Posts
Showing posts with label Kyrgyzstan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kyrgyzstan. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
donate to humanitarian relief in southern Kyrgyzstan
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) regional office in Tashkent is mobilizing aid to southern Kyrgyzstan. You can donate here.
Voice from inside a blockaded Osh neighborhood
It took many tries to get ahold of my Uzbek friends in Osh this evening, making me worry about their well-being. Finally, I was able to reach them at their home number.
Nargiza (name changed) answered and her voice sounded like a child’s. Unlike last time, when she expressed her excitement to hear from me, she remained somber. “We’re not doing very well,” she said in a low, quiet voice. “We’re all still healthy, but you know, it’s a war zone.”
A few days earlier, she expressed regret that her sons were out guarding the neighborhood and couldn’t talk to me. Tonight, there was no discussion of friendly chats. Her husband and sons were busy sleeping in shifts of 1-2 hours, taking short breaks from a constant guarding of the neighborhood.
“I’m very scared for my children,” she said. “None of us are getting much sleep.”
She said the men in her neighborhood have blockaded it, so the people and the houses have remained safe. But they feel they are in a state of war, and the stress and the lack of the sleep are wearing on them.
“We can still hear shooting,” she said. “We keep hoping that someone from outside will come to provide security, but it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t believe anyone in Kyrgyzstan anymore, so we want someone from the outside to help.”
She says it has been a bit quieter since Monday, though they can still hear shooting. The people within her neighborhood were told not to venture out, so she hadn’t seen the city outside her street for several days. “People have run in different directions,” she said. “The Kyrgyz to their villages and the places they came from, the Uzbeks into Uzbekistan. There might not be many left in Osh.”
They are left with a sense of incomprehension. “We don’t know who killed people or who was killed. The Kyrgyz say it was people specially prepared to do this. I know the Kyrgyz are good and peaceful people. We’ve lived among them and shared space at the market together. Still, there is a war with Kyrgyz and Uzbeks killing each other. They burned Uzbek homes and destroyed their stores.”
“I’d like for my children to be able to leave,” she said. I asked where they could go and she didn’t know. “Uzbekistan isn’t letting anyone else in. They let in 80,000 and said they don’t have any more room. There are a 100,000 people lined up at the border. Those who went first to Uzbekistan were those who had no protection, who had nowhere else to go.” She is in regular contact with relatives in Tashkent, but says they are unable to do anything.
A few days ago, she spoke about how the family had begun the process of remodeling their house to put in an addition for their eldest son. They wanted a space ready for him so that he could marry and bring his future wife into their home. In a matter of a few days, they are willing to give it all up. “A part of me is ready to leave this all behind, to give up our house and everything for our family to be able to leave.”
While the men protect her neighborhood, she and her female neighbors huddle together at home. They have food, water, electricity and telephone service. “I hear talk about humanitarian relief being organized,” she said. “We have plenty of food. No one in our neighborhood will die due to a lack of food. What we need is protection. I’m very, very afraid of something happening.”
Nargiza (name changed) answered and her voice sounded like a child’s. Unlike last time, when she expressed her excitement to hear from me, she remained somber. “We’re not doing very well,” she said in a low, quiet voice. “We’re all still healthy, but you know, it’s a war zone.”
A few days earlier, she expressed regret that her sons were out guarding the neighborhood and couldn’t talk to me. Tonight, there was no discussion of friendly chats. Her husband and sons were busy sleeping in shifts of 1-2 hours, taking short breaks from a constant guarding of the neighborhood.
“I’m very scared for my children,” she said. “None of us are getting much sleep.”
She said the men in her neighborhood have blockaded it, so the people and the houses have remained safe. But they feel they are in a state of war, and the stress and the lack of the sleep are wearing on them.
“We can still hear shooting,” she said. “We keep hoping that someone from outside will come to provide security, but it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t believe anyone in Kyrgyzstan anymore, so we want someone from the outside to help.”
She says it has been a bit quieter since Monday, though they can still hear shooting. The people within her neighborhood were told not to venture out, so she hadn’t seen the city outside her street for several days. “People have run in different directions,” she said. “The Kyrgyz to their villages and the places they came from, the Uzbeks into Uzbekistan. There might not be many left in Osh.”
