This past week took me to a new village in the west of Tajikistan close to the border with Uzbekistan. Most of the inhabitants of the area are Uzbeks and I wanted to come here to see how things were for Uzbeks that live here in Tajikistan. One thing that’s been tough is that when I’m here I keep thinking of my friends in Uzbekistan. For political reasons I can’t get e a visa to go visit them.
Flour and Rice mill
The family that I’ve been staying with runs a rice and flour mill on their property. The rice mill is complicated to explain. Basically the goal is to get the shell of the rice grain, so usually people have to pound the rice and then throw the stuff in the air and the chaff blows away. Here they have a series of 5 telephone pole size “hammer heads” that pound the rice and a machine that sucks out the chaff. The “hammer head” machine is hook up to a rotating drum that has a series of notches that catch the hammerhead and make them go up and down. The rotating drum is attached to a water wheel and an electric generator so you can choose which type of power to use. Super complicated… but if any one has gone with me to “Old Threshers” (the antique tractor and farming equipment festival in Iowa), they know that I can spend hours watching the equipment run. Well, here I’ve been spoiled because I can actually help and watch the machines for hours. Im sure the pictures will show better than my description.
Vagina Dialogues
Sorry for the strange title, but I thought I’d write about something that is a bit embarrassing . Well, uhm.. how to start..
Some of us have this bad habit of saying.. uhm.. It’s fun in school because when you get bored you can count how many times the teachers says.. uhm.. or your friends say uhm in a presentation. Well, it’s not a habit that translates well into Uzbek because the word for vagina in Uzbek is pronounced “ahm” or “uhm.” I bet you can only imagine the trouble I get into when I’m trying to speak. So sometimes I say things like “ Today I… uhm… went to…. uhm… the store. ” which in Uzbek translates into “ Today I… vagina… went to…. vagina… the store. ” No one had really brought it up to me on this trip until last night when one of the guys asked me not to say “uhm.” I knew exactly what he was referring to when he mentioned it and it just about paralyzed my speaking for a bit since I was so embarrassed. So I started to say “I………………………………… ……..went………………………………….to the store” Then I got more comfortable and just started say “Today I… Aaaa… went to … Aaaa… the store.”
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