The road to Samarkand

We got an early start since nobody believed them when they said the A.C. on the bus was fixed, and it turned out to be a prophecy well in tune with reality. The five hour ride was hot and bumpy. Uzbeki roads leave a lot to be desired in terms of comfort. They do provide, however a real glimpse of life along the way. We’re out of the desert areas and each side of the road is lined with farms and small gardens seemingly very productive. There are some motorized farm vehicles on the large parcels, but still the majority of the work is done by humans working with their hands, with hoes, and sickles seem small-minded and picky. All along the way we saw donkey carts pulling loads of grass, mulberry limbs, and a variety of greenery which couldn’t be identified from the passing bus.
All along the route we’d pass kids coming and going from school. You could always tell which because when going to school the little knots of kids got bigger and bigger whereas coming home they continued to diminish in size until the last disappeared down some dusty lane which led to their homes. The boys all have backpacks and are boys all the way kicking rocks at each other, chasing, grabbing and jostling with other boys. The really adventurous ones walk on the 4 inch flat top of the concrete barriers between the lanes of traffic as if it were some continuous Olympic balance beam. Cars alternatively whizzed by just a foot or so from them or crawled by, depending upon condition of the road.
The girls all walked very orderly in order to facilitate conversation. They wore their school uniforms of light blue dresses with white aprons, and white knee stockings. Their little chiffon bows tied at the back of their heads made the scene quite attractive. They seemed to be giggling and laughing all the way, and they do walk a long way. We’d see these groups for miles before we actually passed the school. These kids were not high school age, but kids my grandsons’ ages. In many cases, their back packs seemed bigger than they were.
It’s silk worm production time and the little buggers have a voracious appetite. The mulberry tree is very ubiquitous throughout the area and when they harvest the shoots for the cultivation of the larvae, the trees look like grandma’s pin cushion. Each year the shoots are cut, and each year they send out more shoots, so that when the harvest takes place, there are maybe 20 or 30 pointy little shoots where they have been cut back very close to the main trunk.

The cotton fields are starting to take shape with the plants beginning to grow in the late spring heat. The production of which has led to one of the world’s great ecological disasters, namely the draining of the Aral Sea. Soviet central planners consistently raised the quota for cotton production in Uzbekistan to support the burgeoning Russian textile industry which meant cultivating in areas not previously suitable to farming. Hence more and more water was needed, and it had to come from somewhere, that looking at a map there was this great big inland sea and, hey, why not tap that. It’s big. The result was that cotton production did rise but the ground was not suitable and the soil parched throughout history so it just sucked the water into the ground and sucked the life out of the Aral Sea to the point where it is probably irreversible. There are ships which are now just beached on the sand 100 miles from the sea shore. It’s changed the climate in the area dramatically and the life hundreds upon hundreds of miles away as the dust bowl like winds have blown the soil away. I won’t go on and on about it, but there are ample articles about the situation for those interested in reading further.
The temperature has been running in the high 80’s and low 90’s, and we can only what the furnace must be like in the late summer. Temps run up into the 130’s. No problem growing tomatoes here. The heat index, however, does really show the pollution along the road. Up in Khiva and Bukhara, we had clean air and blue skies. As we travel back into the heartland of Uzbekistan we get back to another type of reality, that of the history of Soviet, don’t give a shit attitude towards the environment. Certainly, the U.S. has been a huge contributor to the world pollution problem, and the naysayers of the Bushy-apologists are still denying any global warming, but here it was institutionalized. Coming across China we saw gigantic wind farms, larger than anything I’ve ever seen before stretching literally for miles. The road would seemingly pass through a tunnel with the turbines whooshing on both sides of us very close to the road. No such thing here in Uzbekistan. Dilshot says that Soviet planners rejected any technology that wasn’t theirs and hence continued with the low-grade coal fired plants that to this day spit filth and poison into the air. It’s just awful! The Uzbekis, we understand, are doing what they can but Dilshot says that they’re playing catch-up and it will take decades before they get there. Independence from the Soviets has been a great thing for the Stans, but it didn’t come easily and without severe repercussions. Let’s just say that the Soviets took more out of these places than they put into them and now they’re paying for that.
We passed through one area where the pollution is so bad that the Uzbek government gives workers a substantial bonus just for working in the factories and acts as an inducement for people to move into the area. They give free annual trips to the mountains where they have health spas and sanatoriums for those workers. Great, it makes the short run a lot easier to bear, never mind that they’re all gonna die very early. And as Cat Stevens would say: “Where do the children play?”

When we got back to the hotel I noticed that our Japanese birder lady was in the restaurant with her group. I told Carol I wanted to say hello and we went in. She had her back to us, and as we approached, some of her friends said something to her and she turned around and was so happy to see us. We had told her that we were staying at a different hotel (so we thought) and so she was really surprised. She just got this really great smile on her face and almost danced up and down. She’s almost five feet tall if she wears a lot of socks, and just is so full of joy and energy. She cupped a magazine to her mouth like it was a megaphone and said quietly that she was 85 years old. I told her I was 70, and without a moment’s hesitation she shot back: “Oh, then you can be my son.” and laughed her embarrassed little laugh. She is so much fun, I wish I could have the opportunity to talk to her more. I know she’d be really forthcoming. I’d be curious what it was like for a girl of 15 ,living in Tokyo when WWII started to see the whole thing unfold. Tomorrow breakfast will be my only opportunity and war stories aren’t necessarily breakfast fare. But again, just meeting people like her in a seemingly coincidental moment are the things I’ll take back home with me.
John continues to be a source of fascination. He is so calm in his speaking and thought, and yet…..this morning at breakfast they had some hot dogs cut up into pieces and I remarked in my most sincere voice. “Oh boy, hot dogs.” He replied: “Dodger dogs.” I looked at him and he reminded me that Rupert Murdoch used to own the Dodgers, and the only games he’s ever seen have been from the president’s box. Every time Tommy Lasorda would come to Japan, he’d look John up and give him another autographed baseball. John would think, what do I want with another of these, and he made a tossing motion like he was throwing the garbage out over his shoulder. I told him it was just another reason not to like him, and if my son found out, he’d accuse me of consorting with the enemy.