Shopping with her sister for vegetables and fruit in one of Dushanbe’s bazaars last week, Farida, a young Tajik woman, is extremely cautious about how she spends her money. The family budget is just $100 a month, a total dependent on whether her father, working on a construction site in far-off Moscow, is in work or not.
“We will spend hours trying to find the best deal and cheapest food, even if the vegetables are soft and mushy. We rarely eat meat.” If they run short one month they can turn to their two aunts, whose husbands also work in Russia, for financial help. It is estimated that, of a population of 7m, 1m Tajiks are doing the dirty jobs Russians do not want to do themselves and who cannot find jobs in their own country, whose sclerotic economy is crying out for reform.
