Jarrett Basedow's blog

One weekend morning, I walked into the kitchen of the house here in Garm to see what I could scrounge up for breakfast. I smiled when I noticed there was coffee ready.

My previous housemate was often up before me and I’d wake to find all sorts of good surprises. I did my customary check to see how my protracted battle with my sworn enemies – the ants – was going. Not well. But then I noticed there was something else sitting by the stove.

A pan filled with some sort of batter. “Fikr mekuned, Jonibek – think, what could this be?” I asked myself. My still-sleepy mind flashed back to the previous weekend, when we’d enjoyed some delicious French toast. “Didn’t that have some sort of batter, and didn’t Amy show me how to dip it and grill it up?”

Excited, I cut some slices of bread and dipped them in the batter.

A spread laid out for guests in Kashot, Tajikistan. Photo: Jarrett Basedow/Mercy Corps

“Hmmmm.this batter seems a bit thicker, but whatever. Also, remember to Google the advice someone gave you about ants not wanting to cross a line of chalk. They must be stopped,” I thought.

The area around the bread began to get fluffier and I realized I was basically making pancake-wrapped toast. My co-worker was infinitely amused, but I stand by my creation – it was pretty tasty.

From this example it should be clear this post is about my own kitchen-based deficiencies, and not about how hard it is to cook here. This isn’t anything new, as I once borrowed a glass pan from a friend to try and make lemon squares, and had to call her back two hours later telling her I owed her a glass plan.

Our facilities aren’t bad, although they require a little ingenuity. Gulsara, our weekday cook for the office, whips up some great meals – even on the day where a lack of gas and power outages gave her intermittent access to one hot plate. If that had been a weekend, I probably would have survived on Clif bars and maybe managed to make some ramen.

But every day, residents of the Rasht region provide for their families with basic stoves and worries about power supply, harsh weather and food security. I’ve been humbled by some of the meals I’ve received when interviewing villagers, and am able to truthfully tell them it’s way better than what I eat at home.

The lack of food security in this region has been demonstrated to me by these trips, and by seeing what is often unavailable. Even seeing the dip in products at the local bazaar has made this clear – much of what was present throughout the summer is already beginning to fade from view.

In light of what I have available, I’ve resolved to make more of an effort with cooking and using fresh local produce. Successes include a decent tomato sauce and several vegetables grilled with garlic. I even made pancakes for some of our staff, most of which were edible.

Read more ▸

Beekeeping is an extremely valued activity in many areas of the world, and honey enjoys a nearly mythological reputation in many cultures. It should – promises weren’t made about a land of milk and honey for nothing.

Honey is a simple and healthy combination of sugars with many medicinal benefits. Other bee products enjoy many uses, as well. My toothpaste even contains propolis (a resin mixture collected from flowers and trees that bees used to reinforce the hive), as recent dental research is investigating its anti-cavity properties.

Beekeepers in the village of Sangi Maliki, Tajikistan Photo: Jarrett Basedow/Mercy Corps

I’ll admit that conducting value chain research for Mercy Corps has made me somewhat obsessed with bee and rose hips products, and that I specifically bought this toothpaste because it had a picture of a bee. I even tried to convince my shopping partner to buy it, but she went with wintergreen instead. Also, I might have taped a “Buy Local” post-it to a jar of imported honey I saw at a friend’s apartment.

Beekeeping has been practiced a long time in the Rasht Valley, and all over Tajikistan. Most of the beekeepers I have talked to have decades of experience, and learned the craft from their family. They use moveable frame hives similar to designs used in large honey producing countries, including Argentina, the U.S. and China. Many transport their bee boxes to higher mountain areas to take advantage of the fresh air and wild mountain flowers, producing a honey that is prized for its clean taste and medicinal properties.

Local producers in the Rasht Valley can make a decent living off of selling honey, and many smaller ones supplement their income through home honey sales. Some just enjoy diversifying their diet a little. Obstacles for Rasht producers include a lack of market information and difficulty finding markets for their product. The region can feel isolated, both in the five-hour distance to the country's capital, Dushanbe, and economic and political ties that are sometimes lacking. Many beekeepers transport (or arrange transport) to areas outside of the Dushanbe’s bazaars and sell to merchants who turn the product around for a higher price inside the bazaar.

I am researching ways to help beekeepers make direct market connections and work together to market their product. Additionally, I’m looking at how beekeeping can help marginalized groups, including women and residents of poorer villages, increase their food and income security.

My research continues to bring me close to swarms of bees, but this is balanced out by finding myself in close proximity to tons of delicious honey. I think it’d be rude not to taste every variety put in front of me.

Read more ▸

When I’ve studied abroad, I have usually avoided using a local moniker — including last summer when I lived with a Tajik family and studied Tajik. It didn’t matter too much to me that my name, for whatever reason, is completely unintelligible for a variety of cultures. Usually people come close — "Jerrett" has been a popular pronunciation in Russian, and others have made a valiant effort and ended up with "Jerry" or "Gerald."