They are left with a sense of incomprehension. “We don’t know who killed people or who was killed. The Kyrgyz say it was people specially prepared to do this. I know the Kyrgyz are good and peaceful people. We’ve lived among them and shared space at the market together. Still, there is a war with Kyrgyz and Uzbeks killing each other. They burned Uzbek homes and destroyed their stores.”
“I’d like for my children to be able to leave,” she said. I asked where they could go and she didn’t know. “Uzbekistan isn’t letting anyone else in. They let in 80,000 and said they don’t have any more room. There are a 100,000 people lined up at the border. Those who went first to Uzbekistan were those who had no protection, who had nowhere else to go.” She is in regular contact with relatives in Tashkent, but says they are unable to do anything.
A few days ago, she spoke about how the family had begun the process of remodeling their house to put in an addition for their eldest son. They wanted a space ready for him so that he could marry and bring his future wife into their home. In a matter of a few days, they are willing to give it all up. “A part of me is ready to leave this all behind, to give up our house and everything for our family to be able to leave.”
While the men protect her neighborhood, she and her female neighbors huddle together at home. They have food, water, electricity and telephone service. “I hear talk about humanitarian relief being organized,” she said. “We have plenty of food. No one in our neighborhood will die due to a lack of food. What we need is protection. I’m very, very afraid of something happening.”
Saturday, June 12, 2010
One Family Waits Out the Osh Unrest
I became very worried about reading the news about the last two days of ethnic violence in Osh. I lived with an Uzbek family in Osh for close to a year. The mother traveled to my wedding in the United States, her first time ever on an airplane. She has three sons who are young men and I feared any of them could be at risk. I wondered what it must be like to live in fear in your own house, the place I also used to consider home. The Uzbek neighborhoods, or mahalas, are close knit. But they are also segregated by ethnicity and easily identifiable.
As soon as possible, I called to find out. Nargiza (name changed) said that her husband and her two sons that are in Osh spent all night guarding the street. The men sit together on the street, guarding their neighborhoods. “But they don’t have guns,” she said. “I don’t know how much they can do.”
She wanted her sons to stay home, but “they are grown up now, and don’t listen to me.”
Markets and workplaces have been closed for the past two days. Her youngest son was supposed to take his last exam to graduate high school today, but that didn’t happen. She said some houses were burned in a nearby neighborhood and that she heard gunshots. She heard that many of the nice, large shops that were constructed in recent years, many by Uzbeks, were looted.
“It’s been terrible,” she said. “Two nights and a day of violence.”
Nargiza has a stall at the market, where she sells dishes. Her dishes are in storage at her market stall. I asked if her goods were in damage of being looted. “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to think about that,” she said. “This happened so suddenly. I haven’t been there for the past two days.”
She was hopeful the unrest would blow over within a few days and said the presence of the troops seems to be helping.
I asked what relations at work would be like after this. How would her husband and son return to work, where most of their colleagues would be Kyrgyz? How would they be treated?
“Relations between the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz in the city are fine, very friendly,” she said. “This has been caused by wild people brought in from other places, rural areas in the south. It’s only been a problem since Bakiyev was removed.”
As soon as possible, I called to find out. Nargiza (name changed) said that her husband and her two sons that are in Osh spent all night guarding the street. The men sit together on the street, guarding their neighborhoods. “But they don’t have guns,” she said. “I don’t know how much they can do.”
She wanted her sons to stay home, but “they are grown up now, and don’t listen to me.”
Markets and workplaces have been closed for the past two days. Her youngest son was supposed to take his last exam to graduate high school today, but that didn’t happen. She said some houses were burned in a nearby neighborhood and that she heard gunshots. She heard that many of the nice, large shops that were constructed in recent years, many by Uzbeks, were looted.
“It’s been terrible,” she said. “Two nights and a day of violence.”
Nargiza has a stall at the market, where she sells dishes. Her dishes are in storage at her market stall. I asked if her goods were in damage of being looted. “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to think about that,” she said. “This happened so suddenly. I haven’t been there for the past two days.”
