SIPA Summer Switchboard

David Trilling, 2nd Year MIA posts from Tajikistan

[David Trilling is a 2nd year MIA at SIPA and is currently in Tajikstan working on a documentary about the heroin trade in Central Asia.]


Tajikistan is a paranoid place. The Soviet Union is still very much alive in many people’s fears and anxieties here. Many people do not like to be photographed, and any dissenting views are whispered as if rumors can come alive and do their nastiest work. For this reason, I don't know what to do with the photos and videos I am accumulating. For now, I hesitate to print any here.

July 5th

Tanya, Tanya and Anya are all in their mid-20s. The live in a little messy house somewhere in the aimless, dusty suburbs of Dushanbe. We met out back, under some pretty grape vines, on a charpoi – “four legs “ – a spare divan on which people eat, drink, relax and, in this case, I can’t help imagine what else. Each woman has sex with about four partners a day and take heroin as many times. Each coupling pays for one dose of heroin (roughly 4 dollars). They are abused, forced to have sex without condoms, beaten and burned with cigarettes, on the run from the police (who rape them days on end when they are arbitrarily arrested), and unable to even have a shower in their sad little home. The only source of running water, when it is on, is a sickly little sink in the front yard that appears also to serve as a toilet.

Through an interpreter, as the three women are Russian speakers and appear to live in that secluded little world of Russians here in Tajikistan, removed from the ruling ethnic group and generally without any rights, I learned about their lives, their habits and their "boredoms," as my translator kept putting it.

They seemed to lack any passion all together and discussed such horrors as the suicide of a husband and the deformity of a baby without apparent emotion. Indeed, Anya seemed possibly mentally retarded and I wonder if she is the product of such a lifestyle.

SIPA, Summer 2007

While summer's official start was last week, SIPA students and recent graduates started their summers in early May 2007. The Summer Switchboard, which started in 2005 and is sponsored by SIPA's blog The Morningside Post, will chronicle the adventures, thoughts and insights of the student body, who are currently spread around the globe. We encourage you to write in and we'll publish your photos and dispatches from around the world: editor(at)themorningsidepost.com.

From Beirut

Before I begin writing how I am experiencing the war agaist Lebanon, I would like to share with you the following article from Robert Fisk, who manages to caputure the sentiments here more eloquently than I will be able to...

A farewell to Beirut
Robert Fisk in Beirut
July 22, 2006

IN THE year AD 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus — headquarters of the Romans' East Mediterranean fleet — was struck by a massive earthquake. In its aftermath, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors — ancestors of the present-day Lebanese — walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed to them.

That was when a giant tsunami returned to swamp the city and kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople to every family left alive.

Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived in Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city.

New York, then Georgia

Hello.  I am in Tbilisi, Georgia.  Having a good time and being productive at Ministry of Defense here.  Was in NYC for the first six weeks of summer, where I was on Reserve orders for the Marines.  Posted a longer piece on my experiences thus far on The Morningside Post.  Back in NYC at the end of August.  Have a good one.  Dan McS.

Addendum - Update from Cyprus

I just wanted to let you all know I'm safe and sound (though going on two hours of sleep in the past 50) in Larnaca, Cyprus. I'm at a hotel right on the beach, which is shocking considering that Cyprus is in the midst of tourist season and also getting thousands of refugees and evacuees from Lebanon right now. We lucked out, I guess.

The evac out of Beirut was a bit rocky. I don't quite have a whole huge update in me just now (cf: lack of sleep), but here's the (mostly) bare facts:

We were told by AUB administration around 10:00 AM Beirut time yesterday that we were having a meeting that day at 1:00 PM, and to bring our bag (we were allowed only one that we could carry ourselves). At 1:00 PM, we were told that we were in fact evacuating by buses at 3:00, that the AUB students would be getting a full refund on their expenses for the summer (some $3600 each), and to be ready to go at least a half hour early.

