Trips

Tues., 10/2/18 - Bukhara and the Village of Nayman

Today was our OAT “Day in the Life” of a village. We visited the farm community of Nayman. Village “government” is still set up much like in Soviet times. Each neighborhood or block of apartments will have a “White Beard.” It is usually a man but can be a woman who is a busybody watching people in his charge and reporting to a “governor” things like: he had strange women in his apartment or she did not go pick cotton. Each small village also has a “commissioner” who reports to the governor or police station violations of law or criminal activity like stealing or prostitution. He is paid by the “state” (meaning the government) and the commissioner we talked to has had no crime so far in 2018 and only a lost (and used by another villager) cell phone in all of 2017. The white beards also try to solve grievances like: my husband drinks too much, my wife is a terrible cook, etc. It is a spy and report system. We talked to the commissioner and he asked us questions. It was an interesting dialogue.

PO Box
Sign on the wall	Nayman's Commissioner
Not for reading but just look at the organizational chart - Russian in origin! You need a map to determine who reports to whom, etc.
Another one	Pomegranates
Cute school kid	After our meeting with the Commissioner, we went off to a cotton field, put on the bags, and proceeded to pick cotton. Our group of 13 picked 26.26 kilo. It is backbreaking to have to bend over for hours but not that hard to pick. The cotton the villagers pick belongs only to the government. The state operates the removal of seed, manufacture of cotton thread, cotton seed oil, and husks for cattle feed.
Getting our bags	Picking
Even I picked between photos
Weighing the results of our labor	Farm road
After our farm labor experience, we went to the farm house of an upper middle class family in the village. We helped the lady of the house, two of her sister’s in law, one daughter, and grand-daughter make several kinds of pasta filled with corn and onion, mashed potato, or carrot and onion and these were steamed, fried, or baked in a bread oven for our lunch. She also made a large pot of “plov” (pilaf) cooked over a fire made by burning cotton plant remains. It had meat, onions, carrots, rice, and cardamom and whatever else. It was very good and filling.	Lady of the house
Rolling the dough
Collecting the finished product for cooking	Cutting the dough
Granddaughter singing the Uzbek National Anthem
A different variety	Finished product
Wood fire cooking	Cooking the pasta
Feeding the stone oven	Finished
Flattening the bread	Adding a decoration
In the oven	Making Plov
Making Plov	Hungry fire
Bread	Plov
On the way back to our hotel we stopped to look at Chor-Minor, meaning four minarets, with four blue brick minarets and a fake stork nest on top of one. The mosque was once part of a madrassa and is built with Indian-style architecture.	Typical street
Doorway	Chor-Minor

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