Uzbek Life or Life in Uzbekistan Stephen “Sroj” Bugno

This section is for those interested in the culture of Uzbekistan. This means I basically try to tell you what it’s like to live in Uzbekistan. I will try to explain how I see and participate in the activities of everyday life the best I can. This means I’ll talk mostly about food and going to the bathroom. Of course other important topics will be covered. But most importantly, I hope to keep you amused and entertained with these anecdotes.

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We will start with food. This isn’t such a funny topic, but it’s probably the most important thing we can talk about. I can’t speak definitely about Uzbek norms all across Uzbekistan for sure, but I can tell you how it’s like with my family and with other families I’ve eaten with. Here most people (and at my host family’s house) eat on a topjon. (Please pardon any misspellings here, I only here this stuff and I spell it how I feel.) A topjon or choyhona is a wooden or metal piece of furniture (for lack of a better term). It is square, usually about eight feet by eight feet. Everyone sits around a short table (about two feet high) on this topjon, and eats. There are usually one or two big plates in the center of the table that everyone eats off of. Bread called non is eaten with every meal.

Non is so important that it deserves its own paragraph. It is relatively flat bread that is always baked in a circular shape. It is considered sacred by all Uzbeks. Before the meal it is always broken by hand and divided among those at the table. At about this time if you were sitting on a topjon with Uzbeks, you would be bombarded with the word “oling.” Then you would get another round of “Oling, oling, oling” about five seconds after the first round. Oling means, “take.” And you would take when you heard this. Non is always placed on the table right side up. Non is never thrown out. If it is stale it may be used for another recipe or fed to animals.

Don’t disrespect the non.

Tea is consumed with every meal. Usually black tea, but sometimes green. At breakfast there is a dish of fruit on the table as well. It may contain apples or pears, but most likely grapes. Almost every family has grapevines at their home. It provides nice shade in the courtyard of the residence.

Many Uzbek homes in villages or small towns are set up with rooms around a courtyard. There is a little vegetable garden inside too. Many families also have chickens, sheep, cows, or horses.

But besides the “Jesus breakfast” (grapes and non) there are plenty of other foods here. The most traditional Uzbek dish is osh or plov. This is a type of rice dish with meat and is always served on Thursdays. But it may be possible to eat osh several times in one week, as the literal translation for stomach in Uzbek is “osh pot”. Go home if you don’t like osh.

Another popular food here is shashlik. This is meat and fat grilled on a metal stick. A shashlik grill is found at almost any café. It’s served with a pile of onions on top. And like in America, men traditionally do the grilling.

Another Uzbek food is lagmon. This is basically soup with noodles. That’s the best I can describe it.

Monty is another dish. These are like dumplings filled with meat and onions. They are basically big pelmeni.

Most of the time at home we have soup or some sort of rice or noodle dish. And when I’m lucky, they double up on the starches at dinner. This means potatoes with pasta. And of course non is eaten with that.

Overall, the food is very good here.

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The “Unibrow” is very popular here. (For those not familiar with this term, a “unibrow” is just what it says, “one brow.” It is when the two eyebrows are connected by a Bering-land-bridge-type of connection.) It’s desirable to all the men and ladies here. The women actually darken their eyebrows, and many wish them to be more connected than they are naturally. They are disturbed by the fact that foreign women “pluck” and wish to lesson their “natural beauty.”

To put some concrete evidence behind these claims, one of the PC trainees had her host mother rub darkener on her eye brows without even asking her permission. The next morning I noticed something different. I noticed she was a bit more beautiful, but I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

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Esmeralda.

Saying this simple name is enough to excite any Uzbek. At 9:00pm for one half-hour, Uzbeks enter the Mexican world of Esmeralda and Co. At this sacred time, life as we know it in Uzbekistan stops. You don’t plan anything at this time. You don’t except anything at this time. Nothing but Esmeralda.

Esmeralda is a Mexican soap opera dubbed over in Uzbek. And if you want friends here, you don’t say anything bad about it. Because this soap isn’t just for stay-at-home moms. Everybody watches Esmeralda. School boys, teenage girls, university students, mothers, fathers, and grandparents, all watch Esmeralda. You can’t avoid Esmeralda.

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For those curious about mullets in the former Soviet Union, we will get the mullet question out into the light. Does the mullet exist here in the “heart” of the world? [For those that are unfamiliar with the term “mullet” I’ll make a very long story short by saying it’s a “hairstyle” (I cringe in saying style because it severely lacks any sort or “style”) that was most popular in the 1980’s and is basically short hair on top and long in the back.] (or as they say: business up front, party in the back.)

