘readjustment’ going on in my head and body.

The more immediate concern is, where do I take this blog from here? I’m flattered that people have enjoyed stories of my shenanigans in Central Asia, interspersed with anecdotes from similarly exotic locales, but surely I’m going to have a tough time bigging up Keene, New Hampshire, aren’t I? At the very least, this will definitely test all my creative powers. You see, I’m the type of person who identifies with ‘all things morbid and evil. I love the splendour of decay, the foul beauty of corruption’.* I don’t think I’m going to find much of that here.

Time for yet another arcane literary reference to justify my existence

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera speaks of graphomania: a mania for writing, or to have a public of unknown readers; isolation breeds it. It becomes an epidemic where there exists:

* an elevated level of general well-being, where people can devote time to useless activities
* a high degree of social atomization or general isolation
* the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life (for example, there are many more novels written in the UK and France than in Israel), though in this case I’ll substitute ‘person’ for ‘nation’

I think all three of these situations apply to me. What does that mean? Probably that there are no excuses for not writing a lot. I’ll have to really dig deep for material, however, so any and all suggestions are welcome. Please send along any interesting ideas or angles I could pursue.

First off, why am I here?

In a nutshell, in order to get my teaching certification in secondary social studies. The aim is to get this over and done with as painlessly as possible. My course ends on 9 May 2010 and I plan on having a one-way ticket to somewhere far from here departing on 10 May.

Okay, so I’m being a tad melodramatic. It’s not all that bad. Yet.

Cultural adjustment 101 – the things I’d forgotten about

After years of living in various 3rd world hellholes, there is much about America that takes some getting used to:

* the general orderliness and omnipresent rules and laws. Case in point: having to wait for the blasted green man to cross the road. My first day in Keene, whilst flat-hunting, I was ticked off by a policeman for jaywalking. Later, a car honked at me from some 200 metres away for not waiting to cross.
* at sporting events, the artificial noise and music pumped into the stadium to juice people up.
[in a somewhat related note, I’ve often wondered why in America the national anthem is played before domestic sporting events. This has long been a fascination of mine. I thought America was the only country where this happened, but I found it to be the same in Israel, just before a Beitar Jerusalem-Maccabi Haifa match. I can understand it being played in Israel, which faces a justifiable existential threat. But why here?** I should also add that Emma has alerted me to the fact that the national anthem is also played before [ice] hockey games in Russia, which ruins the thesis I’d been working on.]
* the lack of public transport outside of major cities. I’m completely isolated without a car in Keene, and I generally abhor driving.
* the language barrier. Seriously. Most of the time I find it harder to communicate here than places abroad. I’m not sure I can properly explain this, but it somewhat relates to my next point:
* the overly hospitable to the point of excessively annoying and obnoxious and overwhelmingly perfunctory customer service in restaurants. It starts with the greeting, which never fails to rile me up: ‘Hey, how you guys doing, my name is Ashley and I’ll be taking care of you this evening. What can I get you to drink?’ Why do they always say that they’ll ‘be taking care of us’? What are they, babysitters? It’s enough to make me miss the surly, insolent customer service characteristic in the former Soviet Union.
*the fact that you can’t buy individual pens and nor can you test the pens before buying them as you can just about everywhere else. My father points out that by this stage in my life I should know which pens I like, but I can never remember and I inevitably end up buying the wrong pens. This happened to me recently when I was shopping for stationary.

As for my classes…

So far, uh…it’s early days yet, I’ll give it time. The first week is never a good indication of how things stand. At least I hope that’s the case. But I’m not terribly encouraged by the early signs.

My first class, which deals with exploring teaching as a career and is intended for freshman (for non-Americans, that’s first-years) who aren’t sure whether they want to pursue teaching as a career, really led me to question what I was doing here. Why I have to take this is beyond me, but I have no choice. There are 24 students in the class: me, another boy, and 22 18-year old girls, all with nose studs, and all named either Katie or Rebecca. I quite like both names, so I hope this doesn’t taint my associations forever. For most men, this wouldn’t be a problem. For me, it was downright terrifying. Especially as I constantly got picked on by the professor as the old, wizened man of the classroom.

