Money and mad dogs

When I woke up this morning I was beginning to lose faith in Khorog. The town is in a stunning setting; the Aga Khan Foundation is investing a substantial amount of money in building infrastructure, including a stunning landscaped park in the centre and the campus for the University of Central Asia that will confirm the already distinct sense that this is a university town; the people seem essentially prosperous, and for such an isolated community are very open to outsiders. Could it be that Khorog is just too damn happy to furnish the kinds of stories I am looking for?

My main hope for introductions has been a microfinance organisation called Madina, led by Nabot Didikhudoyera. Their first two suggestions – clients who are clearly experiencing hardship – were not sufficiently linked to the financial crisis. Perhaps I had been barking up the wrong tree.

Yet this is a country that gets 55% of its national income in the form of remittances from migrant workers in other countries, and remittances fell 31% in 2009 compared to 2008 thanks to the slump in the Russian economy that the crisis triggered. There simply had to be stories here.

So the good people at Madina put their heads together and came up with a couple of ideas. There was a family they knew of in Khorog living in a house near the botanical garden. This was not a client, but they knew that family to be highly dependent on remittance income. Then Farid Zamirov, a young director at Madina, thought back to his time as a volunteer doing household surveys out in the sticks around Khorog and Murghab and suggested we simply head out to a village and ask around.

So we took a minibus taxi over to the home of Jomahonova Oshurmo, a pensioner of 63 who still works as a hospital cleaner.

Oshurmo’s five sons all work in Moscow. Her four daughters-in-law and nine grandchildren all live with her in their small home. They have a sleeping room and a drawing room, plus a covered space outside used for storage.

Collectively the brothers used to send Oshurmo US$100 per month to augment her 180 somoni (US$45) monthly income from her wages and pension. It was not a handsome sum for a household of 14 people, but it was enough, she says. Back then prices in Tajikistan were lower so it was enough to cover food basics and also meat, essential clothes, and electricity to power their summer stove (a single hotplate) and lighting.

When the crisis hit Russia the sons collectively could not find sufficient work even to send US$100 a month. Oshurmo received no money from her children from the spring of 2009 until the Russian economy began to improve this year. She received US$100 in March, and US$50 in April.

I wanted to know how on earth someone in Oshurmo’s position coped with such a catastrophic loss of income. I asked her what she could not buy now that she used to buy. She replied that she just bought less stuff, that she still had enough for the basics, as before. Cashflow was tricky; they had to buy food on credit from a neighbour’s shop to see them through from wage packet to pension packet. But she seemed to be saying that not much had changed. I couldn’t understand it. US$100 was a lot of money to someone in her position. Before she used to receive that each month, but for a year she did not. Before she was just buying the basics, so surely now life was harder still?

Suddenly while speaking to Oshurmo I realised my frame of reference was wrong. Oshurmo does not have the luxury of whining about the present. She is too focused on feeding her household. She does not sit there thinking back to how life used to be better, but on how to juggle with what she has now.

I changed tack and began to itemize what she has in her larder: some potatoes, a sack of flour, oil, pasta or noodles, dried beans, and some onions – the only fresh food I saw. Then I asked whether they eat meat. Not any more, she said, though they used to eat meat quite often. I made a mental note to interview the World Food Program people here in Khorug about the nutritional value of such a diet. Beans are a good protein substitute for meat, but I wondered whether food quantities had likely reduced.

I changed tack again. How did she spend the US$100 that came from Moscow in March? She bought a sack of flour, and paid something towards her electricity bill. She had only succeeded in part paying her electricity bill each month for a long time, and had built up a debt of 650 somoni (US$160). Twice this year the electricity company had cut off her supply pending further payments. The supply had last been cut for three days in March, preventing the family from using their electric stove to cook.

These physical hardships loomed large, but were not the complete picture. Before, Oshurmo had never needed to ask for credit from anyone, now it was a fact of daily life. And culturally this community places great importance on helping each other in times of need, such as when putting together food for a wedding, for helping after a death. Though clearly in a state of distress herself, Oshurmo clearly finds it shameful to be unable to provide material help to her family and friends as the need arises.

So here it was, a story of real hardship in Khorog. A story of a vulnerable family driven to the brink by the consequences of the global financial crisis. I was feeling satisfied that I had found something important here, and hurriedly set about taking photos.

I took Oshurmo’s portrait and the family group, and backed away to take a broader shot of their home. Suddenly I heard a growl and felt something tearing into my ankle. I whirled around in shock to see the family dog slinking angrily away from the spot where I had trod on it.

Great, I thought. Here comes a rabies shot.

We returned to Madina’s office and Nabot on hearing about the bite phoned her brother, a doctor at the hospital. I was shepherded along the road to see him. The small wound was cleaned with alcohol and he prescribed antibiotics. There’s no rabies in this area, he reassured me.

It was a sudden end to a valuable morning, but no real drama. Now I need to think if there is anything I missed that I should ask Oshurmo before I leave town.

The lair of the dog that bit me