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Sunday, October 19, 2025

Using My Russian Skills

A decade ago, I started the long and difficult process of learning Russian.  We were living in Dushanbe the first time, and had already lived in Azerbaijan (where a lot of Russian is spoken) for the previous two years.  Brandon had recommended that I learn Russian, but I was resistant.  Life was busy, I was lazy, and learning Russian didn't sound like it would be any kind of enjoyable (spoiler alert: it wasn't).

But when we moved to Dushanbe, I finally got a tutor for the kids's school and reluctantly attended the three times a week hour-long sessions.  I spend three years learning Russian in Dushanbe and continued in Tashkent.  After three years more in Tashkent, I declared myself workably functional in Russian, and quit to spend more time painting.

When we were bidding on posts after Tashkent, we originally thought to get out of the region, as two posts in Central Asia is enough for most people.  But when we started looking around at other places, I realized that moving somewhere else meant that I was going to have to learn yet another language, starting again from scratch.  

After spending six years making it to functionally workable Russian, it was awfully nice to be able to get around all by myself and get stuff done without having to panic, ask for help, or resort to my phone for translation help.  I could read all the labels at the grocery store.  When someone asked me a question, I could not only understand what they were saying, I could also answer back (even if it wasn't gramatically correct, it was understandable).  I could hold a conversation, even if it was basic.  All of those skills make living in a foreign country a lot more doable.  You aren't constrained by your lack of language ability, and so you're not restricted to activities that limit your language interactions.  It's very freeing.

So instead we bid on Astana.  Astana, the second coldest capital in the world, was always on my anywhere-but-there-list.  However, when push came to shove, it turned out that my desire to avoid living in a country where I couldn't speak the language was greater than my desire to avoid living in a place that is below freezing for a third of the year.  

And after we were done with Astana, it made sense to just keep going with the whole Russian-speaking theme, so we bid on Dushanbe.  Because if you've done Tajikistan once, you can do it again - especially when they're paying you a whole lot of money to do it again.

Having done Dushanbe once with no Russian (gradually transitioning to very rudimentary Russian) and now doing Dushanbe with workable Russian, I must say that it's a whole lot easier to get things done when you can speak Russian, even if it is with incorrect cases and miming to fill in the blanks.  

When I got an orthodontist recommendation from a friend who has lived here for almost a decade, I didn't have to ask if he spoke English.  And when I went to the first appointment and he didn't speak English, I was able to have a functional conversation about orthodontic treatment, x-rays, and timelines all in Russian.

When we had to get x-rays at another clinic, I was able to get registered, pay for (thank heaven now for all of those painful drills with numbers), and follow the instructions at the dental clinic.  

I borrowed my friend's driver - who only speaks Russian and Tajik - this week to go and buy plants.  I was able to have conversations about the costs of plants, borrowing money, repotting plants, whether or not prices were reasonable, and what kind of plants I was looking for.

When I went to another plant shop, I was able to conduct all of my business talking about plants, choosing plants, discussing discounts, where my car was parked, and having to return to pay more money because I didn't have enough (it turns out that houseplants here are very expensive) in Russian - and I didn't even get flustered.  

We've hired a gardener to turn our clay-soil weed patch into grass, and he also speaks only Russian.  We've had lots of conversations about various things he has needed to get, how much it costs, when he'll be back, how to take care of the newly planted grass seed, and various other things around the yard.

It has been incredibly helpful to be able to speak Russian.  I will never sound amazing, and the finer points of what everyone is saying will probably always be lost to me, but my language skills let me get the job done.  And being able to get the job done has made my life here a lot easier, which is a nice thing to have when you're living in Dushanbe.

Barricade Runner

This week Vladimir Putin came to town.  He comes to Dushanbe from time to time, but according to Brandon, there are various levels of visits with various levels of protocol.  The visit this time was a state visit, which means that there is a lot of fuss (and a whole lot of flowers, judging by the media photos).  

He and President Rahmon went and saw a lot of stuff - factories, parks, government buildings - and they even dropped by the Russian school that is located next to our neighborhood.  I got to watch a little media clip about his visit, which included a long section about the school and how all the kids there are evidently quite excited about learning Russian.  My favorite part of the clip was when the camera panned over to the embassy (the next-door neighbor of the Yuri Gagarin Russian school), and the newscaster excitedly told his audience that they also speak Russian at the U.S. Embassy.  See - even the Americans want to speak Russian! 

Which, to be fair, is at least true for these Americans associated with the U.S. Embassy, as we're paying teachers a lot of money to teach all six of our kids three times a week.  So he's not wrong.  

All of these visits have caused complete chaos throughout the city for the past few days.  Because every time the whole entourage goes anywhere, the roads get shut down.  And they're not shut down for just a few minutes - they're often shut down for over an hour so that a few cars can spend a few minutes driving down them without having to be bothered by the cars and traffic caused peons driving on the road.  Schools have been closed, bazaars have been shut down, and half the employees at the embassy have been teleworking because they can't get in to work.  

The schedule for road shut downs might possibly be announced in advance, but if they are, nobody has been telling us.  Since Putin showed up on Thursday, our community chat has mainly consisted of people reporting the locations of closed roads.  These reports are often accompanied by a picture of stopped traffic, as the exact location of roads that are currently closed is unfortunately only known by getting stuck in the closure.  

Our family has been able to avoid all of these road closures because: 1. the kids are homeschooled and 2. Brandon walks to work.  A hermit lifestyle can be useful sometimes.  

On Friday morning, however, I had an orthodontist appointment for the kids.  It probably wasn't the wisest plan to schedule the appointment when I knew that roads would be shut down, but I found alternate routes just in case I ran into a road closure.  However, luck was on my side, and the road was not only open, but quite clear Friday morning.  The consult went well (according to the orthodontist, Joseph's mouth will be a 'complicated case'), and I was happy to find someone who could get to work on both Joseph and Edwin.  

