The road to Kurgan Teppa

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We wake early to take a 2.5 hour trip and a visit to our partner Ghamkhori in the south of Tajikistan. We’re all feeling a little sick, and being crammed into two Riva 4x4s with loads of luggage isn’t helping matters.

As we exit the city we see a Soviet tank mounted on a cement plinth – its turret pointing menacingly towards anyone choosing to visit Dushanbe. We drive past a huge dilapidated market, and through a roadside police checkpoint without incident… in Tajikistan people are stopped by the police every few minutes. It’s an easy way for the police to supplement their meagre incomes.

Pretty soon we’re out of the city and amongst some stunning mountain scenery. As with any journey in Tajikistan, we pass building after building that has been part finished or destroyed. Nothing seems intact anymore. Our translator points out an old vineyard… back in the Soviet era the region was famous for its wine… but the vines were destroyed during the civil war of 1992 to 1997. The war cost up to 100,000 lives and was the most violent of conflicts within the post-Soviet republics.

The mix of stunning scenery and economic collapse continues. We drive past what looks like an old military base. There are bi-planes and an old helicopter, all covered in tumbleweed. Despite this, we’re amused to see that the place is still guarded. Tajikistan has a conscript army but conscription is easily avoided with the right bribe to the right official. So these poor guards not only have nothing to do, they’re from the very poorest Tajik families and have no choice in being there.

The mountain scenery changes from snowy-white to dirt-brown and we begin to pass through more villages. Each place has dogs and livestock running across the road causing us to brake regularly.

We stop to rest the vehicles and Amanda is out like a shot filming footage for a video diary she is compiling that shows the nature of the country’s collapse. Everywhere we go children stop in their tracks to look at us. We’re not sure whether it’s because we’re wearing so many layers of clothes that they think we look strange or whether they’re just not used to visitors from abroad. The houses around us are little more than shacks. Try as I might, I simply cannot imagine how hard life must be in this country. Yet what we are witnessing right now is the normal experience for the majority of Tajikistan’s 6.7 million people – 80% of the country lives below the poverty line.

We continue and Catherine passes me her iPod. The track ‘Dirty Old Town’ by The Pogues is playing on it and I listen silently as we press on through the villages, suddenly feeling the cold in my bones. These dirty old towns are what poverty is really about – I cannot believe there is any such thing as poverty in the UK anymore. Hardship, yes. Poverty, no.

We arrive in Kurgan Teppa along a broken tarmac road. In amongst grey worn out tenement blocks we find the offices of our partner Ghamkhori – this is no rich NGO spending development money on nice offices. This is a grassroots organisation right in amongst the people they serve. The director of Ghamkhori, Bahodur Toshmatov (39), welcomes us. He’s a big burly man whose father was high up in the local communist party when he was a child – he looks like the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to pick an argument with (no bad thing when dealing with local officials). But his welcome for us is warm and he leads us into the scruffy apartment block for green tea and biscuits.

He begins his introduction to Ghamkhori by explaining the power in the area has been off for three days – throughout Eid – and the lights had come on just 10 minutes before our arrival...