About Us

IRP Fellowships in
International Journalism

Covering Homeland Security - a McCormick Tribune Specialized Reporting Institute

Gatekeeper Editors Trip

Journalist-in-Residence

Conferences

Journalism Resources

A Nukus street, seen through the windshield of my guide's Volga sedan. We drove the car all over Karakalpakstan, and it performed in a faithful, if fallible, manner. The car often had trouble starting; the only way to get it going was to push it. The streets of Nukus were rutted with craterous holes. To preserve his fragile car, my guide avoided them with extreme vigilance - driving became a kind of slow-motion obstacle course.

For many years, Sergei Lipatovitsj was Muynak's harbormaster. Lipatovitsj, who started his career in 1953 as a fishing boat captain, has become the Aral's unofficial historian. Sitting in the small, neat Russian house that his father built - a house that was once a hundred yards from the shore - he told me about his memories of the sea and the town. Over tea and stale bread, he traced the sea's demise on an old map and showed me his old uniform. On his wall was a painting of Stalin holding a baby.

The Muynak Harbor ship's log. Lipatovitsj kept the log after the harbor disappeared.