I really enjoyed visiting Tajikistan. Unfortunately we only had about 24 hours in that country. The city Khujand was exceptionally clean, the people were incredibly friendly. The bad news is they basically have an autocratic government. They do have a constitution. They have a bicameral legislature. Women certainly seem to enjoy equal rights. However, the president has been in office since 1994. He has eliminated all opposition. The government is corrupt. He’s supposed to be on his last term of office. It remains to be seen what’s going to happen in two years when that term is up. Tajikistan like the other countries I am visiting has definitely benefited from being part of the Soviet Union. Of course that has its negative aspects too because Stalin killed many people.

I really don’t know what I was expecting when I came on this trip. I’ve traveled in places like Jordan and Egypt, which were obviously very poor. I saw slums, dirty streets, beggars. I haven’t seen any of that in these countries. Tajikistan’s GDP is the lowest of the five countries. It is a lower middle income country with declining poverty. They are really trying to develop a tourist economy.

People here are so incredibly friendly. They stop us so they can take pictures of themselves with us. As we go by kids wave at us and say hello. I have been having a lot of problems with my knee and going up and downstairs is very difficult. You can’t believe the number of people that are trying to help me. We did spend one day on the bus though we did make multiple stops. So we got into the rural areas. They were mostly clean except I saw number places were a lot of water bottles were dumped. That was really sad again. People in the rural areas are just as friendly.

As you drive down the streets, there are walls with doors in them. Most houses aren’t open to the street at all. If you go into the through the door, you usually wind up in a courtyard. Housed are multigenerational. Tonight we ate at a home that had four generations living under one roof.