At just before three we were herded onto the buses and driven to the Beirut Port and, after a long wait, were loaded onto a Norwegian freighter along with several other busloads of people heading for Cyprus. The trip itself was fairly uncomfortable; the ship was a freighter, and didn't have facilities for hundreds of people. There was food and water, but only about 20 crew to pilot the ship and distribute and do crowd control; things were chaotic, and people were pretty unhappy. I didn't sleep at all - the top deck was cold and windy, and below decks was stuffy and heavy on the flies. Absolutely beautiful clear night sky from the top deck, though, and sailing out at sunset had it's own  special grandeur; never lose track of the good amidst the bad, I say.

From Russia with...

MIA Seond-year Doug McGowan recently submitted this post on his experiences at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.  Sounds like very interesting work.  See you in September, Doug.

He writes:

I'm working in the US Moscow Embassy for the Political-Military Section reporting on Central Asian and Caucasus Multilateral Security Organization developments.  I've been working extensively
on the Collective Security Treaty Organizations' Collective Rapid Deployment Force, the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations' Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) and numerous other security
organizations operating in these two distinct areas.

Yalla Bye

By Ben Ryan

No self-respecting blog can go long without cat-blogging. We're leaving, so this is all from Beirut. My thoughts are with those who have no way out, and no voice in the current conflict. I hope for a speedy conclusion to this whole mess, and a speedy recovery for the Lebanese people. I know I'll be back as soon as possible. For now, as the AUB kids say, "Yalla, Bye!"

Beirut - 7/17

By Ben Ryan

(I'm hearing some more disturbing things today, and I've decided that, unless things change in the next couple hours, as they evacuate us in the next couple days I'll be leaving Beirut. I'm enjoying my time here and learning a lot, but it's not worth getting taken hostage over. Educational experiences are only worth something if you get to use it later. I'm not sure where I'll be going from here - there's talk of Jerusalem, various European cities, or just straight home. I'll update family and friends when I know what's going on. Thanks all, and here's what I had written from this morning!

One further update: I'm now pretty glad I moved into the dorms here. I've been noticing that more and more folks are moving up from the south, getting out of the way of Israeli attacks. From talking to others around here, more folks are wearing conservative or "traditional" garb. And most of the restaurants and cafes are playing Al Manar on the TV screens. After hanging out on campus tonight, folks got the bright idea to go to De Prague, a few blocks into Hamra from AUB. The group I was with got about two blocks and the atmosphere began raising the hackles on our necks. One guy waiting on a street corner at night is not weird. Several guys at multiple street corners is. A large group of 20-something men at a sidewalk cafe at night is not weird. Not drunk or listening to music is. One guy walked past us and coughed "Stop, stop" into his hand, and we got the hell out of there, and warned the others to head back as well. There's a line between adventurous and stupid, and going out after dark around here is now over that line.)

There has been a haze of cloud and smog over the coast and mountains to the east of Beirut since I arrived, but Sunday was the first officially cloudy day in Beirut proper. Much of that, of course, is not humidity but smoke kicked up from the goings on down south.

Beirut Update - 7/16

By Ben Ryan

Quick update today, as I'm trying to get some real work done at the paper and figure out what I'm going to be doing over the next couple days. The offices here are a little emptier now, as our translators are all working from home. One woman came in teary eyed - she accepted a hug, but didn't want to talk about whatever it was that was wrong. One of our reporters has a grandmother in the south, in a town that Israel has been bombing on a daily basis. She was able to convince her parents to move out of their home in the southern suburbs at the beginning of this week, fortunately. All the interns are still here, surprisingly. We all hung out at a huge empty apartment in Hamra last night and listened to the bombs drop, watching DVDs of Friends on the big screen TV there.

The plan this morning was to go to the Palm Beach Hotel and go up to the roof - they have a pool there that's free to get in, they serve champagne, and there's a panoramic view of the city - with Glenny and Lena, until recently attending the Arabic program at AUB, Veronika Bartosch (SIPA-ISP '06) and a couple of the Daily Star staff, but after hearing about the rocket attacks on Haifa we decided it wasn't the best idea. We're not sure what will happen right now.

Changes to our blog

Looking to the left of the screen you'll see a montage of photosfrom Flickr. They are random and simply a selection of all public photos stored using the Flickr photosharing service.  If you use flickr just place the words SIPA and Columbia as tags against your photos and they'll appear here.