The Most Blending-in Person Ever?

While enjoying the sun in a park in Tashkent, a small French speaking group with an Uzbek guide sat down next to me. The guide started telling a very interesting story about the history of the region, and obviously, I stayed and listened. Wearing my Puma sneakers and jeans and top of European brands, I thought I screamed foreigner. I also assumed that it was quite evident that I was listening to the 20 minute lesson of Uzbek history and religion. So when they left, I nodded and mumbled a “merci” to the guide. I guess he did not hear what I said because he smiled back at me and said “Salom Aleikum”.

Even if I might be taken for Russian, I sure do not look Uzbek! But this happens all the time. I can hardly be in a country for more than a day before locals come up to me and ask for directions. It’s incredible! I, myself, spot foreigners at miles distance. Would I not constantly be told how people remember me from the most unlikely places (a while ago, I even met a person who recognized me from the supermarket), I would be worried that I am enormously grey and invisible. But I guess I am just blending in. Like a nationality chameleon?

Last Weekend in Uzbekistan

Written on March 22, 2008

After almost three weeks in Uzbekistan, I am getting ready to go home. Not because my stay here has not been nice but because I feel like we have don what we came to do. And I have to admit that after five weeks of traveling, I am starting to miss Chisinau and everyone there. But I really have had a wonderful time here in Uzbekistan. I have met so many people and learned so much, not the least from my colleagues. I hope that I get to go back to this very quiet country that in so many ways seems so isolated from the rest of the world and where life seem to be acceptable but without passion and curiosity. Where despite laughter there seem to be a bit of melancholy in the air.

Except when the women dance. Then the room is lit up and the energy is there. And the women seem truly alive. It is fantastic!

Finally, one of the best discoveries was that I now get around with the little Russian that I know. It really facilitates traveling in this region and opens up more than ten new countries for me.

For more information on what we did in terms of work, please visit the Country Office’s website where I have written an article on one of the events that we organized.

I’m back…

I have not forgotten about my blog, I just have had an immense amount of work these past months and little access to internet outside of my office. So even though I wrote some texts in early January, I haven’t gotten around to post them until now.

Right now, I am in the middle of reading John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and even though I have only gotten through half the book, so far it is by far the best book I have read in a long, long time and probably the scariest one ever. Coming back to consumerism that I wrote about below, I should have added its impacts on international relations and domestic politics in addition to my concerns about environmental and human rights impacts. “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” is a scary, scary book about how Western corporate interests have shaped the history of too many countries and hence the lives of far too many individuals throughout the world. If you read only one book this year, read this one!

Do We Really Need All This Stuff?

In Stockholm there has been a small local protest going on this winter in one of its inner city districts. (Small in size, but it actually reached the Financial Times.) The issue that has raised these heated feeling is a plan to build a new indoor mall in an area traditionally characterized by local shops, cafes and restaurants. The experience we have with gallerias in Stockholm is that chains tend to take over and the local shops around disappear over time. And apparently, the inhabitants just have had enough of H&Ms and all the other Swedish chains that are mandatory in every shopping mall around the country, and want to keep the local urban environment.

In another survey, Swedish citizens were compared with those of the US and Russia in terms of attitudes and values and the results showed that the Swedes do value money and income as much as the Russians and the Americans. People with high incomes were not admired to the same extent in Sweden as people with knowledge, people with a lot of leisure time and the possibility to control your own work situation, and people that are good parents. The conclusion of the survey was that this is because Sweden has reached a so called post-materialistic stage in which other qualities in life such as personal development, etc, are higher valued. And it is true to a certain extent, but whether it depends on an advanced development stage or if it is due to almost a century of collectivism, social democracy and an even longer history of the so called “Jante Law” according to which no-one should stick out too much or believe themselves better than others, is another discussion. Regardless, I am not sure if I have been to any rich country where people are so concerned about environmental impacts and values nature as highly as in Sweden. Even as a kid more than 25 years ago, I had environmental classes in pre-school were we learned how to act in the forest or by the sea in order to not harm the wildlife and to not leave any traces behind. Before Christmas, a Swedish news paper even gave advice on how people could tackle their stress about global warming. And yet, I know few countries that where the people consume so much.

