Visit to Ashgabad, Turkmenistan and Almaty (Alma Ata), Kazakhstan

Monday, November 10, 1997

Left London, arrived in Istanbul near midnight.

Tuesday, November 11

Arrived in Istanbul. When we go to board flight to Ashgabad, we are bussed to airplane. By the plane there is a stack of luggage for passengers to identify before they are loaded on the plane. Mine was not there. I was told at the door of the plane that it would come and that I would have to identify it. When I could see that they were getting ready to leave, I asked about my bag. I was told that since I was a continuing passenger it was loaded and not stacked outside. But when I got to Ashgabad, the bag was not there.

The flight was three hours, change planes, then another three hours, and arrive at 6 am local time. No, no time to sleep. There were three agents checking passports, but each person took at least three minutes. (I began to time them after I got bored with waiting.) Then there was an equally slow process of filling out custom forms and going through another line. It took about 2 ½ hours to get through the airport reception – and only our flight had landed. Kurban Allaberdiev and his wife Elena were there to meet me. They are 40-ish (I think). Lena speaks English quite well, although this was the first time she had ever had to speak it. We waited around for another hour to meet with a Turkish Air representative about my bag. They took my information and told me to call back the next day. The next flight to Ashgabad is Friday, after I leave, so my first hope for a change of clothes will be in Almaty.

We drove to the hotel and got checked in. it says that it has four stars on the front, but the room is very small and the bed is short and hard. There is a shower but the water is barely warm. Kurban met me at one o’clock and we walked the two blocks to the Climate Institute building for and initial meeting.

Back to the morning; I wanted to take a nap so I would be ready for the afternoon, but had to get settled. I found a bank that would exchange money (the second bank I tried). I changed $150, and found that their largest bill is the 5000 Manat, which is worth about 90 cents. The woman at the bank gave me a huge stack of bills. I zipped them into my coat pocket and went to an open-air market to get a tooth brush, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. There are no stores here – only open stands. I went back to the hotel and got showered and cleaned up, but didn’t have time to sleep. My stomach was starting to feel queasy, so I didn’t try to find lunch.

We met until about 3 pm. I got an overview of the institute and we decided on my schedule for the week. Then Kurban and Lena took me on a drive to see Ashgabad. The driver was a Turkmen. I found that Kurban is also a Turkmen, but he is light like a Russian. We stopped first at the Carpet Museum. One of the displays was a full-size yurt with traditional carpets inside. Kurban said it was like the one he grew up in.

We drove past a row of new, very elaborate hotels. This place reminds me of Las Vegas. It is desert with bare rock mountains on the South. The President of Turkmenistan has appointed himself President for Life. His picture is everywhere. There are statues of him and even one of his mother. One of the carpets in the museum was a family portrait of him and his family. There are policemen at many corners who seem to pull cars over at random. We were pulled over – I never learned why. The policeman let us go only after the driver gave him some money. The driver took us through the poor section of town and stopped at his home. His mother is an old woman, bent over at the waist when she walks. His father is an old guy that looks like a Cossack – with a bald head and native clothes.

They seemed determined to show me every big building in Ashgabad. My stomach was really acting up when they dropped me off – about 6:30 pm. I got my key, ran upstairs, and threw up as soon as I got into my room. Even though I hadn’t slept the night before, I laid awake with chills and fever until probably 5 or 6 am until I finally went to sleep.

Wednesday, November 12

Kurban and Lena met me at 8:30 am on Wednesday for a tour of their two observatories. The first is near town, the second in the mountains near the Iranian border. They have another observatory at the top of a mountain, but it is too close to the border with Iran and I am not allowed to go there.

A woman and young man at the site close to town study sporadic-E (the topic of my doctoral dissertation). They are familiar with my work. It was fun to talk with them. I have an interpreter for the day – a woman whose field is chemistry, but who works part time as an interpreter for an Iranian railroad crew. We then drove south for about an hour. The mountains are bare. There are trees like cottonwoods along the streams by the road, but there is no grass. The observatory is by a little valley full of apple orchards. The staff tend their own little orchard – apples, cherries and apricots – and maintain the equipment. There is no money for doing science. They served a meal on an outdoor table in the late afternoon. It felt a lot like Southern Utah. A woman who works at the institute fixed a rice and chicken dish over an open fire. Everything tastes really good. My stomach was feeling better, and I hadn’t eaten since the airplane.