During the consult, the orthodontist informed me that the boys both needed x-rays, which were not availabe at his clinic.  However, they gave me a referral card with a map, and told me that I could just walk in to the other clinic and get them done that day.  I looked at the map, noted that the clinic was much closer to the excitement than the orthodontist, and decided to gamble.

This time, however, I lost.  We made it to within a block of the clinic before coming a complete standstill.  Not one to give up with my goal in sight, I was able to make it through three lanes of traffic (Tajik drivers are much nicer than Kazakh ones), pull a u-turn, and park on a side street so that we could just walk to the clinic.  Which was, sadly, closed.

The kids and I hiked back to the car, hopped in, and then couldn't go anywhere.  Now both sides of the roads were closed and we were going to have to just wait until it opened up again - whenever that would be.  I turned off the car, opened the windows, and settled in for the long wait.  After about fifteen minutes, one of the drivers in front of me started making motions for me to back up.  He was quite insistent about it, so I started backing up, thinking that he needed to back up himself.  

After I had backed up, he started motioning for me to pull around all the other cars waiting to be released from road-closure purgatory.  Mystified and unsure, I pulled around the cars, but stopped at the truck that was blocking the road.  My Tajik friend motioned wildly - go around the truck he seemed to be saying.

So I went around the truck and onto the road, where there was a policeman stopping traffic.  I stopped when I saw him, but then he started waving at me.  But it wasn't to stop - it was to go.  Unsure why my diplomatic status entitled me to drive down a blocked road when everyone else had to wait, I hesitated.  "Go! Go!" he shouted at me in Russian, and so I went.  Red plates for the win.  I had no desire to see how much longer we had to wait, and a desire for equality rarely persists when you get the better end of inequality.  

Yesterday, we took the kids to the pool.  The current temperatures in Dushanbe are about on par with a warm July in Astana, so we're enjoying our extended summer immensely while chortling about the current sub-freezing temperatures that those in Astana are suffering.   It was a lovely day - warm, sunny, and cloudless, with the sky a deep blue.  The kids enjoyed the novelty of swimming in October - this exact same weekend a year ago saw Sophia pulling on snow pants to go walk a dog - and after about an hour we headed home.

Normally, we just walk to the embassy, as it's just about as quick to walk as to drive (the traffic patterns necessitate driving about three times the actual distance because we can't turn left), but not wanting to tromp down the road in wet swimsuits following our swim, we just drove.  Happy from having had a nice swim, everyone piled into the car, and I started pulling out of the embassy - only to be met by another policeman frantically waving his stick.

This time he was most definitely not telling us to go.  Unsure of how long this newest road closure would last, we sat and waited.  When the road continued to stay closed, we parked and waited.  When the road was still closed, we went back to the pool - it's always better to wait at the pool than in the car.

There was another family stuck at the pool also, so we waited together.  After awhile we were joined by other inmates who had been refused exit by the stick-waving man.  The waiting started patiently, but after another half hour, it started to get more impatient.  By the second half hour, it turned to grumbling.  And by the third half hour, plans were made.  

If we all went out together maybe our stick-waving friend couldn't stop everyone at once.  After all, what could one man with a stick do against a crowd of irritated American diplomats intent on escaping their containment?  We had cars.  He had a stick.  The stick always loses.  

So we all gathered up our things and our courage.  I hustled the kids into the car.  Everyone buckled up their seatbelts.  I scouted out the stick-waving man.  Still there.  The cars slowly backed out of their parking spaces and lined up while a local staff member looked on.  Would it work?  Would we get stopped?  What would they do?  What could they do?  

My hands were shaking as they gripped the steering wheel.  I'm an American.  Part of being an American is following the rules.  When the light turns red, you stop.  When the road says 'one way,' you don't drive down it.  When there's a line at the DMV, you stand in it.  Everyone following the rules is what makes the US functional - it's what is done.  Breaking the rules is, well, against the rules.  

But I was committed, and at the head of the line of cars.  I gunned the engine, headed for the exit, and turned right.  As we approached, our stick-waving friend jumped out and wildly started waving his stick.  I kept driving.  He added his whistle to his stick-waving.  I drove faster.  Seeing that the stick and whistle weren't deterring us, he started shouting.  Brandon waved at him as we blew past.

Having escaped the embassy, we roared down the road to our neighborhood, just past the now-infamous Yuri Gagarin Russian School.  Passing plainclothes men patrolling the sidewalks (this time not just the roads, but the sidewalks were shut down), more policemen, and several police cars, we pulled a hard left into our neighborhood - which was filled with more policemen, more cars, and more men in dark suits looking official and looming.  

We punched through and finally made it to our street, which was blissfully empty.  Pulling into our gate, I sat for a moment, calming down from my nerve-wracking experiment with rule-breaking.  I don't care what other people say - it isn't fun to break the rules.  

Shortly after, I read through our neighborhood chat and found out the reason for our containment - Putin and Rahmon had been meeting at a house one street over.  I can only imagine what all of those security people thought when they saw a red-plated American diplomatic car roaring past all their measures meant to keep the rest of the world separated from the two presidents having a quiet tet-a-tet.  Hopefully it only involved head-shaking for the arrogance of Americans and nothing more.

Thankfully Putin has left, the road closures have ended, and life (and traffic) can continue in its usual pattern.  But I've learned my lesson.  Next time any president comes to town for any kind of state visit, and most especially the Russian president, I'm not pressing my luck.  I'm not going to take my chances, I'm not going to flirt with rule-breaking, and I'm not going to try and drive anywhere.  I'm just staying home.