Uzbekistan
 

So, does anyone here have any experience or know anything useful about Uzbekistan? I'm going there in a few days for work on an aid project and I'll be gone a month. I've done my own research, but I'm more interested to hear what others have to say.

sapienza

Nothing to offer, but Wow! That's heavy-duty! Good luck!

1. Speaking Russian will not endear you to the locals. Avoid it if you can.

2. The money's worthless. Take cigarettes, cheap Bic lighters, and ballpoint pens to use as "baksheesh". Everybody likes those.

3. You know those anti-bacterial moist towelettes that mommies use to clean the kids' hands in restaurants? Take a bunch of those, too. And use them. You'll be glad you did.

4. Westerners are occasionally the targets of hostility by some of the more fervent (and poor) Islam-embracing natives. Just keep your head on a swivel. Stick to Tashkent and you shouldn't have a problem.

5. Pepto-Bismol.

What a great opportunity! Good luck, and have a safe trip. We expect a full report when you get back!

Hay, wow, Hubris-Boy! Thanks for the info!

May I ask what you were doing in Uzbekistan, and how long you were there? I'm going to pretty much be in Tashkent the whole time.

sapienza

The guy has got to be a mercenary. He knows Russian...and he's in the Reserves. And he's apparently a HUGE fan of wall-to-wall counseling. ;)

Not long... couple of weeks back in '93. Just lookin' around, you know? Part of a longer excursion through the smoldering remains of the former Soviet Union.

Oh, by the way...

6. Learn to like lamb. You'll probably be eating a lot of it.

7. Take toilet paper. Local varieties are more like fine-grit sandpaper than anything we're used to... and that's when they're available at all. (Usually only in places frequented by ethnic Russians.) Local customs in this regard are appalling, and do not bear consideration.

If only someone just made a porto-bidet. Hehe :)

Interesting about point #1. I speak a bit of Russian (3 years college edu-muh-cation), but I think now I may hide that fact when first meeting folks. :)

sapienza

http://www.cyberspace-creations.com/...rrest-2-sm.jpg

Phone Home

[quote]Originally posted by sapienza
[b]Interesting about point #1. I speak a bit of Russian (3 years college edu-muh-cation), but I think now I may hide that fact when first meeting folks.

<span lang="RU">Хорошая
мысль, по
моему мнению.
Но, это почти
десяти лет до
я был в
Узбекистане.
Может быть,
люди сегодня
не так же
чувствительно
об этом.
</span>

Good thought, in my opinion. But, it has been almost ten years since they were in Uzbekistan. It could be that people today are not so sensitive about it.

for those of us who speak no Russian. :confused:

Sapienza,

The State Department's travel website might help you as well. Also, here are the State Department's background notes on the country. And although I've never been there, it might not be a bad idea registering with the US embassy in Tashkent when you get there.

Have safe travels, take lots of pictures, and let us know when you return!

Close, but no cigar. ;)
It should say "I was". "They were" would be "<span lang="RU">они были</span>", not "<span lang="RU">я был</span>".
Shame on your <span lang="RU">переводчик</span> for making such a simple mistake!

mea culpa

my translator said "it was" and I misinterpreted from the context "they were" instead of the more accurate "i was" :o

Bringing a thread back to life, even if only temporarily ...

Got back from my month and a week from Uzbekistan last week, and while jet lag disappeared fairly quickly, my stomach still hasn't really adjusted to the concept of non-fat-slathered food.

Overall quick impressions of the place were that the people were really nice, the food was really bad, and that the whole place is just going to fall apart in about 10 years or so.

The people were great. No anti-American sentiment the whole time I was there. I really didn't get outside of Tashkent, the capital, much at all, unfortunately. A trip to Samarkand and a drunken weekend at a dacha up near Charvak reservoir were about it. Folks were eager to meet new people and those that new it couldn't wait to try out their English.

The food was ... well, not my style, shall we say. For those of you not in the know, the cooking style is heavy on the fat.

