New Normal

            We have a new normal living overseas. After four years in Central Asia, we take things in stride now that would have (and maybe should) be astounding and disturbing. Our road is one. A journey that frankly intimidates nationals who live in the capital is simply a normal routine for us. Yes, it is on a cliff for hours at a time, yes we face danger from other vehicles and weather and the road just collapsing or being collapsed on, yes it is long and arduous and exhausting, but it’s just what we do and we barely think about it is abnormal.

            Another little incident of this type struck us in March on our way down to the capital. It’s the sort of thing that ought to really cause some anxiety, but we just mostly felt annoyance with a delay. You see, it seems that our neighbor to the south has some people who have a tendency to express annoyance with armed violent force and happen to be annoyed at the road being built on our side of the border. They also have very little money and find kidnapping to be both financially rewarding and fairly simple. They also have a tendency to resort to force to resolve political disagreements or make a point. All of these tendencies came together the day we drove down, though we had no knowledge of it at the time.

            The drive went fairly normally, we left just after sunrise, drove normally almost the entire way, until we reached the police post just past the halfway point down. The road was closed. No explanation, not a word on when it might open, the road is closed so you had better go back up the road to the nearest village and wait there, you will get a call when it opens. We found a little tea house, had some tea, asked around, turns out there is “fighting” about 30 km (20 miles) down the road.

            Ok, so we will stay where we are. Fighting is a good reason to be off the road. The day wore on and on, taxis and trucks making the trip down piled up in the little village waiting for an opening. Every now and then an army truck would drive by, speed through the post and be off. Once they had significant armament on top, a sight common on the other side of the border but not on ours.

            This should have freaked us out honestly. A major international incident, troops in combat operations, no word on the road opening up. Nope, we had tea, threw rocks in the river with the boys (it’s amazing how long they can throw rocks in the river if you let them, I don’t know why we ever give them toys), Matt took a little nap, we talked chatted with other people stuck with us, called coworkers to keep them up to speed, just waited. No one was ever upset, scared, even a little nervous, just slightly annoyed that the fighting interfered with our journey.

            Dark came, we realized the road wasn’t opening up today so we drove about an hour back up the road to a town where we had done some work, found someone willing to give us a bed for the night. The hospitality here is always astounding, a family none of us personally knew took us in, fed us, laid out beds for five people, all at the drop of a hat without a word of complaint. They seemed overjoyed that we could stay with them and told us to stop in every time we came through. It was a long night and an early morning, but the next day we were back on the road to see if it was open.

We asked around, the secondary route we could take was far too muddy with heavy snow on the pass, our vehicle couldn’t make the drive. No one knew when/if it would open, but we only had one option, so back to the little village and a spot on the side of the road. Once again we got in line with all the taxis, trucks, and now even a few cars making the journey down. Once again no one knew anything. Periodically we would see more troops, more big guns coming through. These weren’t the kids drafted in who are rarely even trusted with a magazine in their AK-47 on patrol, these were the well-fed, well trained, very well armed special forces we see when something big is going on. They bought water, snacks, so on, but stayed tight-lipped as to what was going on and when it would be done. We passed time, ate snacks, walked up and down the road, threw more rocks (seriously entertaining apparently at the age of two or three), passed another day sitting on the road.

Finally 5pm rolled around. We didn’t want to go to bed too late if the road wasn’t open again, so had decided 5:30 is when we would give up and head back to the house we were in and get some rest. So, we dutifully and disappointedly loaded up and turned back. We were almost back to town when taxis started passing us. We pulled over and stopped one, sure enough the road opened at 6:00 and everyone was getting through. We turned right around rushed back down the road and passed through the post with no problem. A long line of cars drove with us through the night, heading for our destination more than a little behind schedule.

We drove by two of the machine guns on the back of a pickup, a couple of armed personnel carriers, more than a few troops sitting around looking tired on the road, kept right on going up and over the mountains to the capital. It was about two in the morning when we made it in and got unloaded enough to get to bed. Cindy made her flight out (it was delayed for weather anyway, are you getting a theme in our lives?) and had a great time at her meeting, so all ended well. A normally 13-hour journey was 41 hours, not a record for us (60 is our longest) but pretty close.

