The President is Coming!

Last week, for two days, the president of Turkmenistan visited Turkmenabat, the city 45 minutes from my village and the second largest city in Turkmenistan, a fact which surprises me each time I visit. I thought I would take the opportunity to describe both the city and the event.

Each Monday afternoon, after finishing my morning lessons at the hospital, I walk to the taxi station of my site. It is the town’s main intersection, next to the tiny bazaar. I should take a moment to describe taxis here. Very, very occasionally, in Turkmenabat, you will see a car with a taxi sign on it. It is a registered taxi. Those registered taxis are never in my village. Taxis here are anyone with free time and a car. Drivers wait around by the bazaar in their cars until they have enough passengers and then drive twenty minutes to Dunya Bazaar, the enormous market at the southern edge of the city. On Sunday, when many many women make the trip to the Dunya for cheaper produce, fabric, vacuum cleaners, electric kettles, yarn, car parts or anything else, the cabs fill quickly with four passengers. But on Monday, when I go, the drivers wait around for another fifteen minutes for just one more passenger.

The road between my town and Dunya is the main road for the entire Lebap region, starting at the bazaar and extending another five hours or so south to Afghanistan. In America, it would be a two-lane highway, traffic heading north and south. And it is two lanes here, too. Sort of. If the driver owns a car less then ten years old, he will pass the slower older cars ahead in an imaginary middle lane. Two lanes, main thorough-fair of Lebap, and both northbound and southbound traffic using the imaginary lane. Occasionally, I find myself wondering which is safer: a twenty-five year old Soviet Lada whose cabin is probably full of carbon monoxide and which I doubt has an impact-absorbing crumple zone, or a newer safer car, with a driver passes in the middle lane. At these moments, I turn to the camel-hair talisman hung from the rear view mirror and hope that protection from the evil eye includes automotive invincibility. At. Dunya, I hop out of the taxi and hand over my 10,000 Manats, roughly 70 cents.

Though everyone in my town calls Dunya, “the city,” my trip is hardly over. Dunya is on the outskirts, and I have another half hour bus ride to get to the internet café or another volunteer’s apartment. There is no choosing between new and old buses (or at least there wasn’t until recently, but more on that later). All the buses are Soviet era, seating about twenty people on seat cushions so worn, that I recognized a bus by the way my butt fell into exactly the same hole. Each bus has personality, as the upholstery is in assorted garish fabrics probably hand-sewn by the bus-driver’s wife. The passengers are a mix of village women in traditional dress, with covered heads and long yakas (the embroidery on the front of the Turkmen dress), and young fashionable city youth in tight jeans, high leather boots and occasionally with pierced noses. It is probably wishful thinking, but this bus ride feels like one of the most blissfully anonymous parts of my week. The mix of people makes me less conspicuous, I think.

We all bump along together at a snails pace, the ancient cassis of the bus shaking every joint. I once tried to tell my counterpart at work that the bus offered a full body massage, but I’m not sure she understood. Tooth-rattling roads are just a fact of life here. One time, the bus I was on stalled, and the driver hopped out and hand-cranked the bus back to life. All buses have a manual start option in case the alternator fails. The driver was reluctant to come to a full stop at the next bus station, so a passenger hopped out as the bus continued to crawl forward.

Despite its alleged size, the city hardly seems to bustled. In the bus window, I see squat two and three story apartment buildings in pale pinks and greys. Bright white satellite dishes hang in stark newness by every window. Few other things look so new. The stores are under-stocked neighborhood convenience stores, and occasionally restaurants or bakeries. My landmarks on the trip are the “Asia Disco,” with a sign in giant red letters framed in palm trees, and a giant unexplained statue of a rubix cube. The cube would be impossible to solve, however, because every side is full of a single color, save one yellow square on the green side. The cube has ten yellow squares, and eight green. Sometimes the whole country feels like an impossible rubix cube. If I want to go to the other volunteers’ apartment, I get off at the bronze of an ancient Turkmen hero next to an eternally empty amusement park. Otherwise, I get off a few stops later at Gok Bazaar, by the internet café, or I ride the bus to the train station then walk to the post office. Sometimes I ride the bus to the train station just to pass the time, though, since timing my arrival for two pm, when the internet café reopens can be hard.

I haven’t done much site-seeing in the city, as most people attest there isn’t much to do. There is a Russian Orthodox Church I entered, with the usual filigree icons. It is a single room, surprisingly light and the smell of incense sent me scrambling to remember all the Russian chants and hymns from my chorus days. I can’t tell the number of times I regret not bringing my Russian chorus music, because I really think the folk songs would be a great community-integrating tool, and I can’t remember the full words to many of the songs. I have also been three times to Lebap restaurant, which makes a totally decent Margarita pizza, the only thing I have eaten there. I tried, once, to order blinis (Russian crepes), but they were out. The other option is soup, but I never want to order soup, because I eat it for every single dinner. The only patrons I have ever seen at the restaurant are the other volunteers. The Bratt travel guide to Turkmenistan calls it the “closest thing to fine dining in Turkmenabat.” One time, the volunteers met at Owadan Café. I order the mushroom pizza. It was tasty, with plenty of mushrooms, but there were no tomatoes, very little cheese and it was topped with mayonnaise and ketchup. I still need to visit the Russian bath house and the city’s museum. They are probably closed Sundays, though, so I will need to take some time off work to get there.

And now on to the President. Starting several weeks (or was it over a month?) before his visit, news of the impending arrival was being whispered around, “The President is giving us a hospital, a school, new buses.” For his visit, Dunya Bazaar, the second largest bazaar in the country, was shut down for three days. My host father, who works at a pharmacy in the bazaar stayed at home, but my host mother, a doctor in the city, stayed late each day at work for meeting about the new hospital.

On Turkmen TV, whenever the president is shown (and this is very often), he is surrounded by an adoring public waving flags. This is because all employees of the government in my county ( and in the city and other neighboring county), had to go and wait for him. This means the hospital was empty of all but a skeleton staff, and all the schools were closed because the teachers went off along with the oldest grades to greet the president. The new hospital was opened along with the new school and 180 new buses were given. My hospital even got a new ambulance, though we’re not in the city. All the new vehicles have a clear message on the front, “A gift from our respected President.” My family, who watches almost exclusively Russian satellite TV, watched the Turkmen news to see the ceremonies. Children in the new school gave a concert, recited poetry and used the schools new computers. It is hard to gauge reactions to the event because most people were simply tired for waiting around in the rain for their head of state.