When I and a few other Americans with the same program walked about four blocks to exchange money and get
dinner, my first day in Dushanbe I was overcome by how familiar Tajikistan looked. It reminded me a lot of
certain parts of Barcelona and even parts of Germany.
We went into a tiny little grocery store on the way to the restaurant
to exchange our U.S. dollars for Somoni, when I say tiny, I mean about the size
of a modest walk-in closet. A boy around 12 years old was running the whole shop. It
was the funniest thing, he was acting like he was the man who owned the store. He was very polite and
he did the calculations for $100 to 480 Somoni in his head without hesitation.
A friend later told me that he patronized that little store a
lot when he was here last year and that one day while he was in there, a big
drunk Russian came in and ordered him to do something and the boy stood up from
his little stool behind his cash register and pointed at him and yelled at him
to get out. The kid is a boss.
Here is the boy who runs the store just about every day with his friend.
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