After the professor introduced himself by playing an agonizingly cringeworthy guessing game of ‘How old am I? How long have I been teaching? What do I teach? How often do my wife and I have sex?’ that lasted 15 minutes, the two teaching assistants, who are second-year students, introduced themselves as follows:
‘Hi, I’m Steph, I’m a sophomore, I’m on the dance team, yay!, I study blah-blah-blah…’
‘Hi, I’m Katie, I’m a sophomore, I’m a cheerleader, yay!, go Keene! I study blah-blah-blah, my boyfriend and I blah-blah-blah every night…’

We then engaged in inane group activities which reminded me way too much of teaching English activities with teenagers. I even got to work with the same type of irascible, churlish girls that have proven to be my bête noire in the past.

God help me.

[I thank my good pal Asif for recently sharing his fortune cookie with me. We decided that it will be my motto to guide me through these dark times at Keene State: ‘When you have no choice, mobilise the spirit of courage.”]

Bizarre flashbacks and unwelcome déjà vu that remind me of my age

It’s been a long time since I was an undergraduate, and I’d forgotten all sorts of other niggly little things. But I’m also not certain what’s new and what’s different. Hell, when I started university back in 1994, we barely had the internet on campus! We certainly didn’t have mobile phones if memory serves correctly (fellow Tuftonians, am I right here? Did anyone have a mobile? Can you verify this?)

Other observations from my first days:

* I must be the only person on campus not wearing jeans or shorts.
* I’m one of only a handful of males that doesn’t wear a backwards baseball cap.
* the usual, annoying endlessly dull conversations that consist of question: ‘Oh my God, you went to --------- high school? Did you know so-and-so?’ and answer: ‘oh my God, he’s like my boyfriend’s little brother!’
* Poster sales! With the same selection as 15 years ago, including all American college students’ favourites: Dave Matthews, Reservoir Dogs and Che Guevara. Doesn’t this shit ever change?
* Girls wearing pajamas to class. This will never change.

But fret not friends, there is hope

Most of my readers know my fondness and at times downright obsession with t-shirt slogans. I didn’t expect to see too many funny ones here, assuming that people would be a bit more conscious of the message they’re trying to get across. But I spotted a classic one the other day on the back of a girl’s shirt:

‘The front view is even better’

Maybe this place won’t be so bad after all.


* Sylvester Viereck
** Michael Billig, in Banal Nationalism, touches upon this theme

A fortnight of peregrinations in Uzbekistan

First, as always, one of my infamous and epic disclaimers

Central Asia, with Uzbekistan in particular, has long been on my list of places to see. No other region has arguably grabbed my imagination in such a way. From the moment when I first read Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game, I was instantly hooked. Tales of intrigue between the Russians and British in high mountain passes, stories of treachery and betrayal from various emirs, the trading routes of the old Silk Road, the exquisite and intricate faience of Islamic architecture, not to mention the structures themselves, the mythical connotations rendered forth by the mere utterance of the name Timur Lane…I had long built-up an image in my head of how splendid and wondrous the sites would be. It would be fair to say that I had very high expectations, which I firmly believe is always a dangerous thing. But then it can be awfully tricky suppressing such expectations, so what was I to do? Uzbekistan was one of the last great unknowns on my travel calendar.

The verdict? I’ll save that for the end

Nukus, capital of Karakalpakstan: utter desolation, Aral Sea tragedy and a fascinating art museum

That could have been my wife on the right

I’ve already discussed my experiences in Nukus, a grim, desolate place hundreds of miles from anywhere. The destruction of the Aral Sea in the 60s and 70s destroyed the republic, and very few people inhabit the region now. I was tempted to progress further towards the Aral Sea, to a town called Moynaq some 200 kilometres away, if only to stay in a hotel called Oybek, which the Lonely/Lying Planet describes thus:

‘There’s no electricity, no running water, and it looks like a giant poo volcano erupted in the shared bathroom. But the champagne brunch is just divine. Not really. Fortunately they keep the large rooms much cleaner than the bathroom.’

