Training at the Polyclinic

In the physiotherapy room of the poly clinic I meet with the paediatric staff three times a week for a seminar. We chew over cases together. We drink green tea. We discuss topics. Left to right are Adolat, (Speech & Lang  therapist) Mararam (psychologist) and Barnot (SLT )  then me then Mohabat ( paediatrician) Marbuba (paediatric neurologist) Jamilla ( Opthalmologist) Zulfia (Physiotherapist) Manzura ( SLT)

It was Marbubas birthday and we were discussing the development of behaviour of small children, We discussed the difficulties the might come from speaking both Tajik and Russian if a child speaks a different language at home and school. This is a familiar topic to me from the UK. Most of the staff in this seminar had their professional training in Russian language and tend to use this if discussing technicalities. When I learn new words from people they don't normally say whether it is a Russian or Tajik word. For example beer is always 'piva', a russian word. So I am learning a mixture of both. It is slightly like the number of English words that we have forgotten were originally french. And on the subject of language here is a picture that one of the seminar took of myself and my translator Farangis.