Man Purse, or Central Asian Carryall?

The largest currency note in Uzbekistan is 1000 sum, about 80 cents. In Turkmenistan, it is 10,000 manat, which is about 40 cents. So stuffing your wallet to even George Costanza-like proportions means you can carry only about $20 here. Enter the man purse. This is really what it sounds like: a little leather bag, with a handle on top, in which men can carry their huge stacks of bills. These were common in Turkmenistan and even more so here in Uzbekistan. I’ve been too afraid to photograph a man carrying one, but I was at the Chorsu Bazaar yesterday and saw some for sale:

I briefly considered getting one – not the leather kind, but the slightly less lame nylon version: 

I carry a backpack most of the time, and it makes my back sore. And it also pegs me as an American. This was illustrated when I did an interview for the newspaper in Batumi, Georgia. It was short and we did the interview standing up outside, and then the reporter wanted to take a photo. So I moved to take my backpack off, thinking that would be a better photo, and not wishing to look like a dork. But no, the reporter insisted – twice – that I keep it on.

 

With a man purse, I could carry money, a notebook, maybe another small book, and my camera. I was even practicing my Jerry Seinfeld impression: “It’s Central Asian!” But I figured carrying that would just make another part of me sore, and instead of looking like an American I would look like the Central Asian equivalent of a Guido. So I’m sticking with the backpack.

Incidentally, this currency issue was one of the first big things that turned Iraqis against the US military in Iraq. There, the biggest bill was even smaller – something like 10 cents, if I remember right. So to make a big purchase you had to have a big shopping bag full of money. I heard a lot of stories from Iraqis that they were taking $300 to the market to buy a satellite dish, and the Americans stopped their car, saw that much money and assumed that with that kind of cash they were up to no good, and arrested the people and confiscated the cash. I didn’t believe this at first – anyone with the remotest familiarity with Iraqi money knew you had to have that much to buy anything. But I naively assumed that the US soldiers had the remotest familiarity with Iraqi money, which they didn’t, even a month or so after the end of fighting. Later a US officer admitted to me that the Iraqis’ stories had been correct, that the troops had been confiscating large amounts of money.

Anyway, speaking of shopping bags, there are a couple of other personal goods containers that are ubiquitous here: the Rave Girl shopping bag and the A&C Aygen Collection bag. People carry plastic shopping bags everywhere here – people are just always carrying things, as a large part of the economy is based on buying things in one place and selling them somewhere else. But these bags are also used as school bags, luggage and, of course, shopping bags.
 

The Rave Girl bag I have seen in every country from

Georgia to here, and it is invariably carried by the most babushka-looking old women, who would likely be scandalized if they were told what a rave actually was.

 

The Aygen bag is absolutely everywhere here in Uzbekistan, though I don’t remember seeing it anywhere else. But honestly, 50 percent of the shopping bags here are Aygen. Why? Who makes this bag? Does Aygen actually exist, and do they pay the makers of this bag to be advertised like this? Does the advertising work? Mystifying.

Comments

[Nathan]

If you'd gotten the murse, you would have also needed to get some pointy shoes to complete the stylin' young post-Soviet male look.

[Ian]

After coveting the Rave Girl bag since my last stay in CA two years ago, I finally jumped and got one last week at the bazaar! Why ever did I wait?! (Ah, yes, because I resent paying for plastic bags to carry my groceries in...)

[Jamiyat]

you have to pay for plastic bags in the majority of european countries too, a lot of americans complain about it.
shop in supermarkets of TashMENT and you get free ones. :-)