March 19, 2004 - April 03,2004

Day 06 Wednesday March 24, 2004
Askabad Carpet Weavers, flight to Tashhouz,Turkmenistan
Submitted by Agnes

Traditional Turkmen greeting ,
the guests are offered bread when they enter their house

Here in Ashkabad it looks and feels like a warm day coming up.

Waiting on the bus, I notice quite a bit of traffic. Is this rush-hour in Turkmenistan?  I can smell exhaust fumes.  There are a lot of smoking tailpipes here. (Lot of smokers, too.)  Two women sweepers are cleaning the sidewalks and curbsides.  New spring leaves are on the trees.  There are very beautiful tress here.

As we travel on the bus, Meli talks about the President's book Ruhnama which means spirit, soul.  The book is his vision of Turkmenistan for the century.  This country, he claims, is a secular state which he describes at length.  (The tone of the book is nationalistic.)  Among other things, he talks about family values.  (Does he live apart from his family?) The sign Ruhnama is everywhere, I notice.  Why?  Advertising, propoganda, I guess.  Moussa says (with reference to parts from the book that Meli has been reading), "The words he's saying are quite nice, but they are just words."  (A little later he says

Turkmenistan is still a Communistic state.)  We drive past a large gold statue of the President sitting in an armchair.In the countryside now, signs of poverty are much more evident.  At a small village, we stop for a home visit where we are greeted in the courtyard by children offering food treats on a tray.  Then we are ushered into a small room piled with carpets, and Moussa introduces "the master of the house."  An Afghan Turk, he came here from Afghanistan 16 years ago.  He imports and sells carpets.  The elder son who speaks quite good

English acts as a spokesperson.  There are several children.  The youngest is a shy very cute 5-year old girl. Outside in the courtyard, a huge pot sits on an open fire where sheep wool is boiling in a rust-coloured dye.  After 4 hours of boiling, the wool will be washed and hung to dry on a wire fence near the vegetable garden which is separated into sections ready for planting.  It's hot and sunny.  We go inside to a room which looks like a kitchen where a daughter is working on a loom, learning to weave a small carpet.  Daughters, we're told, begin weaving at age 10 when they are taught to weave old designs.  Later, they will make their own designs.  Another younger daughter demonstrates for us.  She's fast!

Also in the courtyard, outside, is a large metal pot (looks like a wok) on an open fire. It contains rice, lamb, and vegetables.  It smells delicious.  Our lunch, I discover later.  We eat in another room in the main building where our lunch is, as before in some other places, spread on a plastic sheet on the floor.  No other furnishings here.  Lunch is: tea, sprite, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, store cookies, apples, pistachios, wrapped candies, rice (plove) with vegetables and lamb.  It's all very good. Later, in the airport waiting room, I see a Saddam-look-alike.  Barbara agrees that the likeness is striking.  Several women here are wearing lovely head scarves, some quite artistically tied. Moussa says Turkmens can ride airplanes free within the country.  So of course the plane is full (of mostly men).  We fly to Dashoguz.  About 5 in the afternoon we make a short visit to a small local market where those of us with cameras are mobbed by people eager for photographs.

At dinner, Meli tells a funny story of her trip with "the mad locomotive enthusiasts."  (The story goes: In the hotel-in Mongolia, I think - the bar was occupied by prostitutes, several of them trying to seduce the men.  Meli walked in and yelled at them, "Get out of here.  Shame on you!"  The women all left at once. Meli claims the men were interested only in locomotives.)
From my hotel window, I see a spectacular red sunset.