She was hopeful the unrest would blow over within a few days and said the presence of the troops seems to be helping.
I asked what relations at work would be like after this. How would her husband and son return to work, where most of their colleagues would be Kyrgyz? How would they be treated?
“Relations between the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz in the city are fine, very friendly,” she said. “This has been caused by wild people brought in from other places, rural areas in the south. It’s only been a problem since Bakiyev was removed.”
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Learning about Kyrgyzstan
Planning a trip to Kyrgyzstan and you’d like to know more about the country and the culture. Here are some suggestions:
Non-fiction books
Kyrgyzstan: central asia’s island of democracy? By John Anderson is overdue for an updated edition, covering the period only up to 1997. Despite this, it provides a very useful and readable overview of Kyrgyz history, political and economic development and security issues within a compact 100 pages. Filled with lots of useful facts, it’s a good primer for visitors who want to understand the country context.
Kyrgyzstan (Lerner Geography Dept., 1993) This book is intended for middle-school readers, but it's a useful introduction to anyone looking for a short overview to the people, land and industry of Kyrgyzstan. Chapters include The Land and People of Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan's Story, Making a Living in Kyrgyzstan and What's Next for Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan by Claudia Antipina, Temirbek Musakeev and Roland Paivo presents a nice collection of photographs, focusing on Kyrgyz textiles and costumes.
The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After by Erica Marat presents, in the form of a timeline, a chronology of the 2005-2006 events in Kyrgyzstan and an analysis of the country one year after President Akayev’s ouster. This book offers a useful opportunity to understand recent Kyrgyz history.
Non-fiction books
Kyrgyzstan: central asia’s island of democracy? By John Anderson is overdue for an updated edition, covering the period only up to 1997. Despite this, it provides a very useful and readable overview of Kyrgyz history, political and economic development and security issues within a compact 100 pages. Filled with lots of useful facts, it’s a good primer for visitors who want to understand the country context.
Kyrgyzstan (Lerner Geography Dept., 1993) This book is intended for middle-school readers, but it's a useful introduction to anyone looking for a short overview to the people, land and industry of Kyrgyzstan. Chapters include The Land and People of Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan's Story, Making a Living in Kyrgyzstan and What's Next for Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan by Claudia Antipina, Temirbek Musakeev and Roland Paivo presents a nice collection of photographs, focusing on Kyrgyz textiles and costumes.
The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After by Erica Marat presents, in the form of a timeline, a chronology of the 2005-2006 events in Kyrgyzstan and an analysis of the country one year after President Akayev’s ouster. This book offers a useful opportunity to understand recent Kyrgyz history.
Kyrgyz Leadership and Ethnopolitics: Before and After the Tulip Revolution: The Changed Position of Ethnic Russians and Uzbeks by Munara Omuralieva. I haven’t had a chance to take a look at this new book yet, but some Russians and Uzbeks found the Kyrgyz nationalism associated with the tulip revolution to be threatened. It would be interesting to read this analysis.
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron takes readers on a modern day trip through the Silk Road territories.
Over the Edge: A True Story of Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia by Greg Child tells the story of four American rock climbers kidnapped near the border with Afghanistan.
Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia by Nancy Lubin is a bit outdated, but still useful as an introduction to some of the social, political and economic issues of the south of Kyrgyzstan.
So Many Enemies, So Little Time: An American Woman in All the Wrong Places by Elinor Burkett is a memoir of an American woman’s time teaching at a university in Bishkek.
Better a Hundred Friends than a Hundred Rubles? Social Networks in Transition – The Kyrgyz Republic, a World Bank Working Paper by Kathleen Kuehnast and Nora Dudwick provides insight into local culture and relations.
The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron recounts a journey to Central Asia in the early 1990s.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk is a highly engaging account of the battle between the great powers for the territory of Central Asia.
Turkestan Solo by Ella Maillart is the travel journal of an adventurous female traveler in the 1930s, who crossed Kyrgyzstan and explored many of the major Central Asian cities.
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron takes readers on a modern day trip through the Silk Road territories.