The short answer to this question is…Yes, mullets do exist here in Uzbekistan. And where were they spotted, you may be asking yourself. And the answer to that is the soccer stadium. We went to the Uzbekistan vs. Japan game and all the little mulleteers came out of the woodwork. It would even be an exaggeration to say the mullet is a little bit popular here. The truth is- it isn’t. I only spotted two that fine day.

Another mullet was spotted weeks later on the metro, a Russian male, probably 16 years old.

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Uzbekistan puts the “multi” into multi-use stadium. (grazing and soccer)

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The Great Gasoline Conspiracy

With a name like The Great Gasoline Conspiracy, you are probably thinking this is something great. Well, it is great. But you decide for yourself just how much of a conspiracy it is.

When I look at the main roads in Uzbekistan, I see an almost steady stream of traffic. There isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a lot of traffic here, but you do need to look both ways before crossing. But every time I pass a gas station, they are usually empty. Sometimes there will be one automobile filling up, but never more than that. So, how can there be so many cars, going so far, and so few cars getting fuel?

Some people say its because they don’t sell candy bars at the gas station. I have another theory.

I don’t want to spoil the mystique that I created here, but I should share this theory to The Great Gasoline Conspiracy with you. Telling you this defeats the whole point of presenting the conspiracy, but I think this needs to be let out.

Most automobiles or marshrukas have one or more gasoline tanks in them. I’ve seen plastic tanks in the trunk. That also explains the gasoline flavor of these marshruka rides. When these containers are filled, this means fewer trips to the gas station are needed because one can refill without going to the pumps. However, if one needs to fill up these extra reservoirs, wouldn’t the filler and the auto be spending double the amount of time at the filling station, therefore increasing the chance I would see more cars filling at any giving passing of a gas station?

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The Great Battery Disposal Dilemma

The Great Battery Disposal Dilemma is exactly what it sounds like, a dilemma on how to dispose of batteries. First, one must know that all trash in this country is incinerated. I’m not sure where or if there are large-scale incinerators, but there must be. What I’m talking about is personal incinerators. There is a little place to burn “stuff” in every house. You can imagine what this place smells like on days when a lot of people are incinerating. Yes, you’re right- not that great. And they wonder why I want to scurry up to five thousand feet to play in the mountains whenever I get a free day. So, my point is the air isn’t too pretty. But on the other hand there aren’t landfills here, or sanitary landfills, as they’re know as back home. So pick your poison. As the famous expression goes: six of one, half dozen of the other. But as I’m lapping the football field at seven a.m. I am wishing it was the half dozen. But as the say here, “The neighbors wife is always more beautiful.” That’s our version of the grass is always greener, but they don’t have yards here. So that certainly doesn’t work. But really…the neighbor’s wife is very beautiful.

So back to the point of this nonsense. Both my Duracell and Energizer batteries specifically say, “Do not dispose of in fire. Battery may explode or leak.” And as I don’t want these batteries exploding or leaking, especially in my family’s incinerator, I am afraid to dispose them. So a little collection of used batteries is starting to form on my desk.

So…do I set them on the side of the road? Do I toss them in the pit toilet? Do I drop them in some drawer in my house? This are the question that keep me from sleeping well each night in this land they call Uzbekistan.

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The Watering of the Sidewalks

Every morning, woman in Uzbekistan will splash water from buckets and cover every bit of pavement or concrete that exists in this country.

After weeks of being unnecessarily stumped by this phenomenon, were able figure it out by figuring out what it wasn’t. We knew for sure that it wasn’t to help the sidewalks grow. Sidewalks here aren’t going to grow any better after a morning coat of water.

Now I’ve had babushkas tell me that I should be wearing a coat, or should be doing this or that. I’ve even had one or two slightly raise their voice at me. This is understandable, we need random old women telling us how to live our lives, especially so we don’t catch colds get too close to an exhibit in the room of the museum. But I’ve never have I met a babushka so disgruntled as this one. She always has a scowl on her face and is always looking for someone or something to yell at. She works the territory (her self-proclaimed territory) by one of our favorite cafés. And sometimes in the morning, while enjoying our tea, we have to get up out of our chairs so she can water the area under our table. One particular afternoon, she came walking by with her broom past the café and she mumbled something in Russian to us, clearly scolding us. The only bits I caught were “It’s Monday and your sitting here while you should be at work. Idiots!”

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To be continued. This is a work in progress.