We got a flat tire on the way home. The spare was low, so the driver got a hand pump and pumped it up. I watched two little boys leading some camels – a great picture, but it was too dark.

Thursday, November 13

The big events on Thursday were meetings with Academician __________, former president of the Academy of Science and founder of ionospheric research here during the Soviet era, and with ____________, who is currently the President of the Academy. (I forgot their names before I had a chance to write them down.) Our paid interpreter couldn’t be there and Lena had to translate. I could tell she was scared to death, but she did a good job. The President said that I was the second Western scientist to visit the Academy.

These diplomatic meetings are interesting. I have to act like the “great man” and say good and intelligent things that make them feel like I am impressed, but without committing the U.S. to anything, while on the inside I am saying, “What in the world is a farm kid like you doing in a spot like this?” I think I said the right things – the local scientists were too nervous about being there to know if I did or not.

I nearly forgot the best part of Thursday – the bazaar. There are a Russian and a Turkmen bazaar in the city – they are the official ones. We went out of town to the real one. it was out in a dusty field surrounded by livestock pens. Women were dressed in bright blues, greens, yellows – all colors, and all bright. Men wore big black woolly hats that look like “afro” hair-dos. We walked around once, and then through the carpets. After word got out that I was buying, I really got a lot of attention. One little guy followed me around with a carpet on his shoulder everywhere I went. Kurban helped negotiate the price of the carpet I decided on down from $220 to $150. Everything is in dollars. We went to the museum to get a certificate so I could take it out of the country. They said that I had a very good carpet.

The institute director invited me to his home for dinner. His wife is an out-of-work physician who speaks good English. He has a nine-year-old daughter - dark and pretty, dainty like the Turkmen women you see on the street. Everyone is small here.

Friday, November 14

I had to be at the airport at 4 am for a 6 am flight. The director and a driver met me at 3:40 am. I had to un-wrap my rug and satisfy the agents at the airport that it was legitimate. I was glad I came early – the check-in counter closed at 5 am. At 5:30 I heard something in Russian on the PA system about Alma Ata, but there was no one at the gate. I got worried and looked around, and found that they had changed gates without announcing the change. We flew in an old Russian jet that looked like a bus – a shelf overhead piled high with people’s things, loose carpet on a metal floor, no assigned seats, seats like old school bus seats, and no knee room.

There is snow at Alma Ata and it is below freezing. (Ashgabad was warm.) Two tall Russians met me – a big change after Turkmenistan. My baggage is not here, but Alex Pogareltsev has learned from the Turkish Air office that it will be here tomorrow. There was a big group from the Institute of the Ionosphere at the hotel to discuss schedules and have lunch. I have corresponded for a year about my research with Galena Khachakjan. I changed some money, and she showed me the bazaar where I bought a pair of socks (very necessary) and where I had my pocket picked for $50. I went to the U.S. embassy to meet the Air Force attaché (an old buddy of Dan McGillen’s) and start working on the problem that my visa expires on the 19^th and my flight home is on the 20^th. (There is no flight on the 19^th.) They said that since the Academy of Science invited me, they are the only ones who can extend the visa. I have to register with them as a foreign national on Monday. I hope I can get it straightened out then. I got back to my hotel and found that my key is missing. I am sure I turned it in at the desk, and they are just as sure that I didn’t. I had them change me to another room – who knows who has the key to the other one – but now my TV doesn’t work again. I hope I can sleep tonight. I am tired enough. I couldn’t go to sleep again last night. I finally gave up and got up and read until I left for the airport. I was dead tired and went to sleep at 7 pm, but then work back up at 9:30 thinking I had slept through the night.

Saturday, November 15

Saturday morning Alex Pogoreltsev tried to get my luggage but was told I had to be with him, so they came and took me to the airport. If you come into the country with your bags, you have to fill out a detailed customs declaration and they search your bags. This time, however, a lady showed us where the lost luggage was stored, we picked mine out and left without even showing any kind of identification. What a system! Afterwards, Igor and Zlata from the seismic institute took me to the historical museum. It was the first time they had been there since the end of the Soviet Union, and they were most interested in the new way that the history was presented.