This is our life these days. Flat tires, engine trouble, landslides, avalanches, major international combat operations, these all offer roughly the same level of delay and annoyance, all are possible on a journey out of town. Welcome to the new normal I guess.

A Trip Up A Valley

Work often takes us out and about to some interesting places. In December a rather strong earthquake struck one of the valleys in these mountains and caused some serious damage. Loss of life was minimal but the damage to some of the homes in the villages was rather extensive and sparked a rather large response with several countries donating significant funds to the response. Our organization typically focuses on the long-term response to disasters, so it was some time before we were asked to make a trip up the valley, but mid-February seemed to be that time.

            This valley is one of the most remote areas in these mountains. Typically the roads are closed from the first heavy snowfall until late March. The road is bad in the best of times, impassible of the river is too high or the snow is too thick. With the earthquake the road has been kept open by the government, so we could drive up, but it was still a challenging trip to say the least. It’s only about 100 miles up the valley, but at a whopping 15 miles an hour average, you are going to be on the road quite a while.

            My dad has asked me what the roads are like sometimes. I grew up in Africa, bad roads are a point of pride for people from my background. We take pictures of donkeys laying down in potholes, of roads with mud halfway up the tires on our way to church, this is one of the things that defines life in Africa. These roads aren’t really that bad. That said, in Africa, if you end up off the road, you are well… off the road. You might get stuck and have a long night pulling a car out of some unpleasant terrain, but you really just went off the road.

            This valley had roads that would have been a challenge in Africa, narrow and rocky with plenty of challenging areas to pull through, but with the added joy of being on the edge of a cliff and ice on the road. There is nothing quite like driving for 8 hours knowing that slipping off the road is a life-threatening proposition. The road is only one lane wide, so there isn’t a lot of slip in the ice before you end up worrying less about getting the car unstuck and more about getting out of it before you drown.

            Even in the midst of stressful driving, it was amazing how beautiful this valley was. There are long stretches of barren nothingness, a rather common thing in this part of the world, but everywhere you look there are magnificent peaks and stunning valleys. The higher villages feel like communities at the end of the world, yet you are welcomed with open arms by people who just had what little they owned to begin with threatened with total destruction. We slept on the floor of rooms sharing them with people who lost their own houses not long before. We even got to see aid work at its best, USAID donated several yurts (large, round movable tents, like a central-asian teepee) that were serving as shelters for several families, material was being delivered as we were there and, even in -15 degree weather people were starting the recovery process.

            It’s exhausting to go out for two nights and three days on a trip like this. I have learned how little I need to carry with me when I travel (a toothbrush, toothpaste, some deodorant, I am good for about a week) and we eat what people put before us and talk in their language all day. I would never say it is comfortable, but it’s amazing to get to take trips like this and see a part of the world so few people get to see. There are many tourist attractions up here that I have yet to go by and experience (it’s not easy to make time for them when we really prefer to not vacation in mountains) but the villages and roads we do get to see are a really neat part of living where we live.

Just a little view of the mountain road up the valley. I really only took pictures of the nice parts of the road, the other ones left me far too focused on not dying. 

A Cheed (house) in one of the upper villages. 

This hydroelectric generator is the sole source of power for one village. Nothing like a little elbow grease and ingenuity to keep something going. 

When a truck is stuck along the road you stop to help them out. It's the only nice thing to do, besides, you aren't going anywhere until they are out.

Walking along to inspect a house. 

Earthquake damage. International donors have insured most of these heavily damaged houses already are on a list to be rebuilt. 

One of the USAID yurts a family is using for the winter. 

The earthquake added a new window here. 

This is the current drinking water source for about 40 households in one village. The ice is about a foot and a half thick here, so everyone knocks the ice out of the hole each morning when they come to get water. Bringing a pipe for drinking water into the village is one of our possible projects this coming spring. 

Bringing water in by donkey. Got to have those kids do something.

Distributing building materials in the top village in this valley. 