Every time I come to Stockholm it strikes me how much people shops. All the time. It might be that the larger cities in Sweden are an exception, but walking around in the main shopping areas an ordinary Saturday or Sunday afternoon, everyone you meet seem to be carrying several shopping bags in each hand. And not only are people well-dressed, but people are trendy. And the thing with trends is that they change all the time. But it has been possible for us to follow them thanks to chains like H&M, Zara, and Mango. We can even change our homes according to new interior design trends thanks to IKEA. Bad quality of course, but most of the time, I don’t even think people expect things to last for a longer period of time. They only want it to last for as long as it is trendy. Or just to have something while they look for something better. And if things against expectations break before we are done using it, we just through it away and buy a new one. As opposed to here in Moldova where people cannot afford to do that. This summer, I bought a pair of Euro 20 made-in-China-shoes in one of the Swedish chain shoe stores. Nice but not very long lasting as they were made out of some kind of synthetic silk. They broke in the seams after a few weeks, and I planned to just use them as they were throughout the season and then through them away, while I promised myself that hereafter I would only buy high quality footwear. But when my colleague spotted my broken shoes, she asked me why I did not just take them to the shoe repairer across the street. So I went over with my shoes and ended up paying a dollar to get them repaired. While I was there, I saw persons coming in, repairing their umbrellas. The same types that Bengalis sell for four euros a piece at every metro exit in Rome during rainy days. Those that break at the slightest wind blow and you therefore end up buying a new one of every other time it rains. You end up buying a new one because it is cheaper to do that than to have it repaired. But I seriously think there is something this picture.

It is in human nature to strive for more and this strive is obviously what has driven development from the beginning of time to now. Good health, material wealth and not the least unprecedented opportunities are all given to us due to this. But what about all the negative effects? All the negative environmental impacts and in certain cases even violations of human rights, just because we need to consume? My only question is: do we really need all this stuff? Isn’t there anything else we can put our money on that still contributes to economic development across the world? Or will we have to wait until the costs of environmental externalities and the future value of natural resources are included in the price before we change our consumption habits?

So Fifty Percent of the Population Simply do not Matter?

The other day when watching TV, I saw Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama making some statements on the outcome of the recent trial in Saudi Arabia. (I won’t go into details, but for those of you who have not followed this particular news, but here is an article: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/17/saudi.rape.victim/) I felt a tiny sense of relief that someone finally was at least reacting. Though not nearly enough of course. President Bush for example did not criticize what had happen, reluctant to upset a much needed ally. Instead he said, like so many others when cases like these come up, that this was an internal matter for Saudi Arabia. 

But why is it that even in my part of the world, where women got the right to vote almost 100 years ago, do careers, become politicians and men take part of the responsibility for children and the household, men’s rights in other countries are still valued higher than women’s? Would this have passed this easily if this punishment would have been for a Muslim man being driven by a Christian or Jewish man?

In 1999 or 2000, I remember an e-mail being circulated about women in Afghanistan. I had of course read occasional reports in the papers about the horrors that especially women endured under the Taliban regime. This e-mail encouraged me to forward it to Mary Robinson and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as a protest. A few days later, I got an e-mail back from Ms. Robinson, explaining that due to al the e-mails they had received, their server was collapsing (remember that this was seven years ago…). But she also wrote that the OHCHR was very concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and had tried to raise the issue with its member states but that there was no real interest among the members to do something about it. So she asked us who had send the e-mail to instead mail the OHCHR a paper letter that they could bring to the member states to show the broad public opinion on the matter. About a year later, 9/11 shocked the world and NATO went in in respons to the attack on the U.S.

