Another day at the Bazaar

Today I went to the bazaar again. Other than walk around, eat some kabobs, and drink tea I didn't actually do anything there. But, it is an interesting place to wander around. I found some books this time. They were all in Kurdish. However, I did recognize Mao's Little Red Book even in Kurdish.

Paper on the overthrow of Nkrumah

I have a new paper up on the Internet. Nkrumah, the Cold War, the Third World", and the US Role in the 24 February 1966 Coup is supposed to appear in Bea Lundt and Christoph Marx, (eds.), Nkrumah Today (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016). But, I haven't heard anything from the publisher in a while. At any rate I have put up a draft of the chapter on my academia.edu site for anybody that wants to read it. You can read and download the paper here.

A trip to the store

Yesterday I went shopping and purchased 30,000 IQD worth of food and beverages which is a huge amount for me. I got so used to being poor that spending over $20 on food for myself in a single trip is something strange for me. I purchased some doogh, mint, honey, pomegranate lokum, halva, dolmas, mortadella, garlic sauce, hot sauce, Cheetos, Coca Cola, bread, and of course Indomie ramen noodles.

Reflections

It is strange that you can never see why God sent you to a place until after you leave it. It is only just now that I am starting to understand why he sent me to Ghana. I can only vaguely guess at this point why he sent me to Kurdistan. But, I have some idea now why he sent me to Arivaca and Kyrgyzstan so the Lord's mysterious ways become less mysterious as time goes on.

New Profile up at AUIS website

Here is my new profile up at the AUIS website.

Defining the Middle East

The Middle East is of course a construction just as more defined geographic units like Europe, Asia, and even Africa are constructions. Thus its borders are contested. In my History of the Middle East class I have treated Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of the Middle East. There are after all twice as many Azeris in Iran as in former Soviet Azerbaijan and nobody argues Iran is not part of the Middle East.

Bazaar

Today I went to the bazaar and got a winter coat and a new smaller bag to carry my wallet and keys. I also got half a kilo of apricot flavored lokum. There is a lot of stuff to buy at the bazaar. But, most of it is stuff I really have no interest in acquiring. My favorite parts of the day were eating kebabs for lunch and later drinking Kurdish tea.

Soviet Kurds and Assimilation

In 1926 the Soviet census counted 242,000 Kurds. A little over two generations later in 1989 the Soviet census only counted 153,000 Kurds even though the total Soviet population had almost tripled. So in 63 years the Kurdish population declined by almost 100,000 when it should have increased to at least 700,000. This massive decrease in population was due mostly to assimilation into other ethnic groups such as Azeris or Meskhetian Turks by many Kurds. Officially assmilation did not exist in the USSR since nat'sionalnost' was a permanent, immutable, and transgenerational category similar to race in South Africa. Nonetheless, the Soviet census figures provide solid evidence of massive assimilation out of the Kurdish nationality in the USSR between the middle of the 1920s and the late 1980s.

Correction:

The secondary source I used initially for this post, N.F. Bugai, T.M Broev, and P.M. Broev, Sovetskie Kurdy: Vremia Peremen (Moscow: "Kap'", 1993), p. 45 was incorrect. The 1926 Soviet census does not count 242,000 Kurds, but only 69,184. There was still a lot of assimilation, however, the numbers are not so stark. I'll leave up the original mistaken post to show the dangers of using secondary sources even for blog posts rather than primary ones.

Weekend

The weekend in Kurdistan is backwards from what I am used to in Ghana. Here we get Friday and Saturday off. But, everything is closed on Friday morning similar to Sunday mornings in Ghana. So if you want to do anything that involves using money it has to be done on Saturday the day before you return to work on Sunday. This may take some getting used to.

That is a big smurf