It did actually cross my mind to lie and say I really did stay there. But I didn’t. And I didn’t think such a fleabag hotel was reason enough to venture a long way out of my way.

Khiva: slave caravans, mud-walls and densely packed mosques, tombs, alleys and medressas

In some ways, Khiva reminded me of Tallinn: both come across as outdoor, museum-like fairy tale cities, where just about all of the sites are enclosed within the city walls. Outside of the fortifications, there’s not altogether much worth seeing. Khiva can be explored in a matter of hours, unless one pops into each and every little museum and medressa, which can pricily add up.

Had there been more tourists around, the ubiquitous souvenir stalls might have seemed oppressive and overly gauche. But the city was largely devoid of tourists, save for a French tour group, and most of the stallholders were too lethargic and apathetic to try and drum up much business for their tacky wares.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan’s holiest city: wanton cruelty, barbarity and a couple of beheadings

This was the highlight of my stay, though I was ill for a part of it. Still, I was eager to delve into the 1000+ years of history of a town centre that apparently hadn’t changed much, if at all, over the past 200 years. This was where I enjoyed that wonderful ‘plov’ meal from the crooked scrimshanker of a money-changer who tried to set me up with his daughter (one of a couple such attempts on my trip) and had a nice rubdown and trampling by an 18 year old boy at the public baths.

The sites here were stupendous and moving, especially in the fading light of dusk. Particularly memorable was the Mir-i-Arab Medressa, which tourists can’t enter, and the Ark, Bukhara’s oldest structure, 80% of which was destroyed by Soviet bombing raids in the 1920s. This was where, in 1842, two British officers caught up in the Great Game intrigue were beheaded. Colonel Charles Stoddart had arrived in 1838, and was immediately thrown into jail by the offended emir (a long story which I won’t get into here). He spent much of the next 4 years in torture chambers and dungeons and a bug pit full of various creepy-crawlies. Captain Arthur Connolly arrived in 1841 in a futile attempt to get Stoddart released. He too was made to languish in various cells before being executed along with his comrade. Of all the Great Game yarns, this remains one of the most entrancing and gripping.

Samarkand: jewel of the old Silk Road

We travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
(James Elroy Flecker, The Golden Journey to Samarkand)

Whenever I’ve thought of Central Asia and its glorious past, Samarkand has always been the first city to lodge in my head. Its very name conjures up some of the most epic and evocative images, sending frissons of excitement down my spine. I had no idea what to expect, though I had reserved my highest expectations for here.

The Registan in all its [Soviet-restored] glory

Its most famous site – and arguably the most famous and spectacular in all of Central Asia - is the Registan, a massive plaza boxed in by three of the world’s oldest and most-beautifully preserved medressas. To be fair, the Soviets renovated much of these edifices, so much so that many say that today they look nothing like they did centuries ago when Timur Lane made Samarkand the capital of the Mongol Empire in 1370. But it’s still quite a spectacle, majestic in its grandeur and redolent of a bygone era signifying the region’s greatness, affluence and power.

Tashkent: the start and finish

New friends in Tashkent (the kid in the middle in red really doesn't mean that)

I began and ended my journey in the capital, Tashkent, which in many ways was the most intriguing and thought-provoking of my destinations. Most travellers to Uzbekistan steer well-clear of Tashkent, using it merely as a base for a day or two whilst waiting for visas or flights out of the country. But as a self-professed lover of cities, I was thoroughly enchanted and mesmerised by some of the things I saw and experienced here.

Tashkent was, in some respects, an eerie, surreal place. I encountered very few tourists and nowhere else is the idea of Uzbekistan being a ‘police state’ made more manifest than here. The city was swarming with policemen and some lovely tree-lined streets were completely deserted of regular people. Amazingly, I couldn’t get over how friendly all the policemen were; though I’d read and heard tales of police harassment and brutality, every policeman I met was courteous, pleasant and inquisitive in a non-threatening manner. And none even so much as hinted at wanting a bribe.

