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Steve Bugno's Adventures in Uzbekistan

Hello and Welcome to Uzbekistan! This page has been created for easier communication to family and friends at home and a way to educate everyone about the people and places of Uzbekistan. I hope you find it interesting. I will include photos and all types of writing. It will be updated periodically.

Uzbekistan is located in the middle of Central Asia. It is one of the fifteen former Soviet Socialist Republics and gained independence in 1991. Uzbekistan’s territory of 172,700-sq. mi. is slightly larger than the state of California and is bordered by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. It also shares the Aral Sea with Kazakhstan. For centuries Uzbekistan was at the crossroad of ancient trade routes like the “The Great Silk Road” and today is home to the historical cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva.

About three-fifths of Uzbekistan’s land is desert steppe, broken by irrigated, fertile oases along the banks of two great rivers, the Amu-Darya and Syr-darya. Winters are mild, and rainfall is no more than eight inches per year. Summers are long, hot, and dry. These conditions, with the help of irrigation, create an excellent environment for growing cotton, tobacco, fruits, and vegetables.

Uzbekistan’s capital city is Tashkent. With 2.4 million people, it was once the forth-biggest city in the USSR after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. About 24 million people live in the whole of Uzbekistan, approximately 70% being Uzbeks. The other main ethnic groups are Russians, Tajiks, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, and Tatars. However, Uzbekistan is home to over 100 ethnic groups.

I am currently part of group of 50 English teaching Peace Corps Volunteers in Uzbekistan. After arriving on the 17th of August we spent 11 weeks training in Chirchiq, a city thirty minutes outside of Tashkent. We lived with host families in the communities’ stretching from Tashkent to Chirchiq, and I was in the village of Baytqurgan. Training consisted of Uzbek or Russian language, technical training for teaching methodology, Uzbek culture, health, and safety. Then on the 2nd of November 2002, 48 of us were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers.

Following swear-in, we all moved to our permanent sites. They include cities, towns, and villages, all across the country. Some of us are teaching in primary and secondary schools, some in academic lyceums, and some in Universities.

My site is a school in the city of Olmaliq (Almalik), about an hour south of Tashkent. It is an industrial city of about 120,000 located in the Angren River valley, just west of the Fergana valley. I teach English to the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. There I live with the Sharipov family, which consists of a mother, father, and two boys, age 12 and 18. However the eighteen-year-old is only home during the weekends, as he is a student at university in Tashkent.

Please check back for photo and writing additions. I will be sending them home whenever possible.

You may write to me with any comments or suggestions: ANorthernSoul at operamail dot com