Sunday, November 16

Galena met me on Sunday for a bus ride to a sports complex and skating stadium in the mountains, and then to a “high school” to meet with a group of students she is teaching to make scientific presentations in English. Each of her students presented a research project to me. We then went to her home to talk about her science. Her daughter left while I was there to go to Tomsk and defend her PhD thesis – a three-day journey by train. It was also her grandson’s birthday. Four little boys were in the apartment having a party.

While I was at the Khachikjan’s the topic of tea and coffee and then religion came up. Galena’s husband and daughter were especially curious. Galena said that it was all nonsense and definitely not scientific. Her daughter, Svetlana, belongs to an “English Speakers” study group that often talks about religion. I told her I would leave a Book of Mormon for her. It turns out that the head of the study group is Arthur Yakovets, the scientist from the Institute who met me at the airport. To make a long story short, I now have an invitation to their study group Tuesday evening, and I am sure that the Church will be the hot topic of the evening.

At the end of the evening, Mr. Khachikjan said he would bet a taxi for me to go back to the hotel. We walked out to the street, flagged down the first car to come along, and gave him 100 Dengi (about $1) to drive me home.

Monday, November 17

Monday I spent the day at the Institute of the Ionosphere. Days like this are hard. I spent a half-hour or so with each person at the Institute hearing about their research and getting their sales pitch for funding – and all the time acting like I knew what they were talking about and trying to ask intelligent questions. They are much more experienced in international “grantsmanship” than the group at Ashgabad. Most of the scientists are Russians, while most in Ashgabad were Turkmen. I can also feel that they are not as close to one another socially as they were in Ashgabad.

Everyone who visits here must register with the government. When Igor went to register me today he also asked to extend my visa. They told me that everything, including my passport, will be back to me on Wednesday at 5 pm. My flight is Thursday morning at 5:30 am, so if something goes wrong and I don’t get my passport back, I am in big trouble.

Tuesday, November 18

Tuesday I spent at the Seismic Institute at the National Nuclear Center. I am sure that I was shown things that during Soviet Union times would have been top secret. The scientists I visited with are working with seismic arrays to monitor the nuclear test ban. Their research is to learn how to distinguish an earthquake from a nuclear explosion. We are funding a study at a site on the Chinese border that is near to the Chinese nuclear test site. We spent much of the time talking about studies of the old Soviet nuclear test site in northeastern Kazakhstan.

I guess I got stood up by the English Club tonight. Arthur said he would meet me at 6 pm. It started snowing quite heavily at about 5 pm – maybe they cancelled it and tried to telephone me. I have been getting a few wrong number phone calls every evening. Maybe his call was sent to the wrong phone also. (As I was writing this the phone rand. It was Arthur. The club cancelled because of bad weather.) Tomorrow we were to go to a cosmic ray station at the top of the mountains (3500m altitude). I am afraid there will be too much snow on the road, and we won’t go.

Wednesday, November 19

It snowed Tuesday evening, so there was no chance to go to the cosmic ray station. Arthur and Olga met me with the jeep and driver, and we drove as far as we could up the canyon. The road became too steep and slick at a power station, so we left the jeep and walked up the road to the top of the ridge where we could see out. It was a narrow gravel road that switched back and forth up the mountain. There was a monument at one particularly steep place where a scientist from the Institute was killed when his car went off the road. In the bottom of the canyon there was a long concrete wall that protected the power station from the flood channel. At the bottom of the wall were two small cement buildings where Japanese prisoners of war lived while they built the wall and a big dm farther up the mountain.

Wednesday evening there was a dinner for me with the Institute scientists at the Academy of Science building. It tasted good – lots of local food: salads, stir-fry, and horse meat appetizers, and steak for the main course – followed by toasts and good conversation. Alex brought my passport and extended visa, so I knew I could leave in the morning.

Thursday, November 20

My flight on Thursday morning was at 5:30, so Alex said we needed to leave the hotel at 2:00! I have learned that you can’t hurry through a Russian airport. We got to the airport at 2:30. The “international terminal” was dark, and people were waiting outside in the snow. The lights came on a little before three, and everyone packed into a small room that lead to customs control. We stood there jammed together with our luggage until nearly 4:30. Occasionally there would be an announcement, but in Kazakh so that not even the Russians understood it. After I got to customs, things went smoothly – then another wait in a big drafty room. We stood in a bud for the ride to the airplane. It was snowing, but they de-iced the plane and we were on our way. It feels good to be in a modern airplane (Lufthansa) with western-style comforts.