2005 is the tenth anniversary of the British Embassy in Turkmenistan. Neil Hook, the first resident British Ambassador to Turkmenistan recalls how it all started.

 

Was this how those early travellers felt as they set off towards Turkmenistan along the Silk Road? As I stood in the check-in queue at Heathrow airport, buried to the knees in diplomatic bags, filled not with precious silks and porcelain, but red tags, draft paper and single hole punches, the banality of it all pushed any such thoughts from my mind.

 

It was September 1995. Geoff Brammer and I fended off check-in staff, excess baggage officials, and irritated passengers queuing behind us, before falling onto the Turkish Airline flight to the Unknown . . . .Ashgabat. In my personal suitcase, I carried all those items my predecessor (had there been one) might have recommended – electric plug adapters, compass, rehydration tablets, toilet tissue, corkscrew. It spoke volumes for my long overseas experience that I soon put all of these to good use.

 

That first arrival in Ashgabat was to set the scene for our next three years. Firstly, only 28 of the 32 bags turned up at the airport. The missing bags were traced to a warehouse somewhere in Istanbul. Almost weekly from then on we would telephone Istanbul and ask them kindly to look in this warehouse, where invariably items bound for the British Embassy Ashgabat would turn up. Secondly, the kind Turkish Airlines representative in Ashgabat arranged a truck to the airport to collect our delayed bags. We never had any difficulties at this practical level; even the main Ashgabat hotel contacted us on arrival to tell us they had been saving a floor in their business centre for the British Embassy. Thirdly, the Turkish Airlines lady and a host of similar incidental contacts would feature prominently in making our life bearable from then on. It was almost as though there was an unofficial administration allocated to the British Embassy. There was for example the Turkish businessman who guided us through the soviet bureaucratic maze and who later married our receptionist. Then there was the Peace Corps medical officer who acted as our unofficial doctor on innumerable occasions and who later married our second receptionist. At least we were happy were had got right London’s injunction about ensuring the pleasant face of the Embassy at the reception desk.

 

The first British Embassy in Turkmenistan was housed in the Presidential suite of the Grand Turkmen Hotel. At one end was my bed. At the other end we set up our lap-tops and began typing (what on earth did we type on that first day?). In fact the first thing we typed was a piece of paper announcing that the British Embassy was now open for business, which we sellotaped to the front door. Imagine our surprise when half an hour later we received a visit from a team of British archaeologists who were on their way to the ancient city of Merv. Later that day, we were visited by a team of British construction engineers building the new Ashgabat international airport. The British Embassy had arrived!

 

My last enduring memory of Ashgabat is of course of the staff. I was constantly amazed and impressed at the quality (and dedication) of the team I had working for me. I am not surprised that some of those, whom I still like to call my friends, are in fact still working for us 10 years on. My sincere thanks to them, and my congratulations and very best wishes to all of the team in Ashgabat. You have come a long way since I first turned up at the airport with a bag full of red tags!