Turkmenistan

In classic Gravy fashion I undertook a project, got a little bored and let the world get in the way of my completing it.

But I'm back.

In relation to a previous post I just spent sometime with a man from Zambia. He was 40 something, with eyes that almost popped out his sockets. He was a copper miner and he invented a very lucrative way to chemically strip the mineral from his country with sulfuric acid. Nevertheless the lucrative chemical mining process fucks the surrounding water table.

But I digress. He was vivacious, with an infectious high pitches laugh, a snore like a hippo being chainsawed and the propensity to snap photos at an alarming rate. He came to see the snow, and see the Swiss Alps he did, he came to duty free shop, and in the tax haven of Andorra he bought more lenses than a Chinese optometrist and he came to bang prostitutes.

He did.

He told me that Zambian emeralds are more expensive than diamonds, the really good ones. I questioned his visiting Switzerland and Andorra considering he was in the business of digging things up. He also told me that Zambia was a stable country, with some kind of democracy, a short and gore light civil war and a moderate rate of AIDS.

I told you so.

Turkmenistan, on the other hand, is fucked. Since the death of its "Glorious Leader for Life", Turkmenbashi, (Big-T) the country has made the slightest of improvements. Under Big-T the country, which is one of the worlds largest gas producers and near to China the worlds largest gas consumer, and its countrymen suffered abject poverty.

Big-T and his family lived large with quite an impressive investment portfolio, including properties in London's Mayfair.

He also renamed the months after himself and his family, renamed the sea after his long deceased mother, built the most elaborate of monuments to himself, including an ice palace in the desert and plastered the country with his own image.

The most interesting part of his reign, however, was the publication of his book. Called the Ruhnama it is not only mandatory reading for all Turkmenistan's citizens, it is still the sole reference for school and university exams, and even needs to be learnt for driving tests.

It basically outlines how amazing Big-T is (was) and how sweet the Turkmen are. And that Big-T better be obeyed or else. If you read it three times you gained automatic heaven entry.

And here are all these other Muslims blowing themselves up for the same privilege.

Big-T wisely spent his country's gas revenue on launching the book into space once. Just because he could and the book said that nobody else could say that he couldn't.

All of the girls in Turkmenistan have mono-brows.