[inspic=17,left,,150] Once I had a conversation with an old man in a village near Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He spoke about the Soviet times, about the social welfare system, salaries, and about his years-long money savings in the Soviet Sberbank, which he never got back after the independence, and many other things, which soon got me bored and I did not listen to him anymore.

But there was one thing he told me, which I still remember. He complained that so many people are leaving his village for Russia in spring and summer that there is usually no men in the village to bring the coffin of a deceased person to the cemetery. The elderly can not do that, women are not allowed, so families of the deceased are forced to ask soldiers from a nearby military garrison to help them carry the corpse. “This is a real Hereafter”-he called it then. One can hear similar stories all around the country nowadays.

A lot of Uzbeks (like many other Central Asians) are leaving their homes, families and children for a better payment, opportunity and simply a better life. Some are lucky and successful find a seasonal job with good payment and honest employers. Some are subject to a real slavery, humiliating living and working conditions, bullying of policemen and attacks of neo-fascists. Uzbek farmers are working as builders and street-cleaners in Russia or elsewhere, as a result of which agricultural output is decreasing, and prices for basic food products is going up. So, they have to work more and longer abroad now. Children grow up without their parents, and none checks if they go to school or not. So, proudly agitated 98 per cent literacy rate among Uzbeks might well be a myth already.

Metal coffins with corpses of Uzbeks returning from abroad and stories of disappearing and humiliation of people might have killed the desire among some to leave the country in the search of a job, but the fear of dying from hunger and thought of the future of the children, still forces many to take the risk anyway.

The frustration with prices going up on major food products and living is on all-time high, not only among rural population, but also in urban areas. A lot of families have changed their diet to a permanent bread and tea with sugar diet a long time ago.

Low salaries and high unemployment are main causes of such a huge immigration. Entrepreneurs, who could create some jobs and had money, have long ago moved their businesses to neighboring Kazakhstan escaping Uzbek check-and-rob agencies.

Despite the year 2007 was declared as the year of social care and some populist measures followed this decision, they remain incapable of addressing to the very needs the population. Although, many Uzbeks dislike this comparing, but the socio-economic life in Uzbekistan does not differ from that of in the majority of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The first step towards solving a problem is accepting it, but it seems in Uzbekistan it is preferred to close eyes on that or hide it. Instead Uzbeks are promised a great future, just like in the old Soviet times. All know, though, what happened to Communists in the end.