The table, the garden, and the dance: Lessons Tajikistan taught me for Sarnia

Nathan shares his journey from the vibrant public tables and unmediated joy of Tajikistan’s Nowruz celebrations to the fortress mentality and surveillance-heavy public life back in Sarnia. A reflection on community, fear, and what truly holds societies together.

My friend Parvin, who is now Canadian, invited me to see his homeland a few months ago. I landed in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, a country of about eleven million people. The parks were packed on Persian New Year. Thousands of people from every corner of the country, sections divided by region, each one laid out like a home table overflowing with food showing off their particular culinary delicacies. The music was everywhere. We joined in some dancing. Art and colour was in every corner. There was a genuine sense of pride and joy in all the people and we were invited into every aspect of their celebrations. The hospitality in public was incredible with people welcoming us to explore, eat and join in their energy regardless of the fact that we didn't speak the same language.

Our trip there built up in layers. We did two nights in Istanbul, Turkey. Incredible food, massive scale, and the raw and intense relaxation of a traditional Turkish bath. Then two nights in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. That city felt like a lavish mix of Disneyland and Las Vegas, defined by super large public spaces full of kids playing sports and live music. The modernization felt wild and futuristic in places. Yet underground the old school subway system carried the daily rhythm of the working class. It was a very fun and enjoyable time. We went to a restaurant called Tandiriy that will go down in history as one of the best I have ever been to. The food. The vibes. The music. Every single aspect of it was extravagant and new. I never wanted to leave.

After those couple days of exploring new spaces and cultures we flew over beautiful mountains into the tiny Dushanbe airport in Tajikistan.

The gardens. The architecture. The walkable spaces. It was walking into a different world. All the same technology and modern infrastructure but an entirely different take. From the Soviet style architecture, to the vehicles on the road, an unfamiliar alphabet, every aspect was flowing like a city would, but none of it was familiar.

Back home the story we get is that this kind of public beauty and ease requires walls, cameras, and ever growing police budgets. As if the police are the only thing keeping us stable. Sarnia talks about a one hundred million dollar fortress like it is the only thing standing between us and chaos. It is sad how much of our public conversation focuses on the wrong parts of what makes life good. We argue over potholes versus beautifying downtown and the waterfront. We lean into NIMBY energy that blocks real improvements to shared spaces. We invest in surveillance and a constant stream of police PR about arrests and activity. We treat noise extensions as political unrest. All of it leaves me sad that we cannot imagine building something more alive and connected for ourselves.

I am not here to say Tajikistan is utopia. It is not. The country is poor by most economic measures. You would not be able to tell by being there. The public spaces felt vast and seemed wealthy. No visible poverty. No one being shuffled out of sight by security. We just know about the remittances from migrants working in Russia and how that is shaping the culture. It does not manifest itself by the typical measures that my Canadian culture would use to judge a country’s wealth.

The president’s image was absolutely everywhere. Projected on skyscrapers. On the front of half the businesses surrounded in bouquets of flowers. We also had what felt like a three hour church service streaming in the background at a dinner we had on Persian New Year in someone’s home. He was at the forefront of the whole service with dancers and music and displays of nature. There is a very large focus on nature and beauty by this president. Everyone revered him in strange ways. In a lot of ways he was a benevolent dictator though he does get elected by a landslide each election. The entire country adores him and sings his praises. That top down control creates its own problems and violences obviously but what struck me was not the politics at the top. It was the relational fabric underneath that still holds.

Policing That Feels Human-Scale

One thing that jumped out immediately. Policing there is conversational. Cops have power they can use at their discretion. They don't carry guns. You hear stories of cash changing hands to sort an issue. It is normalized, decentralized, and messy. No illusion of perfect oversight.

Here we recoil and call it third world corruption. Fair enough. It has real downsides. But flip the mirror. In Sarnia our version is polished and institutional. We do not have beat cops shaking people down for twenties. Instead we pour tens of millions into a department that issues public shaming releases, pushes for bigger facilities, and treats poverty and addiction like problems best managed through enforcement and infrastructure. The budget becomes the bribe we all pay every year. Which system feels more honest about where power actually sits?

I am not defending petty bribery. I am saying our professional version hides the same human incentives behind layers of policy and spectacle. The result in both places is power protecting itself. One just does it with better branding and massive institutions that are greedy and just want to get bigger and police more and more. There the police felt part of the society, not above it.