Along with the anodyne Contemporary Art Museum, which I popped into for little other reason than to get a respite from the oppressive heat, I visited two others: the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan and the Amir Temur (or, Timur Lane) Museum, dedicated of course to that bloodthirsty tyrant - but then, who wasn’t back in those days? - of a former Mongol leader, long considered an Uzbek national hero and the de facto father of the country.

Amongst the plethora of odes and tributes glorifying the great man was this gem from Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov:

If somebody wants to understand who the Uzbeks are, if somebody wants to comprehend all the power, might, justice and unlimited abilities of the Uzbek people, their contribution to the global development, their belief in future, he should recall the image of Amir Temur.

Though I don’t want to delve into the frasmotic flummeries – for they are all flummeries in the greater context anyway – of Uzbek politics, a brief word on Karimov, Uzbekistan’s president since its independence in 1991. Most call him a third-rate, crack-pot dictator who stifles the opposition, silences dissent by any means necessary and boils his opponents to death. Whatever one says about him, there’s little doubt that he has an iron grip on the country – thanks to a few rigged elections - and for the foreseeable future he’ll be running the show. But as far as brutal, authoritarian present-day dictators go, he has to be up there in the top 10.

Post September 11, Uzbekistan suddenly became a crucial hotspot in the ‘war on terror’, and American and British aid and forces – along with an airbase - poured into the country. This gave Karimov even more leverage in his attempts to stamp out any dissenting voices, for any slight signs of insurrection from Islamic political parties were often conveniently linked to Al Qaeda and he more or less had free license to crack down on anyone deemed a threat. (For an excellent account, read Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand, which goes into far more detail than I’m at liberty to go into here.)

Now, I’m no expert pollster nor am I a psephologist, but in a sample size of about 25-30 Uzbeks, in a rudimentary poll I found Karimov to have an approval rating of exactly 0%. Around 10 people abstained from answering, but I’m willing to bet none of them would have changed the equation.

[For some reason, the words of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe used to describe his compatriots kept going through my head and might be applicable here: ‘They are seemingly nothing but a region of incorruptible and unpatriotic citizens drenched in the crucible of barbarism and incompetence.’]

Anyhow, the History Museum featured all sorts of paeans to Karimov, with a handful of patriotic quotations mixed in with photos of him with various world leaders. Amongst the more indelible were images from September 11 next to a letter from Rudy Giuliani praising Karimov for his role and support in the war on terror along with a gift of a signed photo of the Twin Towers. Next to this display was a dubious array of images of alleged ‘terrorist’ bombings in Uzbekistan over the past few years. I found this all quite troubling, to say the least.

One grim display featured some bandannas with this amusing caption:
‘Terrorist’s forehead fillets taken off from terrorists’ heads’. Not literally, thank goodness.

But in an attempt to find some further humour, or at least irony, in what I saw, this further quotation sums it up nicely. This is what Karimov had to say regarding the brutality and totalitarianism of the Soviet Union:

Socialist transformation lead to the creation of the totalitarian state, coercive nationalization of the economy, elimination of political pluralism and greatly damaged national originality.

And in the section dedicated to the might and prestige of Uzbek science, which featured photos of the future of Uzbek energy, from wind-power generators to hydroelectric plants to clean coal stations, was a solar power plant, along with the caption: ‘big sunny oven’.

You really can’t fault the technological prowess and bravado of Uzbek scientists.

But lest we forget…

The most moving site had to have been the Crying Mother Monument featuring the ever-present eternal flame that forms a part of so many war memorials in the former Soviet Union. Along either side of the statue were corridors with the names of the 400,000 Uzbek soldiers killed during World War II. Samarkand had an identical monument, but this type of thing never fails to move me. Whether Uzbekistan is or was a ‘mighty’ nation, and no matter the present state of its politics, it’s difficult to forget the sacrifice that some of the more forgotten parts of the world have made. Just to put things in perspective, Britain lost some 450,000 men in the war and America 420,000, so the Uzbek contribution, in manpower lost anyway, is equally tragic.