No offense to people with these names, but they are not for me. So, for my work this summer with Mercy Corps, I’ve wholeheartedly adopted a Tajik name. After deep consultation with our staff here in Garm and some testing in villages where we're distributing food, I have settled on a name I use on a daily basis. Some initial suggestions were immediately discarded: my family from last summer and staff at a local café decided that "Jafar" would be a good strong name. But Americans kept asking me where Iago —the parrot from the Disney movie Aladdin — was.

Additionally, many men in the Rasht Valley have much longer names, as certain suffixes are added to indicate respect or religious stature. For examples, -jon, -din or -hafiz can be added to common names like "Mahmad" or "Abdul" to come up with "Mahmadjon" or "Abdulhafiz."

Whatever names our staff suggested I kept adding suffixes to, in order to have the longest name. Since they wouldn’t accept "Jarrett-bek-din-abdul-rashid," I settled on their other favorite, "Jonibek." A rough translation of this name means everyone’s dear or great friend — the suffix -bek indicates stature or respect. It’s not an extremely common name and, between that and its use of seven letters and a "J," I feel it’s a good fit.

Using a local name has made introductions for my value-added interviews easier, as people’s reactions are very positive. They either find it amusing, respectful or just easier to remember. Even staff who really make an effort with my real name switch back to Jonibek since it’s just a lot easier and familiar.

Read more ▸

Amy promised me pancakes if I wrote a blog entry, and I’ve accepted her terms.

Road conditions in Tajikistan's Rasht Valley are always a constraint. This summer holds great promise with a number of new roads being built, but also great frustration in navigating road closures. I know this has been a huge challenge for Mercy Corps’ food distribution currently in action. Beyond road closures and sometimes confrontational road crews, there are also the usual poor road conditions. I’m continually impressed by the resiliency of our vehicles and the skill and knowledge of our drivers.

Village beehives in the shadow of mountains in Tajikistan's remote Rasht Valley. Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

Before I get to my description of navigating a different type of roadblock, I should introduce myself. I am a graduate student interning with Mercy Corps this summer, conducting a value chain study. I’m examining how Mercy Corps can implement value-added programming to improve the honey, rose hip and fruit markets — specifically pears and apples. I’ve been interviewing buyers, wholesalers, retailers and producers to see what people are selling and how the system works. It has been fascinating and, although I’ve found myself in the middle of a few swarms of bees, I haven’t gotten stung yet.

Earlier in the week I interviewed a wholesaler, Makhmad, who purchases dried rose hips from several jamoats (districts) in the area. Basically, if you own a truck in this area you are a wholesaler, and you transport goods to the capital of Dushanbe, as well as the northern city of Khojand, Tajikistan's second-largest city. Makhmad was very helpful, explaining his business and his main contact in Khojand to whom he sells all his goods. He also told me that the village of Pingon, in a nearby jamoat, provides him with up to 14 tons of dried rose hips each year. The interview went so smoothly that I was later startled to find out I had such good access to a man villagers call a "phantom."

I wanted to verify price and other information from Makhmad, so on Friday set out for Pingon with Dodarjon, a member of our agricultural team, as well as our driver Iskander and his trusty yet increasingly shock-depleted Lada Niva. Iskander’s taped-up MP3 player has an interesting selection of Tajik pop, Russian covers of Western artists and Enrique Iglesias. I am burning him a CD so that the last one is in rotation less.

We passed through the village of Shulmak, where I was again unable to track down a phantom of my own — another truck owner that my interviews have pointed me towards. However, he was in Dushanbe this first time I stopped by, and now he's in China.

Graduate student and summer intern Jarrett Basedow holds locally-produced pears. Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

Further down the road we encountered another obstacle – the bridge going to Pingon was washed out. With the options of turning back or finding a footbridge, we decided to eat lunch. The head of the road crew offered us another option – fording a lower part of the river with his bulldozer. I was offered a place inside the cabin, and Dodarjon and Iskander held onto the sides. I held on to a loose watermelon that had been rolling around.

After our alternative crossing, we walked 4 kilometers to Pingon to interview villagers who ascend to the mountains each fall to collect rose hips. I’m conducting the interviews in Tajik, but I’m still glad to have Dodarjon there to take additional notes that I can review later. Household income in Pingon is almost entirely dependent on the collection of rose hips and walnuts in October, brought down on donkeys or on villagers' backs from higher altitudes a few kilometers away.

Most villagers accept informal credit from buyers like Makhmad in the summer, which is based on a low price for the product they hand over in the fall. Other intermediaries appear in the village in November. Wholesalers like Makhmad and buyers in Khojand and beyond remain a mystery to village producers.

While walking back to find a footbridge, a car pulled up. A man who had just returned to the village heard there had been a guest and insisted on giving us a ride to the river. This attitude is wonderfully pervasive throughout the region – guests are celebrated, welcomed and honored.

A few rickety footbridges spanning a fast-flowing river later, it was back to the bumpy ride home and good conversation with Dodarjon about possibilities for increasing and diversifying household incomes in the region. He was clearly amused yet beat from a long and interesting day. When we dropped him off, he still insisted I come to his house for a cup of tea.

Read more ▸