Life in Turkmenistan

Lot's of greenery and water despite being in the desert.

So DYSP blog and Teflsecretagent is back in action! Sorry for the long break but for the last year I was living in Turkmenistan, but now I am happily back in Poland! My lack of blogging mainly stemmed from the poor internet access, heavy workload and fear of the authorities or the organization I worked for, picking up on something I wrote and kicking me out of the country!

So more about Turkmenistan… some basic facts…

Population: 5,1 million

Capital: Ashgabat

GDP per capita: $7,000

Government: Single party - communist style

What can I say about Turkmenistan?

Firstly, before I went to Turkmenistan, I read up about the country on the net and I can honestly say, majority of the information out there including information I read provided by the U.S government, is either out of date or just wrong in general. Before landing in Turkmenistan, based on the information I had read from the net, I was expecting to be living in a desert version of North Korea.

This is not the case, Turkmenistan was quite a pleasant place to spend a year.

The biggest surprise for me was how different the administration of the country was to anything I had experienced previously. Despite what the Turkmen government says, the government system is still a communist one. The government controls absolutely everything. But the government also provides a lot to the people… for example...

Russian Bazaar in Ashgabat, buy anything you want here

120litres of Petrol free per month to every citizen – and after that a crazily cheap price, of around 30 cents a litre.

Subsidized (to the point of being almost free) – Gas, electricity, water, salt.

The state heavy controls prices of basic food stuffs ensuring affordability

And of course, if you work for the government (which majority of people do) you get the benefits of subsidized housing and subsidized holidays every year.

Sounds pretty good eh? And yeah it is. Turkmenistan really was a pretty happy place with most people without the huge amounts of stress in life that plague Westerners. Many locals I met in Turkmenistan said that average wage equated to about 500$ per month in reality, and whilst this sounds quite small, I can assure you, in a country where most things are free or crazily cheap, that money goes a long, long way. In fact, I spent about 600$ on average every month but I was definitely not getting Turkmen prices in the markets, bars and restaurants.

Mr President

Ashgabat, the capital and city of my residence, was also by far the safest city I have ever lived in. Police officers are stationed on every street corner and there is not a single part of the city I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking down drunk at 2pm in the morning.

Communism, who thought it could be so good eh? Of course, if you start to fuck around with the Turkmen government they will make your life very difficult. But who cares about that? If you fuck around with the U.S government they will make your life pretty difficult – ask the victims of U.S drone strikes in Yemen or Pakistan.

More about Turkmenistan in the days to come!