Winter

The weather is colder now -- summer turned into winter in the course of a week, so fast that the trees still got green leaves on them. It's not a Swedish winter by any means (more like Swedish autumn) but by the Dushanbian's complaining you'd think they were talking about Siberia.

The power will be out in the whole country for the next few days. Something about another power plant being opened. Most of the electricity in Tajikistan comes from a hydro-electrical power plant, and now they are getting two of them. But they still have power shortages and during winter, electricity is scarce. According to rumours, the state has enough electricity to supply the whole republic, but instead they cut it off and sell it to nearby countries.

The other day my teacher took me to the Fortress of Hissor, about an hour from Dushanbe. It was very interesting, and I took some pictures but nothing that I can be bothered to upload at the moment. There was a guide there that gave some general information about the historical significance of the fortress, but Muallima always reprehended him: 'Stop using Russian words, speak Tajiki!'. Alas, they always use too much Russian words: uzhun, abed, svet, svetafor, plitka, sir, lamp etc etc ad absurdum. I've noticed the the Tajik of some is really poor, when they speak in Tajik it´s like they are trying to speak to me in a foreign tongue and ca 50 % of the words are still Russian, and some have even said that they wished they could as good Tajik as I do.
In the vicinity of the fortress, there's some kind of big fish Sufi leader buried, so we paid him a visit. Muallima went inside and a mulla there started to pray, the fun thing was that a part of a prayer went like this 'And may all of our family members be healthy and may the women never go unveiled'. (Muallima doesn't wear a veil). She paid that jerk 5 Somonis. (It's alot.)

TV Update: Talk shows are interesting. They are like contests where the one who can quote most poetry wins. And everyone drops cliches like crazy. Once, it was about the Tajiki language and a professor said: 'Yes, and even the Tajiki spoken on TV is bad.' The two talk show hosts turned to him and said: We hope we haven't made you tired with our bad Tajiki.

Music videos are still boring.

News in English: I watched it with Muallima;
What are they saying?
I don't know.
I thought you knew English.
I do, but this isn't English.

There is also news in Arabic, hilarious.

Marshrutka and bus update:
I now understand what they say, most of the time. The dialect here in the south is strange, short u becomes ö. Not long like in the northern part of the country, like in röz (day) but shorter, eg. Daro kösho! (Open the door!). Sometimes on the bus, if you show them your card, they get a little bit angry because they were expecting money.
I like the Tajik way of talking to strangers, for men it's 'aka' (older brother) and for women 'apa' (older sister). It can also be used for waiters/waitresses. You can also add 'jon' (dear) to make it more loving. So for instance, if your on the bus and an older man comes on you can say 'Akajon, shined' (literally, My dear older brother, please sit here). Funny thing is, while they are seating themselves they constantly repeat 'shin shin shin´ (no, no, no, you sit).

Luckily, they aren't as ardent as the Persians in their ta'arof... Strange thing is, now most people now speak Tajiki to me, and of course it makes me very glad. (I don't know why all of a sudden everyone does it, but it sure is fun.)

Once on the bus the ticket-guy that was older than me called me aka...according to Muallima, it's usually not the custom to call people your age or younger 'aka'. Still, it's nice to live in a world where everyone is your older brother or sister, and for Tajiks it really is like that, the other day F and I were looking for a house and asked for directions from an old woman, who happily gave us them and then invited us for a cup, or rather, piyola, of tea at her house. Of course, cities do something to people so it's not so prevalent here as it is in the villages.