travelling through the Commonwealth has taught me that. Though gratifying, being a good guest here is not without its peculiar difficulties, including consuming large portions of unfamiliar foods and answering interminable, often awkward questions: How much does a person in America earn? How much does a house cost? Can the average person buy a house? What do you think of the Russian people? How much money do you earn a month?
The most ludicrous example of such overwhelming hospitality that I have personally encountered goes back almost two years, when I went to Chimkent, Kazakhstan, to write a piece on the "Miss Silk Road" beauty pageant. This poorly organized but well-intentioned little pageant was so thrilled to have an American journalist taking an interest that the next thing I knew I was sitting in the jury box rating young Central Asian girls on how they walked, talked and whether they smiled widely enough.
Sometimes such hospitality makes you feel like a celebrity. On the island of Kunashir in the south Kuril Islands I spent three days and never ate a single meal in the local cafe. Instead I was passed from house to house on some kind of Russian Babette's Feast. To my amazement, I found out by chance that at least two islanders had worked out between themselves who would be having me for dinner one night.
Sometimes being a good guest can require a little deceit. While I was in Penza, Russia, for a story on hunting cooperatives, my hosts decided that I would shoot a boar, something I had no intention of doing. Fortunately, during two days of slogging through muddy forests and combing the ground for boar tracks, we never came across one of the snarling beasts. My hosts were mortified. I was secretly relieved.
In the West we are trained to turn down such offers of hospitality from strangers. But here, I try to accept as often as possible. Too often, such moments have provided my clearest glimpses of provincial life in the former Soviet Union.
A taxi driver in Tajikistan once took me mud hut for tea. I had been passing these homes all week, pondering the depth of poverty they represented. After serving me a veritable feast of fruits, breads and soups, the 60-year-old bearded Tajik reclined on his rickety bench as though it were a throne and surveyed the table of food, his large family about him and the yard in which a cow grazed beneath carefully tended fruit trees.
"Thus, we live", he said. "The family together and plenty to eat".
I realized that he had invited me to this mud hut in order to show off what he had. In his mind, he was a rich man. Who could argue with him?
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