The Arid Zone
(By Shaheen Khan)
Sitting in Central Tashkent, where huge fountains are built to counter the summer heat, one can never remember that it is summer and 40+C temperature. You only feel the pleasant cool breeze, at times with droplets of water, and see only happiness around you. As Uzbekistan had Soviet rule for 70 years, you can see Uzbeks, Russians, Mongols, Koreans, Turks, Greek with their distinct features, totally uninhibited, and having fun in the water or on the lawns. No one can believe Uzbekistan has a water problem.
Or looking out of your flat on the third floor, and seeing a water tanker diligently wash the road passing in front of the building, every morning at 6 a.m., for the President Islam Karimov to drive daily in his black BMW to his office after 8.30, you cannot imagine Uzbekistan has a water problem.
Or even when the maid leaves both the taps open in the bath room on the first floor while washing it, to go and check the gate at quite a distance to see who rang the bell, one hardly believes there is any water shortage in Uzbekistan. Infact you get to see water everywhere in Tashkent.
But when you travel to Nukus and make a journey by vehicle to Muynak, you find out the water shortage. You travel for hours on straight roads, with snow-laden grassy stretches, which actually is salt when you inspect it. You cross the Amu Darya, with a long bridge, but see water shrunken to less than one third of the river, with big stretches of white sand on the sides. You travel on hilly, desert-like area, with strange graveyards, but can’t see any village or dwelling for miles around. Getting close to Muynak, you see the same grassy stretches, but this time with the white saline looking like snow, and pond-like puddles. These you are told is the water logging.
Muynak is a small clean town, where water is distributed through the pipeline daily. Questioning the people, it is not enough for their daily needs, but now they have got used to it. This was on the out-skirts of Aral Sea in the past, and thriving with fish business. One cannot see the Aral Sea from Muynak anymore, but even if you go to edge where it used to be, you will have to travel a 100 kms in the sand bed to be able to see it. Special permission is still required for Muynak, as this was a closed area, because of the biological weapons factory on Vozrazhdenie Island (first discovered by Gary Powers in 1961 when he flew over Aral Sea in his U2 spy plane)15. People of Muynak joke that as the island is no more an island, and the wind is constantly blowing the sand and dust inland, soon they will be mutating and transforming into rats or other unimaginable species.
As Tashkent is rich and pleasant, so is Karakalpakstan poor and bleak. You will find a three storey departmental store in Nukus totally empty now with a few cheap commodities in a corner of the ground floor. The daily bazaars held by the people of the surrounding areas are more fun to visit as you can get Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Turkish material at very low price.
When you visit the villages of Karakalpakstan, they are built with the same plan, organized into proper streets, with a school, and a hospital. All the houses are concrete, with utilities like gas, electricity, telephone but no water. Water for daily need is distributed from resouviers built away from the villages, through pipelines. But the pumping stations and pipelines are all in dire need of maintenance. If originally there were five water stations, only one is operating now, because there is not much water to distribute. Everyone, rich and poor alike, use the pit latrines. Water for plants is distributed through drains, but the people complain that as it is the run-off water from the irrigation, it is very salty and not good for the plants or trees.
People in these villages have the basic necessities as provided by the Soviet government, but they have no money. Very often, people would have patches sown into their garments as they were very poor. The water was stored in the houses and in the streets, in concrete well-type of holdings, made of the concrete pipes used in the sewerages. They would be covered by a concrete slab. The water in it was too obviously dirty, but they had no awareness that they should boil it before consuming it. Some people who could afford had hand pumps installed. According to them, they can find water after trying a few places, as water which they dig is not only very saline, but very often oily because of the underground oil belts. They said the oily water could drive a bike.
Inspite of their poverty the rural Uzbek people are very hospitable. On their dinner tables you will find more vodka than water. A very strange custom, which never failed to amuse me, was that, starting with the host and hostess, they have to make a toast to everyone on the table, and drink it with “Rahmatullil Alameen” instead of “Cheers”. If there are 10 or 20 guests, they have to toast that many times even during working day time, and still perform their duties normally. 100 percent of adults were often highly educated, but now you find children in labour jobs and no education.
In the rural areas, and even on the out-skirts of Tashkent, people were having shortage of gas supply, when according to them in the past it never happened. Gas, electricity, telephone, and water were nearly free for all citizens. Mobile phone connection and internet was very expensive. A government teacher was earning only Rs.750 equivalent per month, but she/he would get subsidized rations, train/bus coupons etc.
The major businesses in Tashkent city belonged to daughters or relatives of Karimov, and employees of past KGB. Even the common housing system of flats, had better and more spacious flats for the KGB employees.
Water or no water, Uzbekistan is a place to visit. Just like they say, ‘a true collision of cultures”.
15 Giles Wittell – Central Asia, the Practical Handbook