In 2003 it was time again. This time it was the regime in Iraq that was under criticism, accused to support al-Qaida. The European and some of the American public were not so convinced. And so the U.S. government started pointing at the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and claiming the human rights violations by the regime as a justification for going to war. To this I agree fully (though I am a pacifist and do not believe in war as a solution) – the Iraqi regime had to be brought to justice. With one of my best friends being Iraqi Kurd, the horrors that happened under Saddam Hussein have not escaped me. But when Condoleezza Rice was asked during the European and US protests prior to the attack if she did not care about the public opinion in our countries, she simply justified their plans by saying that the Iraqi population did not have the luxury to go out and demonstrate their opinion. And this while supporting Saudi Arabia where fifty percent of the population does not have the right to vote or even to drive a car. Where fifty percent of the population can be punished by the official justice system for being by themselves in the company of a non-related man. Where they do not have the right to a surgery without a man’s permission, or where they do not have the same rights as men to testify in courts.

Violations of women’s rights are not the same as violations of human rights. It should be but it is not. Not anywhere in the world. Violations of human rights are political and at least more or less acknowledged, protested against and many times sanctioned against. Systematic and state supported violations of women’s rights on the other hand are a cultural matter. It is a domestic issue, something that exists due to cultural and religious heritage and should not be respected as such. (I was actually at one point censured by FAO’s Office of the Director General for mentioning the lack of certain rights for women in a country progress report.) Even when economic rights are violated like for the white farmers in Zimbabwe or oil companies in Venezuela, Western governments are protesting more against this than the complete lack of legal protection for women in certain countries. Why is this?

Partly, I think it has to do with habits and how we are taught to see the world. Men are the norm. Men equal the population of a country. Not for us as individuals in our own environment or perhaps not in our countries, but when we look at environments that are foreign to us. It becomes very obvious when you watch TV. A while ago, I watched a news-clip on football in Brazil, the country where football is almost like a religion. The reporter told the story about how the kids start playing on the beach and on the street from before they start school, how children compete to get on teams, how the big football players are being national heroes and how everyone loves going to football matches. And yet, all I saw were basically boys and men. Well, I actually did see one little girl in the background at a beach they filmed, but other than that, I did not see a single girl or women play football in that report. How can this be “everyone”?? Brazil has been very slow in developing professional football for women and has not been very supportive of the national team despite their success. Also, currently, it does not have a national women’s league and the world’s best female player Marta, who is from Brazil, is playing in the Swedish league. So how can a reporter even make a clip like that? Well, I guess in this person’s world, women do not even play football and hence, it was never even thought of.

And more importantly, how many times do we not see protests from non-western countries on the news and the speaker talking about how many people that was out and what the public opinion is. But when you watch the film-clips, all you see are men. In some regions I see a few women, but what about the others? Even my strong, full-of-opinion Kurdish friend tells me that this is just because this is not the tradition in her part of the world. But does that mean that women there do not care? Are we saying like the Swiss used to say, that they will just vote like their husbands? Do women in these countries not have any opinions on their own? Are their lives and days so much like there husbands’ and their sons’ that they have exactly the same political opinions? Is it likely to believe that a 14 year old boy has more political views than his 40 year old mother? Do young women not have any hopes and dream for their own lives that would make them think any different from their fathers and their brothers? Is that really what we think?

That men are the norm is very obvious also when watching certain commercials (though I will not get in to a discussion about sexism in commercials, I’ll save that for some other time). I watch BBC World daily, and even though I find most of their news and documentaries etc of interest, it is obvious that I am not the target group. A 33 year old northern European, with a fairly high education in social sciences, a professional post for the world’s largest development institution, travelling regularly both through work and outside, and working closely with politician and policy makers. A bit of a cliché, I know, because I almost fully fit in to the little stereotype. Except for one thing: I am a women. Yes, I hear your protests. I know that there are more women than me in this sector. I don’t know the exact figures but the impression I have when people come in from DC is that we are many in my organization, though I am not sure that it is 50-50. But I am not complaining. Neither does the private sector depress me so much anymore, at least not in Sweden, the US or London (though there is still a lot more that could be done of course). And according to a recent BBC World business travel program, 40% of the world’s business travellers are women. So why then are the commercials for financial institutions, travelling, new papers, cars, and almost everything else they advertise for on this channel so male dominated?? Yes, women are present but they are the airhostess, the receptionist, and so on. In general, I do not believe that there are so many biological differences between men and women and that most gender differences that exist are rather due to culture and traditions and our narrow mindset. Hence, I can identify myself equally well with a man as with a woman. But being used to an environment where gender diversity is strived for, I still react when I see all-men commercials targeting the business people. Or men-only news clips, claimed to represent the entire population. Next time that you see it, I hope you will too. Just like our former foreign minister Anna Lindh’s nine year old son did, when she brought him to a foreign minister meeting in Brussels once. When they entered the room, he looked around and then he asked: “Mom, when are the women coming?” Well, I guess he has to wait at least another 10 years for them. But at least he saw that they were absent!