Over the Edge: A True Story of Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia by Greg Child tells the story of four American rock climbers kidnapped near the border with Afghanistan.
Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia by Nancy Lubin is a bit outdated, but still useful as an introduction to some of the social, political and economic issues of the south of Kyrgyzstan.
So Many Enemies, So Little Time: An American Woman in All the Wrong Places by Elinor Burkett is a memoir of an American woman’s time teaching at a university in Bishkek.
Better a Hundred Friends than a Hundred Rubles? Social Networks in Transition – The Kyrgyz Republic, a World Bank Working Paper by Kathleen Kuehnast and Nora Dudwick provides insight into local culture and relations.
The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron recounts a journey to Central Asia in the early 1990s.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk is a highly engaging account of the battle between the great powers for the territory of Central Asia.
Turkestan Solo by Ella Maillart is the travel journal of an adventurous female traveler in the 1930s, who crossed Kyrgyzstan and explored many of the major Central Asian cities.
Guidebooks
Roaming Kyrgyzstan: Beyond the Tourist Track is my book, based on research from the 2.5 years I lived there.
Kyrgyz Republic by Rowan Stewart has beautiful pictures and top-notch narrative information about Kyrgyzstan.
Lonely Planet Central Asia has a short section on Kyrgyzstan but includes the necessary basics. This book is most useful for those planning to visit several countries in the region.
Kyrgyzstan (The Bradt Guide) is one of the newer additions to the guidebook collection.
Community Based Tourism has published a guidebook to CBT services. The guide to Bishkek in the appendix is especially useful. Buy a copy for 170 som at CBT offices or download a draft of the 2006 version at: http://www.cbtkyrgyzstan.kg/images/stories/files/Guidebook_2006.pdf.
Maps available in the West include Kyrgyzstan: A Climber’s Map and Guide by Garth Willis and Martin Gamache and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan Map by GiziMap.
Fiction books
Any novels by Kyrgyzstan’s most famous author, Chingis Aitmatov, will provide a good sense of the local culture and life. Those available in English translation include: The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, Jamilia, The Place of the Skull, Cranes Fly Early and Short Novels.
This is Not Civilization by Robert Rosenberg is a novel set largely in Kyrgyzstan, written by a former Peace Corps volunteer.
Films:
Beshkempir: The Adopted Son tells the story of a young boy growing up in the typical local manner, until his best friend, in a burst of anger, reveals that Beshkempir is adopted. The film progresses with little dialogue, moving viewers through the days and weeks of typical village life. Most of the movie is in black and white, with occasional vibrant bursts of color. The relations between individuals, the land and animals are wonderfully conveyed, as is the typical life and cultural practices of Kyrgyz villagers. The movie frankly portrays issues such as early sexual exploration and spousal abuse.
Wedding Chest (Tsunduk Predkov) is about a couple, a French woman and a Kyrgyz man, coming back from Paris to Krygyzstan in order to announce their marriage. Some of the scenes are overdone but the scenery is excellent, some cultural traditions and beliefs are illuminated and the reaction of the parents to the foreign bride is indicative of Kyrgyz desire for children to marry within their ethnicity.
Birds of Paradise (Zumak kystary): This Kyrgyz-Kazhak film by Kyrgyz filmmaker Talgat Asyrankulov is about a young, female journalism student who goes to the border to document the issues there and falls in with a comic gang of smugglers. The film feels roughly strung together and the acting is sometimes weak. But the highlight is the famous ostrich farm, located just outside Bishkek, featured in the film.
The PBS documentary on bride stealing by Petr Lom shows three bride kidnappings as they happen. It is a moving and important documentation of this ancient practice that still claims many victims. Watch it online at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/kyrgyzstan/thestory.html
Other movies filmed in Kyrgyzstan, many of them shorts, include:
Pure Coolness (Boz Salkyn) (2007)
Lullaby (2006)
Down from the Seventh Floor (2005) – About the Tulip Revolution.
