Leonardo DiCaprio always dies

I've just remember one of my nightmare when I was in Tanzania.

Leonardo DiCaprio was building an eco-lodge in some island, and I supposed to do the water supply system. of course eco-friendly. He was in a hurry, because he knew he was dying the next morning.

I woke up not so relaxed. And then I realized why I was dreaming about him.

At that time I was living in a tented camp in the middle of the Masai territory together whit the staff (Simon, Mika...I'll tell about them), and a friend passed me one of this 8 in 1 pirate DVD.
8 movies of Leonardo DiCaprio. A must between the ladies passing by the camp. And also the men. A friend gave it to me from Dar-es-Salaam and suddenly everybody at night were staring at me hoping I was going soon in the tent to watch a movie, finish them and then pass by the DVD.
There was no other thing to do, and I watched one movie every night.
Blood diamond, Titanic (sorry...), Romeo + Juliet, the Departed...well, the guy never survived his movies.

Never.

Maybe that's why is so famous: men are happy because he dies. Women are happy because, for the reason that he dies, then they know why the fantastic, perfect, handsome guy never crossed their path. Is not fault of the Tanzanian ladies, wherever they live, whatever they do. The perfect guy is dead, so he is whit everybody and nobody. White and Black. Chinese and Brazilian. Teenagers and...

Wow! Someone in LA is pretty smart

Morning Kilimanjaro. But by night I could not see. 

strike a blow

I spoke a lot about Tajikistan never mentioning the water supply system we were doing.

Two reasons: as I told you I've arrived in Dushanbe as a intern, and then I became project manager for a project already started, studied and provided with materials...so really, the standing ovation for these 11 aqueducts in Ivstarshan is not for me, but for Claudia and the already mentioned Anna.
Second reason: there are already thousand of stories and pictures of good people sacrificing their lives, social activities and whatsoever to save lives around the world.
To be a professional is also not to complain about the best job ever, so I won't.

Do you have in mind the worst Christmas UNICEF picture to raise money showing a malnourished African kid cover by flies?
Well, this is reality. But I don't want your fucking 20 dollars, promising you I'll give him food, education and a peaceful country for you to feel better.
If you want to face the condition the majority of people is living in, you do not need this blog. You know already. I con't teach you anything new.

Anyway I still have many nice anecdotes about Tajikistan, but I'm starving to tell you about Tibet, Tanzania, Haiti and Nepal, the place I'm now.

But, I want to leave you the best recipe ever, truly from Tajikistan: maybe the name was Krutob. Not 100% sure.

Take a kg  of butter and melt it. Put 1 kg of onion clumsily chopped and fry them in the butter. When cold, put some yogurt is you want the slim fast version and then pour it in a wooden bowl with high edges.
You need the high edges to rub fresh green chilly pepper on it and then you take a piece of bread, you dip it in the oily onion, recollecting it you pass over the chilly edge and then you put in your mouth.
Half of it will drip over your arms, and your chin. This very good for your skin and your hypocritical diet. Better in your face than in your stomach.

Oh, gosh. How can I stop to talk about Tajikistan? this recipe just helped me to remember a story about the bread, one about the women and their guest, one about football world champion final in 2006 and a nice fight with an Imam.

Who could think that, at the end, Tajikistan was so entertaining?

tajik table...I mean carpet for special occasion

I'm not cool

Russians have specialties.

And forgive me if with 'Russian' I still think about the borders as in War and Peace: from Europe to the end of the World.

There are no better boxers than Russians, no better drinkers, no more totalitarian lovers, no merciless spies, no more chauvinist workers. And nobody can even reach the furthest edge of the shadow of a Russian writer.

This is because Russian language is finely worked to perfection as a baroque engraving.

One night I was in the bar next to the train station of Dushanbe, and a Russian-Tajik men, whit the same volume of an adult cow, strong and fat as only Russian can magisterially be at the same time, white hair, icy eyes, brown teeth, started to look at me not really in a friendly way.

I start to hurry to finish my Baltika and go home.

"I do not like Americans", he almost shouted in English from the other edge of the bar, to be sure that, not only me, but everybody, understood he was talking to me.
"Well, in fact I'm not American..." but he wasn't listening.

He stood up and start to walk toward me.

"Americans say 'cool' to say something great, manly..." he took a pause to finish in a shot his vodka.
"Cool...As fresh! Fresh, like a fish to eat, or a spring morning" he laugh. Everybody laugh, even if very few Tajik speaks English. But they laugh to demonstrate they were united against me, whatever Ivan Drago was saying.

"In Russia we say сырье" and now is face was two inches from mine.
"It means 'raw'".