Uzbekistan

Written on November 4, 2007

In the spring of 2004, I was sitting in a police station in central Stockholm, waiting to pick up a new passport. My old was about to expire a few months later and as I was going to the U.S. to visit Anthony, I did not want to risk getting stuck in customs.

While sitting there, I was flipping through my old passport. I had gotten it prior to my college year in 1994-1995 and my student visa was in there along with stamps from a variety of countries from Estonia and Greece to Guatemala and Honduras. I remember thinking that considering how many countries that I had seen, how many places that I had visited and how many interesting people I had met during these past 10 years that my old passport had been with me, how much did I not have to look forward to? Especially given that during most of that time, I had been a student with temporary jobs, and that now, I had a well-paid job, six weeks paid vacation and tons of opportunities to travel. But not even in my wildest imaginations while sitting there at the police station, waiting for my turn, did I ever think that I would end up in Rome for such a long time, move to a country like Moldova and go on weekend trips to Odessa, nor that I would get jobs that would take me to places like Kyiv, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania and now Uzbekistan!

To be here feels almost surreal (though this is obviously more due to the fact that I am here than the country itself). After a very intensive week with meetings with range of people from government officials to farmers, producers and international organizations, I went on a field trip yesterday with the national farmers’ association. We went to the region outside of Tashkent and visited farms, the association’s regional office and even a 600 year old mosque. The trip was not organized for me specially, but for the managers of the association’s local offices (all of them farmers), whom had attended training at their HQ for a few days, and they invited me to come along on this learning tour. For me, this was a perfect opportunity to talk to farmers and get their views on the issues that I am here to look at.

After the trip, my translator Andrei took me to the local food market (which was fantastically well-organized compared to the one in Chisinau) and guided me around Tashkent a bit.

The country is both what I expected and not. Situated along the old Silk Road, I think I expected it to be more oriental, but from what I understand, cities like Samarkand and Bukhara are more so. It is however as vast as I expected and with that harsh feeling that the desert landscape gives. Traces of the Soviet Union and the Russian domination are of course still present in both architecture and some ways of life. I always find it a bit fascinating, and especially in a country like this where the original culture and art is so fundamentally different. It is like the Soviet Union meeting Arabian Nights… (But perhaps that is the same as the traces western-style capitalism that is spreading in countries like China and Malaysia and its contrasts to their traditional societies?)

People also drink as much tea as one could expect with a lot of traditions surrounding the tea ritual. The food seems to be an important part of life, and although the majority of the majority of the population is Muslim, so does vodka.

The wild nature seems beautiful and Andrei, who is a mountain bike rider on his spare time, told me that there are great mountain trails just about an hour from Tashkent.

The less nice part is of course the Aral Sea. If you ever doubt the severity of human impact on the environment, look at satellite pictures over it from 30 years ago and now – maps are being redrawn to show its real size!

For those who do not know anything about Uzbekistan, and perhaps even have difficulties with placing it on the map, it can be worth mentioning that it is the second largest cotton exporter in the world and the fifth largest producer. So next time you wear some clothing on which it says “Made in China” or “Made in Turkey”, it is likely that the cotton was grown here in Uzbekistan. The country is also producing some of the best fruit in the region and possibly in the world, so with the right standards and certification systems in place, we might eat some of their fruit in a few years.

