Warm Bread

Since being here we have heard of community ovens and I think today we stumbled upon one. Leaving one of the apartments we saw a couple older women and five or six children standing around a large cement mound. The children were playing and the women were pulling several large flat circular loaves of bread out of the mound wearing oven mitts. The bread in Tajikistan is really good, usually flat and spongy. A man came a to take a loaf away with him. My flatmate asked (mimed) if she could take a picture. We have been wanting to take pictures of some of the people here. The older of the women, said in an emphatic tone "Niet, Niet, Niet" (no, no, no) so we kept walking but then she called out "Da, da, da" (yes, yes, yes) we confirmed and then took some pictures of their work as they half posed for us. Then they gestured to see the pictures. I showed them, pointing the images of the children out to themselves. It was unclear if they had seen a digital camera before, the children seemed really excited and amazed. I took another picture to show them more of themselves. We thanked them over and over. Then they offered us some bread. They broke of chunks of the hot bread of each of us and pressed them into our hands. As we thanked them and walked away we munched on the bread. It was fantastic, - and it didn't even need butter;)

-A. Monkey