Amen.

The Port Said

There was one only bar down there in Dushanbe.

Bar, or nightclub or discotheque...I really don’t know how to name it.

The Port Said.

In the bar you could only find three things: vodka, juice (to go with the vodka) and Baltika, from one to nine.

Baltika was the beer, the Piva, and there were nine variants: more light, red, heavy, almost black and so on. I used to drink Baltika seven, sometimes Baltika four.

Vodka was sold by bottles: a bottle of vodka and one of juice together, and the use was to drink one shot of vodka followed by one of juice. Same same quantities. At the end of the bottle, you really don't think that was fair.

The lights were extremely low, or maybe half of the colored bulbs were just burned out. 

At the end of the room there was the dancing floor, with strobes not really in tune with the russian-farsi pop.

The lonely planet describes it as follows: One of the few night-clubs in Dushanbe. Most women in these clubs are prostitutes so solo female travelers should think twice about going alone.

I don't really remember prostitutes, but a lot of French twenty-years-old soldiers, lost in space, convinced to be in Afghanistan.

And I remember plastic bananas as decoration

And then, probably because of the vodka, I don't remember a lot more...

The dead meat

Food is not a problem

I mean, if you have to feed yourself and your stomach is making noises as a donkey in agony, you eat EVERYTHING. Also your nails with ketchup.

But this time was reeeeally challenging.

I was with Anna.

My mentor, my friend, my teacher in that old times in Tajikistan and sometimes my mother. We went to monitor an old project. Water supply system, as usual. And the village was something like 6 hours by car (always the Niva) up to the mountains.

As usual the landscape was something to overcome your sight: feminine curvy definitive mountains with cattle and cotton sloppy growing, sun and light as a benediction and colorful dressed people.

We visit some fountains, water was working as it supposed to do,  and we were invited by the mayor for lunch.

I felt so happy, my stomach was –as mentioned before- braying like a donkey.

We sat in the carpets of the dining room, and the women showed us the beautiful carpets they were doing with natural wool. We bought two. My parents still have one in front of the chimney. White and black.  Simple as a theorem.

And then the food arrived.

Special food. For the special guest Anna was: the virago who screamed and fight for months with the Muslim hierarchy to be accepted as a prepared engineer, but that at the end brought the fucking safe water in the village.

Fruit. Incredible, rare as a truffle, in that miser land, bread, and….a full bowl of…dead meat. The most valuable and honorable dish they could offer us.

Pieces of lamb, fried to death with salt to dehydrate it and then buried in a clay jar for eight months.

Eight months.

They have no fridge.

Tasted like a nasty grandma’s cupboards.

But we eat it. Smiling and thanking.

Whenever I watch to the carpet, in my parent’s chimney front, I still think of it. That deep experience.

My stomach never dare to bray anymore.

how to refuse it? Never to full for that

- stan

Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan and so on.

In Cyrillic they are written with an ’o’: Tajikiston, Uzbekiston, Kirghizston.

I wasn't thinking this minor discrepancy could create some effects, until the day my water heater in Ivstaravshan, properly hanged next to the roof inside the shower box to save maybe 30 cm of water pipes connections and electrical wires, decided to give up its screws and prolapsed dramatically in my arms, while naked as a piglet, I was looking for respite from the Siberian cold with a quick hot shower.

It was full, so around 70 kg…

Before been founded dead, smashed naked in a shower, I start screaming for help while I was sustaining the load that could not be lying calmly in the ground, because still connected with the water pipes.

Abdulrashid, the nostalgic logistic,  back grounded the door and saved his prince charming. Always naked as a piglet. With no more possibility to respite from the Siberian cold with a quick hot shower.

Five minutes after, the emergency was vanished  and I was drinking a hot tea prepared by Saodat, my lovely cleaner standing in the bathroom and looking incredulously at the rubble captained by HIM: the water heater.

White, cylindrical, shining, whit the brand proudly superimposed in red metal letters: Ariston.

Abdulrashid and Saodat were still with me to give me support and because was so far the most interesting thing to see and discuss about in all Ivstarashan in January. And they were discussing, but in Tajik and I had no interest, in that particular moment of reflections over life death and doom, in understanding. Until their discussion started to become more and more animated:

”Niet!  Tajikiston, Uzbekiston, Kirghizston...”

Looked like a children lesson. But they were obviously  disagreeing on something.

”Afganiston…”

”Kazakiston, Turkmeniston…”. They felt silent, whit their fingers half deployed to enumerate and looking at each other helplessly.

At the end they gave in and asked me: ”Where is Ariston?”

Tajik couple. Love is everywhere