No one lives higher up than this village, though you can walk higher up to a pass in the summer.

Inspecting a really old house.

This is what happens when an earthquake takes down the walls of these houses. They are built with wooden pillars inside so that even if all the walls come down the roof stays up. This is why loss of life was so low, very few if any houses completely collapsed even if many are not livable any more.

Just a village on an early morning. 

This village has three trees that are shrines. I have never seen anything like them, huge ancient junipers that are corkscrewed up. At this altitude they are at least a few hundred years old, probably predating Islam here. The three are 500 yards apart in a straight line up the valley. 

The shrine house for the trees.

This is one of the little interesting features of the road, an icefall right on the way up the valley. 

It's a big one. You might not be able to tell, but there are blocks of ice the size of a car engine laying on the road, they were falling on the road as we drove. You had to just go up and over piles of ice to get by here, trying not to slip into the river. Not a bad place to ice climb if that's your thing though. 

Never let a little winter or frozen river get in the way of a good soccer game. Yep, it's a good bit below freezing and this kids put up a soccer goal. They seemed to be having fun too. 

One of the little houses up there. It's a rather poor valley. 

                                          

Meeting Surprise!

So often we are asked what a day in our lives looks like. Honestly, so many days look so different it’s hard to tell. Sometimes it’s an easy routine of keeping life going, other days it seems there is a mad scramble of work and keeping your nose above water. Other days are entirely unexpected and surprising, like one day a couple weeks back for Matt.

            We had gone to the local ministry of emergencies the day before to ask about visiting a local earthquake area that was in need of response. That evening Matt got a call from our engineer that the governor wanted us to come to a meeting the next day at ten. This is not entirely unusual, we have a pretty good relationship with the local government and we like to know and relate to them well, so we sometimes come by to meet and talk about common priorities and meeting them. So, Matt dressed up expecting a few minutes in the office with the highest official here and a chance to introduce himself as director. The other people at the office were a bit surprised to see him in a tie, but you have to make a good impression.

            Matt and our engineer, we can call him Greg, made it to the government building a little early and didn’t go up to the office but instead went into the large auditorium for major meetings. It seats about 200-250 people and was rapidly filling up. Ok, so this is unexpected. We’ve seen this before though, everyone stands up to report and they probably want us around just in case the ministry of emergencies needed to point us out as helping out with housing in the earthquake response. That is what we thought until the governor came in anyway.

            Now, it’s always a bit challenging to follow any language when native speakers are speaking to one another. It’s even harder here with “government language” which is a little more “pure” so unlike anything normal people speak. Even at that, Matt was pretty quick to recognize that this particular meeting had been called by the governor to bring in all the NGOs and have them report publicly on what projects they had planned in the main town here in the coming year. This is slightly awkward as we pretty much had settled on not doing any projects here, since our last few have had little positive response and a huge amount of headache. It was even more fun when the government presented a list of priorities they had which they expected us to meet in our projects. Luckily a few other groups were in line in front of us, though Matt got slightly more unnerved when each one was soundly chided in front of the entire room of every official or representative of importance in our town for not planning a project meeting these government priorities. Yay. Did I mention the tv camera? Yeah, this is big enough for local news to be covering it.

            Inevitably, despite possible prayers on Matt’s part for a small local disaster to end the meeting early, it came time for our NGO to report. There was more than a slight murmur in the room as the ONLY foreigner present walked up to take his turn. At least our engineer got to come up to help with the report. Matt made his little spur of the moment speech offering what our NGO could do (luckily water was one of their top needs and water is what we are doing mostly these days). The governor seemed to be happy to meet him and hear our report and we did manage to get out of the customary public shaming. There was another nearly two hours left of listening to needs and complaints from the community and assigning tasks, we don’t know if we will actually get a list of things we need to do or not since it wasn’t decided in the meeting. Matt did manage to get out of it without offending the entire room, and it seems this is one way to introduce the new director to the community. He even got to be on tv that night it seems.

            They say everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. It seems ours is in a local tv station in the remote mountains of Central Asia, but you take what you can get.