Monday, January 24, 2011

Tajikistan 101

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping up my blog recently. Just to get you up to speed….I left Iraq in July 2010. I loved being in Iraq, enjoyed my work there (as challenging as it could be) and really miss the staff in Baghdad!! However, being all cooped up in the office was taking it’s toll and it was time to leave. I got a new job with the same organization, Mercy Corps, and am now the Early Recovery Program Manager on the Global Emergency Operations (GEO) team. What that means is that in an emergency where Mercy Corps is going to respond, I am one of four people that the organization could send in to sort of lead the emergency team in response (sounds more impressive than it really feels on the ground). But my “specialty” (in which I have a LOT to learn) is Early Recovery…meaning economic or market recovery in an emergency. I was supposed to begin this new position on Oct 1st out of the DC office, but I got a phone call mid-Sept saying that I was needed immediately in Pakistan to assist with the start up of our Cash-for-Work program there.

So I flew to DC (where I live now) on Sept 21st and on the 23rd I boarded a plane for Islamabad, Pakistan. Later that week I was headed down to our Sukkur office in southern Pakistan where the worst of the flooding took place over the summer. My five week deployment turned into three months, so it was a very good induction into GEO. The basic tenets are deployment can be with as little as 72hours notices and can last one week to three months and I did both. I really, really enjoyed Pakistan. The people were incredibly polite and sweet. The beneficiaries worked incredibly hard and even though the context was crazy complicated, I think we were getting good work done and making an immediate impact (albeit short-term impact) on the lives of those people. They used the money we paid them to repair community infrastructure (like roads, schools and irrigation canals) to purchase food, clothing and medicine for their families.

In February, I am headed to the former soviet republic of Tajikistan for two weeks to provide parts of a one-week emergency preparedness training there. Tajikistan used to be part of the USSR. Tajikistan shares a southern border with Afghanistan and a western border with Uzbekistan in central Asia. The northern border is shared with Kyrgyzstan and China in the east. It is pretty mountainous, apparently. I have to be honest here. I had heard of Tajikistan, but didn’t know anything about the country or where it was located. Some good resources to find additional information if you are interested are these below links:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ti.html

http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/tajikistan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan

Tajikistan (Tah jeek ih stan) gained independence in 1991 only to devolve into civil war from 1992-1997. Since then, it has remained relatively calm. It is a landlocked, mountainous country of about 7.5million people. Of these, less than 4% are over the age of 65 and the life expectancy is right around 65 years old (ranking 165 out of 224 countries). In comparison, the US ranks 49 out of 224 with an average life expectancy of 78 years. The language is Tajik, but Russian is also spoken widely. 90% of the population is Muslim and the literacy rate is over 99% (same as the US). The major natural disasters that occur with some frequency are earthquakes and floods. Mercy Corps estimates that in many parts of the country the unemployment rate is around 40%, compared to less than 10% in the US, and consequently, nearly approximately 60% of the population lives in poverty. The average annual income in Tajikistan is US$1,800. Could you imagine living on $150/month? This is half of my monthly salary when I was in Peace Corps 10 years ago.

I was very surprised when I was looking up all of these statistics about Tajikistan. To put this in perspective, Nicaragua is usually considered the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (only behind Haiti). These stats that I’ve written for Tajikistan remind me of similar statistics for Nicaragua 10 years ago when I was there during Peace Corps. In fact, out of curiosity I check Nicaragua today against Tajikistan and Nicaragua has a lower unemployment rate, a higher average annual income and a much lower poverty rate (48% instead of 60%). The most shocking of all of this is that even with such a grave situation in Tajikistan, funding in the country for NGOs to address these humanitarian needs is ending or shifting to contractors. Sometimes this work is depressing. Until the situation gets dire enough to get it into a big deal on the news or Tajikistan become strategically important politically, funding is unlikely to recover for these humanitarian programs. : (

But my understanding is that our staff there are very hard workers and very eager to learn, so I am excited to head over there for this training. Plus, this is a new country for me. I’ve never been to Tajikistan. I will try to remember to take lots of pictures (and hopefully update my blog more regularly). This is the 35th country I’ve been to. Woo hoo!