Mellnick ’95 and Peterson ’09 meet each other, and Lenin, in Tajikistan
Vlad and Us
It didn鈥檛 take long for Keith Mellnick 鈥�95 and Grif Peterson 鈥�09, attending a horse festival in Murghab, Tajikistan, to ID each other not only as 乐播传媒 grads but as former denizens of adjacent rooms in Smith Hall.
They marked their meetup some 6,300 miles from 乐播传媒 with this photograph, showing them flanking the city鈥檚 Lenin statue that鈥檚 left over from Soviet days. (Grif鈥檚 cap sits atop Lenin鈥檚 head.)
Peterson, who blogs for The Huffington Post, is an academic affairs officer for the Univ. of Central Asia, an ambitious new university set to open campuses in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the coming years.
Keith Mellnick 鈥�95 and Grif Peterson 鈥�09. Photograph courtesy Keith Mellnick 鈥�95
Mellnick is a freelance photographer and writer who posts at his blog, .
Afterwards, Mellnick headed west to report from Khorog, the site of recent armed clashes between government forces and local groups still at odds since the country鈥檚 civil war in the 1990s.
By the time he arrived, the city was quiet, yet buildings splattered with bullet holes revealed what had gone down, as did the presence of soldiers in the streets.
Soon, Mellnick was stopped, his bag searched and prodded with the muzzle of an AK-47. The soldiers demanded to know what he had photographed.
So Mellnick turned himself into Boring Travel Guy, showing each photo on the camera鈥檚 LCD display and narrating in excruciating detail: 鈥淗ere鈥檚 my hotel in Murghab. This is the cat that fell asleep on my lap. This is the yurt in which I slept in the Pshart Valley….鈥�
The trick worked, wearing out the soldiers, Mellnick reports. 鈥淎fter examining my passport, they told me to find another road and not to pass that way again.鈥� 鈥� HJB
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