The national food is called Plov (it's like rice pilaf, I'm sure you can see how the words are related ... pilaf, plaf, plav, plov). It's a rice dish mixed in with various odd vegetables. The place that I ate it at a few times mixed in horse meat, mostly, and had pickled tomatoes and mushrooms on the side for flavor. The entire dish of rice was floating in grease, which guaranteed a quick exit from your body. On top was a large (about 1.5 inches x 4 inches) hunk of fat -- basically that was your dessert. To wash it all down it came with a large cup of warm goat's yoghurt.

Folks prepareed shishkabobs at the dacha we went to, and they consisted of alternating chunks of cow liver and cubed pork fat.

The liver I could handle -- the spices on it were excellent. The pork fat had a tendency to go flying over my shoulder into the woods beyond, though. Whoops!

I managed to get a prescription (under the advice of a co-worker) for Cipro before I left, and it saved me. Power of pepto bismol times 100! There were multiple stretches of days where I was so sick I ate nothing, and when I didn't take my cipro stuff still wanted to come out the other end. I figured my stomach was digesting itself.

In the last few days, co-workers and I started getting most of our nutrients from Beer. The beer we favored was from Kazakhstan, and quite good.

The whole process of acclimatizing to the food was interesting. For the first two weeks my stomach protested about how greasy everything was. For the next two weeks my stomach said "Okay, it's greasy and fatty but I'll let you put some in me. No promises as to which end it'll come out of, though!" And then my stomach started -- *started* -- to say "okay, fine, if that's what you'll eat, I'll cooperate."

Everyone I talked to told me it took around 2 to 3 months to get used to the food. I came back home at the *worst* possible time, I guess -- halfway from each point.

I'm still having a hard time getting used to the food here in the states. It's hard to say, but my stomach is complaining that it's not greasy enough. In the Frankfurt airport on the way back I grabbed some McDonald's -- a food I usually shun for being greasy and nasty -- and it sat in my stomach like a rock. No grease to wash it down! So hopefully I'll be back to eating normally in a week or so. :)

As you can tell, the food made a big impression on me. I can't help it, I just always assumed one of the best "benefits" of third world countries was that they had great food. I grew up for 3 years in Saudi Arabia and my family travelled all around the middle east (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, UAE, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain). My dad spoke fluent Arabic so we'd always go down to the shabby parts of town for bartering bargains, but also to eat the local food. I was hoping for more of the same. Que sera sera!

Anyways, the last point I want to make is that the country is really at a precarious point right now. It's not a first world country, and it's not a third world. It's one of those rare ones that you can honestly call second-world.

But it's trying -- it's trying so hard! -- to climb up and pretend it's a first world nation so that it can compete on the level of East Europe and Southeast Asia and become a world economy.

I just don't see it happening, though. The infrastructure is crumbling. Streets have huge potholes and are washing away at points. Apartment blocks aren't maintained and loook like they'll collapse at any moment. Electric wiring hangs bare above the street.

In short, the whole country looks like it's held together with duct tape. Uzbekistan is the country that has MASTERED jury-rigging.

And it's a real shame, because unless Uzbekistan starts working on some of the core problems the country is facing (unemployment, inflation, infrastructure), all the shine and polish that stuff like the project I was working on (computerization of water management resources -- trust me, they have FAR more pressing water needs right now than this ...) is going to do nothing and in 10 years they're going to find themselves sliding down a slope towards true third-worldness and back into the dark ages, really.

sapienza

Wow. Thanks for the writeup... it sounds like an amazing experience.

I am awed by folks like yourself and HB and P.J. O'Rourke and Christiane Amanpour and Ted Rall and anyone else who will go off into the more foreign lands.

Are they mostly Muslims there? Do they have free markets?

So how was the food?

:)

The country is primarily Muslim, yeah. Figures I've seen say that it's close to 90+%. Most of the Uzbeks I talked to were Muslim as well.

BUT ... not Muslim like we usually think here in the states. In fact, I think you could easily describe most of them (at least in the city) as Jack Muslims (like Jack Mormons). I've never seen shorter skirts than I saw in Tashkent. They drink like it's going out of style. Pork wasn't a big taboo, or at least didn't seem like it. I also saw very few women covered up. Perhaps two while I was there.

In the country, I imagine they are more strictly muslim, but it 's hard for me to say.

