امیدوارم که شما برای چیز خوشحال جستجو نمیکنید...

(First off, if you’re reading this on November 22, and you’re in the US, get the hell off my blog, and spend time with your family. It’s Thanksgiving, celebrate it.)

Let’s talk about friends for a minute. Everybody has friends, right? Those people you can talk to about anything, have a good time with, and all that other stuff that makes you feel good and blah, blah, blah.

Now let’s talk about how that concept is a…difficult one in Tajikistan.

First off, I want to make one thing clear: This is not solely my thinking. I've heard from (short-list) Americans, the British, Russians, and Iranians, so I’m gonna guess that there’s some truth to this realization. Second, this isn't universal. I've met people here who I consider friends, both Tajik and otherwise, so I’m not trying to stereotype.

But actually, there is the constant feeling that, when you meet someone and talk to them, that if you agree to talk to them again, it’s not going to be in the context of friendship. Now, I’m lucky in that I’m both a guy and my country of origin is fairly hard to determine (say the Tajiks). So most of the time, I only get asked for visas. Visas and green cards. Which at first was amusing, but now which has honestly turned into a ridiculous pain in the ass (to be covered later).

(Also, I’m luckily not a woman, because men don’t try to have sex with me. Can’t stress how awesome that is.)

Part of it is cultural, which I understand. You have your family, your massive, incredibly close-knit families, friends are kind of secondary. And I’m not going to bash that because, living in one of those large, close-knit families, it’s kind of nice. But that has its limits, especially as someone not from Tajikistan who doesn't have family here. Likewise, early complaints I might’ve had about people only wanting to speak English are significantly less important (I mean I only want to speak Farsi/Tajiki, so I’m not much better).

But there’s a difference. If I meet someone in the park, or a restaurant, and start talking to them, yes I might want to speak in Persian, but I don’t really care what we talk about. It’s more just having someone different to talk to. Meanwhile, as I've learned from a lot of the people I've met in my first three months here, people want something more concrete from me. Either a visa or a job opportunity or whatever. And it’s annoying because now I find myself not wanting to give new people a chance because I've mentally programmed myself to talk to people once, and then never give out contact information or anything like that because it’ll lead to one of these situations.

(deep breath)

Not all Tajiks are like this. I will quite openly say that the Tajiks I have met through AIESEC have all, and I do mean all, been totally awesome. And there are a few people I've met multiple times on the street or around that are far friendlier than is the norm. But ultimately, it’s those moments when you realize how hard friends are to come by, here and in general, that makes eight months here seem that much more daunting.

---

On the other hand, I get to learn how to make osh today, and I can always drown my sorrows in goat and oily fried rice.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.