Wrap-up Part I: the negative, pettifogging bits:

* It was too damn hot; do not go to Uzbekistan in July and August – temperatures got as high as 44C/111F. The primary reason there weren’t so many tourists? The heat. This time of year, apparently, has the fewest tourists and I soon saw why.
* The food, surprisingly, was downright lousy and the beer execrable. In Uzbekistan, brewing beer is definitely a science and not an art. Uzbek plov is supposedly legendary, but I gave up after 3 attempts. Not only that, but no matter where I ate, whether touristy or well off the beaten path, I had constant gut rot. It was so bad and unpleasant, in fact, that even now, some 2 weeks after my trip, I’m still suffering from a dodgy tummy.
* Although some of the people were pleasant - mainly teenagers, who were exceptionally friendly and chirpy – most were charlatans and crooks out for my money. What little Russian I know saved me a bundle of money, but people almost always tried to take advantage of me wherever I went. I have numerous examples but will withhold them in an attempt to suppress the more negative memories.
* Transport: cramped, shared taxis and flying saunas are not fun. (in this case, I am perfectly happy to ignore one of my guiding maxims in life: ‘Travel for the movement only, not the conclusion; that way you will be a part of the journey and not a victim of it’ - Owen Sheers. Some of the movements on this journey almost killed me.)

How’s this for a backhanded compliment?

I’ll take a compliment any way I can get it, so this will suffice. In most hotels I stayed, upon producing my American passport and trying my best to make the necessary arrangements in Russian, I was often met with perplexed stares and, in English, ‘you speak so good Russian for an American!’ This is not an indication of my language ability, more the lack thereof of the Americans they’ve encountered. Of this I’m certain. But often in my travels, I find Americans getting short strift. I didn’t meet too many travellers, but the few I met were French and British. None of them spoke a word of Russian.

And now for the final word

Did I have a good time? I did indeed. I’d been dying to visit Uzbekistan for as long as I can remember, so I’m definitely glad to have gone. But it was a tough trip too, and certainly far from relaxing. In the words of Laurens Van Der Post in his Journey Into Russia, I find one of his sentiments that resonates loud and clear in my own head:

One of my greatest defects as a traveller is that I am not sufficiently moved by ruins and ancient monuments. I find the buildings of the past seen out of context with the age and civilization which produced them strangely unreal, as if they do not conform but even tend to contradict the things which gave them being and life in imagination.

Any damning comments about the glories of Uzbekistan are no fault of the country or its people: it’s all down to me. A few years ago, when visiting the Alhambra in Granada, I was utterly uninspired and found it strangely unmoving. That was a site that I had long been eager to see. And suddenly, fast forward a few years later, and I was strangely unmoved by much of Uzbek’s faded former ruins and relics. Seen out of context, I couldn’t get a feel at all for what these places were really like centuries ago. I wanted to live and breathe the past, I wanted the architecture to hit me, I wanted the old images of bustling, frenetic marketplaces to take over my imagination. But nothing. I felt empty about it all, like I was going through the motions, ticking off boxes, barely understanding what I was taking photos of at times.

Let me offer up a whopping contradiction and say this: I feel that to truly appreciate a place like Uzbekistan, more than many other destinations in the world, one really has to know a fair bit about its history. Saying that, I realise that it may sound like I’m grasping at straws to describe a place that doesn’t have much going for it. Far from it: even without a knowledge of the past, Uzbekistan is a marvelous, exceptional, stunning place. It can well and truly be appreciated without any knowledge of its history. My problem is that I felt like I knew so much about its past, built up some massive expectations and was then inevitably disappointed because I failed to fully comprehend and appreciate what I was seeing.

Perhaps in my senescent state I’ve become bitter and cynical about the things I see. Perhaps I’ve forgotten how to appreciate the past. Or perhaps I expect too much out of the past. I really don’t know. But by all means, I highly recommend Uzbekistan. Just don’t get into a taxi with a maniacal, sex-crazed 22 year-old on heat; unless of course you’re into that sort of thing.

The Kazakh steppe: 14 hours of excitement

Emma and I in Almaty: insert your own caption