Black Pine hosts visitors from Tajikistan

Our very small home town enjoyed seeing some unfamiliar faces this week, including that of Victor Ibragimov (pictured with "Peaches", a resident of Black Pine) when three visitors from Tajikistan joined up with local MCCA project team members for lunch and a sanctuary tour!

Roger Kovacs and Lori Gagen met up with Victor, the MCCA Tajikistan-based project manager, and were joined by Pulod Amirbekov and another lovely gentleman we'll just call "Art" (sorry, we tried to capture his full name but failed to get it in writing). The latter two men are participating in a cultural business exchange and are staying in Kalamazoo, MI, which is coincidentally only about two hours from Albion. When they learned of the MCCA project here they wanted to make the trip to meet and visit, and learn more. They hope to perhaps get involved back in Dushanbe when they return home.

We all enjoyed a nice meal at a local eatery then a tour of Black Pine. It became clear this will be a great team that will enjoy working together on this important project to help bring the benefits of volunteerism and philantrhopy to the Dushanbe Zoo this summer.

Tajikistan in midst of energy and food crisis

BBC America reports:

Energy Crisis Hits Tajikistan - See audio/video

Tajikistan is in the grip of emergency food shortages, the UN's World Food Programme is warning.

The deteriorating food situation is part of the energy crisis which hit the mountainous nation in the middle of its coldest winter for five decades.

The cost of food has tripled in recent months, partially because of rising world prices.

Some humanitarian agencies claim Central Asia's poorest nation is heading towards catastrophe.

It's well below zero in Tajikistan, but most people have no electricity, no heating and now, increasingly, many don't have enough food either.

One family in the village of Sagdyan, outside the capital Dushanbe, said their four children were surviving on milk and rice. Their next door neighbours could not afford even that.

One meal a day
Zlatan Milisic, the country director for the World Food Programme in Tajikistan, says it's not just the rural population that's being affected, but people in the cities too.

"We are seeing more and more people who are eating just one meal a day. And we only expect the food situation to deteriorate. This is already a real emergency," said Mr Milisic.

He added additional funding was urgently needed to assist the people.

Even at the best of times, tens of thousands of people are malnourished.

But this winter is affecting a huge proportion of the population. People are spending all they have on trying to keep warm.

And the worst is still to come - Tajikistan is currently using up its last energy resources, and it may face a total blackout.