Young people were well bred with intrinsic life values like human compassion towards another being either man, animal or plant. They burst out expressions of love towards life through poems, songs, dances and many other expressive forms.
Khujand has opened doors to people from around the world to establish Silk Road, to travel its roads, to share poetry, to discover new science and health issues, to trade goods and, most importantly, to leave their mark on this wonderful city.
Reading my own words now, I cant help but let small drops of tears roll over my whole being, drops of regret, drops of the past and present. Because now is not like then, things are different.
Things like development and urbanization have turned my city in a different direction. Money is valued more than a person, economic growth drives towards the blindness of young people. Many young people are losing the values of caring and brotherhood, more crimes are being committed, and young girls are coming to the city to work but cannot find employment and end up getting into prostitution. Many people are depressed, families are falling apart. The education system is getting worse and worse. Young people today are less aware of their own culture, history and life values.
Once we claimed ourselves to be a democratic and sovereign state heading towards development for the wellbeing of our society, things started to go downhill. This term ‘development’ confuses me.
International organizations come claiming "We are here to help you. To assist you in your development, to make you a civilised, developed civil society". I find it so disappointing that they don’t believe in what they say, for example, we have an organization called PSI (Population Service International) that works towards the decrease of HIV, by proving seminars among school children on how to have safe sex, how to use condoms and so on. In my culture we have our own way of solving problems that occur on a community level, a family level. Instead of help and proper development, many programs become a distraction of culture, leading to a loss of values, ethics and social disturbances in many communities.
I don’t want you to get down or depressed; these black facts are always serving as an inspiration for me to keep going and create new opportunities to prevent anything worse from happening. I am very optimistic that at the end of the dark tunnel there is light.
« return.