The country likes to brag that it is open to diverse religions, and that there are Christians and Buddhists and Muslims and Orthodox Russians all living there in harmony, when in fact the truth is that all religions aren't equally free, they're just equally repressed. The government seems to operate with religions in the manner of "don't do anything stupid, keep a low profile, and no matter WHAT, do NOT undermine our authority or you'll suddenly find yourself illegal."

In fact, Tashkent had a rash of car bombings in 1998 that nearly killed the president. These bombings were blamed on Muslim extremists from Tadjikistan who were trying to bring back a muslim state, and that led to a great crackdown on islam. Today, prayer call is not allowed in public. People can go to mosques to pray, but you don't hear it being yelled over loudspeakers.

Also regarding Tadjk rebels, that has led to a few interesting biases. I'm a Unix guy, so you can imagine basically what I look like. Hair in a short ponytail, beard. At one point I was told that I should shave my beard because "only Tadjik rebels wear beards." I did get my fair share of odd looks while walking through the city. We took the Lonely Planet guide book with us when we went, and it actually said in there that seatbelts are frowned upon and people suspect you of being a Tadjik rebel for that, too.

Which is a shame, because if there's ever a city whose driving style would warrant seatbelts, it's Tashkent.

Regarding the free market, their markets are ... well, *mostly* free. Sorta free. Kinda, in a way.

They claim to have free markets. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking. People set up kiosks -- or just card tables -- every on the streets to sell things. Beer, cigarettes, books, tape players, casettes, food, super glue. Pretty much anything you might need.

Business can be owned by private owners, but the government is really not very kind on them. Through taxation and other pressure it actually becomes less hassle for a business owner to register 5 or 6 businesses with the governemnt than just one. Which in turn leads the government to turn around to foreign investors and say "look at how many businesses were started here this year!" and give a number that's inflated by 400+%.

The reason people own multiple businesses is because they are not allowed to have more than [it's a number I forget, but very low, so I think my next number will be a good estimate] 10$ of the national current (the sum, current exchange rate 1500:1$) on hand at the end of a business day. Everything else must be banked.

So a business owner will instead use the other businesses as a way to launder their own money. Do a 2 or 3 day transaction of exchanging cash with yourself and you can keep the extra money. It's rather confusing and it was explained to me while I was somewhat intoxicated, so I don't really fully understand. But the gist is that the government isn't really nice to business owners. It tolerates them.

Regarding foreign investment, the Uzbeks have shot themselves in the foot. A few years ago they were so demanding of "tribute" and bribes and they made life so hard for companies that about 90% of the foreign companies investing in the country pulled out.

I talked to a guy who was working in Kazakhstan at the time and he told me that on one flight he was on that was landing in Tashkent, there were about 30 comptrollers for international companies that were flying in specifically to close up their Uzbek operations and pull out all funding and money.

Nowadays, the only big companies there are Nestle, a tobacco comp I have forgotten, Daewoo and ... well, not many others.

Daewoo has invested the most in the country and there is a huge auto manufacturing plant in ... forgot the town name ..., but due to the deal Uzbekistan forced them to sign, none of the cars Daewoo makes in Uzbekistan can be sold outside of Uzbekistan! It's a very limited market and Daewoo will profit in the short term but probably end up pulling out soon enough, too.

In other sectors, many things are still not privatized. Farms, mining, etc. These are still state run.

So, it's sort of a free market. People can buy things, and availability isn't bad at all. No lines, no empty shelves. The problem is most folks earn about 30$ a month and can't entirely afford to buy many extra goodies.

sapienza

I hate you, dhamsaic.

:)

sapienza

Hey! Welcome back! Glad to hear that you not only survived, but thrived!

Didja bring back any good pictures? Why not post the best ones in IotD... or somewhere else. (Photoshop Sapienza guzzling Cipro!)

You Rock
 

Wow! What a great experience. Did the local yogurt aid digestion or was it a problem in itself? Very cool. I second Hubris... pictures man.

My americanized stomach recoils in horror of drinking goat-milk yogurt as a dinner chaser.
Was their any fast food companies from the great satan present?.
I thought companies like McDonalds would at least try to gain a share in their market.