As always when I travel outside the Western world, I have met extremely friendly and generous people and I have been invited to so many farmers all over the country for my next trip that I really hope I have the opportunity to come back soon!

Kyiv Again

Written on November 3, 2007

I am now in Kyiv since last Monday. I came for some tringing in financial management and disbursements. Perhaps not the most exciting topic in my opinion, but very useful for future work.

Being back is nice. I think that the first time I was here, the city was a little overwhelming for me. I am after all a small-town girl now after more than a year in Chisinau! But this time, I have had more opportunities to look at the actual city, and though the whether has been terrible most of the time that I have been here, I find the city really beautiful. It is strange that this large country is so unknown for us in Western Europe. Around the year 1000, Kyiv was actually the second largest city in Europe in terms of population only after Paris. And in terms of size, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe after Russia. And yet, it has been quite isolated in terms of the spread of culture, and probably much more influenced by other countries and especially Russia. However, just like with Moldova, it is nice to come here and discover a new country with a different culture, tradition and habits, and especially one which has some pieces of its history in common not only with its neighbour Moldova but also with Sweden. It is like adding another piece to the European puzzle of how we all are connected.

Also this time have my colleagues invited me to their places for dinners and taken me out in the city over the weekend. I hope I pick up these habits! (Though I guess I have to learn to cook first before inviting colleagues over for dinners…)

I also get to practice Russian here. My Russian teacher Natalia would be proud to know that I had my first conversation in Russian with a taxi driver here the other day. It wasn’t a very complicated conversation. We spoke about the where I was from, that I was in Kyiv for work, that I normally work in Chisinau and that the whether was really lousy. Of course, my Russian is still not good enough for me to tell Natalia this story!

September in Chisinau

Lazy, lazy Åsa… I know, not too many blog postings lately. I have not really gotten the habit of writing on a regular basis. My friend has an excellent blog (I won’t say who because she prefers to be anonymous). It is really funny, a bit like Bridget Jones’ Diary but without the tedious focus on diets, and she updates it three times a day! I guess mine is neither funny nor updated often enough, but I will try to at least keep it alive.

So a short recap of my life during this past month. As I wrote in August, a drought hit Moldova and with it came a lot of work for me since the majority of my time is focused on the agricultural sector. However, I am also involved in a number of cross cutting issues such as governance and anti-corruption, more strategic and results oriented work, and now our office’s work with migration has also ended up on my desk. There are a lot of things happening in all these areas right now, so my work schedule is quite intensive at the moment. But I like that and I learn a lot, which I still think is an important part of my work. And equally important, it is going fairly well which is always increases my hunger to do more. What are we achieving on the ground? Well, I that is for me to find out as my work proceeds. Most of our other projects here in Moldova are successful in terms of impacts and hopefully the ones that I am involved in will be equally so or better.

But my life is not all work. Three weeks ago, I went to Odessa again. The city was as beautiful as the last time, and perhaps even more so now in the middle of the summer. I also swam in the Black Sea for the first time in my life.

Last week, I was in Rome visiting friends. It was very nice and I went to the beach several times. I am happy I did, because now when I came back to Chisinau, the summer is over and cold winds are sweeping in. I think I will have to start using a jacket next week and the days of summer skirts and sandals are definitely over.

Rome was lovely as always. It actually felt like coming home, but more because of friends and all the people I know there, and because of the fact not too much has changed since I left, than the city itself. After three days in the traffic and facing the Romans’ self centred me-me-me, I couldn’t care less about anyone else!!! behaviour in the city (an apology to my Roman friends – hope you are not offended), I realized that I am not yet ready to move back.

In the beginning of this week, I got the sad news that my grandmother had passed away. She was 97 years old, so in a way it was expected. But she was also my last grandparent alive and a person in my life, so even if it the circle of life, it is still a sad loss for me. It is also in times like these that I find it difficult to be away from my family. I will go to Sweden for the funeral and I am looking forward to seeing them then.

Tonight, I am going to see a qualification match for the Euro 2008 between Moldova and Norway (football obviously). Who I will cheer for? Moldova of course!!