Bodies and the State’s Dress Code

The gender contrast was impossible to miss. Men often in plain blacks and greys, functional. Women across the country in colourful, extravagant traditional outfits. Striking and consistent. It was not accidental. The state actively promotes this. The government is trying to revive the culture around clothing because before it was forced through Islamic traditions and people would purchase all their clothing from other states like Turkey and other Arab countries. It is an attempt to show a liberated society that has left that behind. This caused an uptick in the economic health of the country because clothing businesses were now very obviously Tajik clothing, which is incredibly beautiful. The Tajik textile industry grew and a lot of women gained jobs because of this.

I also picked up stories about marriage and family roles. I heard that when a couple gets married the house immediately belongs to the woman. The reality is more complex. But there is definitely something there around how women have the role of building the household while the men go and work, especially with how many of them are going to Russia. It is an interesting way to build a family where the men are often absent for long stretches. Different cultures evolve distinct ways to safeguard women, families, and communal health. Some emphasize property defaults. Others lean on social expectations or extended family structures. What matters is whether the relational fabric underneath actually holds, and it seems to be.

The Table

Food was everywhere. Every home we went to had a massive table and eating together was a primary part of daily life. Stand around the dastarkhan, invite the neighbours, enjoy the communal spread (prepared by the women), and eat and give toasts on repeat every three minutes. Markets in the mountains were full of spots to sit around and eat or take market goods home. Massive vats of traditional foods and soups. Hospitality is not optional. It is the baseline.

I got the opportunity to tour a brewery and a distillery in Dushanbe. I have toured breweries all around the world. It was a gift to be able to see them in Central Asia. One older facility with crumbling infrastructure still rolling along. A newer one coming in alongside it. Just the pure fact that we were from Canada got us tours and experiences behind the scenes of anywhere we wanted to go. Every time we would go somewhere we were always greeted with tables of food and drinks with absolutely no expectation to exchange money or do anything for them in return.

That table culture hits different when you have spent years watching Sarnia debate housing like it is a threat instead of a human need. We have atomized things so thoroughly that public care feels like an efficiency problem for staff to solve. There, despite the larger economic pressures, the expectation that you feed people and hold space together still runs deep. No one is sleeping on the streets there. They find themselves taken care of. The family dynamic and lack of individuality is the strongest part of a society that prevents people experiencing homelessness. If you have a table, if you have a home, then it is extended to everyone you have a relationship with.

The Mountain Hall

Late one night near the president’s extravagant summer residence, music pulled me into a hall. I was sitting around a fire with a bunch of Tajiks that were hosting us. No one spoke English. We had brought a musician to travel with us and he was playing around the fire. He played nonstop for us for twenty four hours. Everyone was drinking vodka like water. I kept getting asked what I wanted to do. I heard this music thumping in the background and I said I wanted to go to the music. They did not understand so I just wandered off on my own. I opened a door of this hall and immediately upon walking in I got called onto a dance floor. Then I could not leave. Not a single word was ever spoken with them. “Redneck Tajiks,” Parvin called them. Room full of men and one woman, dancing hard. Eye contact, movement, energy flowing across the floor. I danced with everyone, almost as if they were having a conversation with me and eventually I worked my way up to the matriarch of the room and got to dance with her. Side to side, in and out, nothing but rhythm and presence.

It was the most spiritually significant moment of my life. No script, no transaction, no supervisor. Just bodies from a culture centuries older than mine connecting through music and movement. I cried there when I was leaving because it was so beautiful and I was so full of joy. The Tajiks we were there with thought they had done something to harm me because I was full of tears. I was just so moved by the entire experience and connecting with other human beings through other means than conversation that I just wept.

That unmediated flow exposed how starved we are for it back home. How screens and rules and fear have colonized even the way we stand next to each other. Eventually the people I came with had to drag me out because I would have gone for hours and hours and we were all on only a few hours of sleep in the last few days.

I went to Tajikistan to see my friend’s homeland. What I brought home was not a clean travel story. It was a clearer sense that the order we chase with fortresses, budgets and regulation often costs us the very connections that make places feel alive. The table, the dance, the gardens, the hospitality. Those are not luxuries. They are what remains when you stop assuming fear, control, transactions and isolation are the only foundations to build a life on.

Sarnia does not need to copy Tajikistan. We need to remember our own capacity for the table and the square. We have done pieces of it before. Dinner parties, festivals, dance parties, beach days: we all have had these genuine human experiences.

The question is whether we will keep building them, or keep paying for taller walls instead.