Saratan (2005)
Altyn Kyrghol (2001)
The Fly Up (Ergii) (2001)
The Chimp (Maimil) (2001)
Sanzhyra (2001)
The White Pony (1999)
Hassan Hussen (1997)
Bus Stop (Beket) (1995)
Taranci (1995)
Jamila (1994) – Based on the Chingis Aitmatov novel.
Sel’kincek (1993)
Where’s Your Home, Snail? (Gde tvoy dom, ulitka?) (1992)
If you know of other resources on Kyrgyzstan, please post them in the comments.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Kyrgyzstan makes list of top 10 countries to visit
Kyrgyzstan is number six on Lonely Planet’s list of the top 10 countries to visit in 2009. I couldn’t agree more that Kyrgyzstan is one of the best undiscovered destinations. For the full scoop on what to see and do, take a look at my newly published guidebook: Roaming Kyrgyzstan: Beyond the Tourist Track. And enjoy the beautiful country and friendly people!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A Desire to Hit the Road
I just finished watching a Russian film called Roads to Koktebel, in which a boy and his father travel across Russia to the Crimea. Hearing the Russian language brought it back into my head. I began to say words to my son in Russian rather than Spanish. I looked at the road they traveled, that looked so much like the road I bicycled around Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. I looked at the forest, the water, the decrepit wooden houses, the Russian characters, with longing.
I’m having the same reaction to photos of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. I haven’t been there, but am dying to go. Seeing photos makes the desire more urgent.
Basically, I have a bad case of wanderlust. The timing is not so good. Having a child hampers my travel plans a little. The state of the U.S. economy and the fact that I haven’t had an income in a while doesn’t help either.
“Nobody needs to travel,” my husband said, when I said I’m going to have to get on the road one of these days.
“I do.”
I’m having the same reaction to photos of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. I haven’t been there, but am dying to go. Seeing photos makes the desire more urgent.
Basically, I have a bad case of wanderlust. The timing is not so good. Having a child hampers my travel plans a little. The state of the U.S. economy and the fact that I haven’t had an income in a while doesn’t help either.
“Nobody needs to travel,” my husband said, when I said I’m going to have to get on the road one of these days.
“I do.”
Friday, July 11, 2008
Death of My Babushka
Yesterday I received the sad news from Babushka Adoption that my adopted babushka, Natalya Vasielievna, died back in February. She lived exactly one year after I departed from Kyrgyzstan.
Just recently I’d been recalling her tears when I left and my promises to send her letters and photos. I’d never gotten around to it and I reminded myself again. Now it’s too late and I feel guilty.
I’d given her a substantial amount of money when I left. I wondered whether she was able to use it to make her last year more comfortable, whether she saved it and it ended up some random neighbor, or if someone was able to con her out of it, as had happened to her before.
I think of how she survived on $20 a month, how she lived alone, selling chicken eggs to make a little money. How she had no family to turn to, despite her advanced age.
I’ve been in the States almost a year now and have started to get used to spending the amounts of money an average American does. Thinking of her make me remember the need in the world and my responsibility to do something. I’ll start by sponsoring another babushka. This woman’s name is Masha and she is 71 years ago. She’s a little bit better off in that she has children. But her daughter is in Russia and doesn’t contact her. Her 22-year-old son lives with her, but is handicapped.
This is her description:
Masha Sergeyevna was born in Frunze city, finished school there and entered the Road-transport College. From 1957 the babushka started working as a technician in the “Frunze” factory, as a secretary in the “Iron” factory then as a methodologist at Road-transport, Pedagogical and Energetic-Construction Colleges in Russia. From 1987 she worked as a manager of household in Tokmok town and from there got retired. At the moment babushka Masha lives with her son (22years), who is handicapped. She lost her husband in 2006. Babushka has a daughter in Russia, but she does not keep contact. Masha Sergeyevna suffers from high blood pressure, ischemia, arthritis, heart and other senile diseases. The apartment, where she lives has 2 rooms and needs minor repairs. The babushka’s pension is pension is not enough to purchase sufficient food, medicine and pay for public utilities.
Life is calm and pleasant these days. But I miss living in a place like Kyrgyzstan, where I learned so much every day and where I felt my work made a positive difference.
Just recently I’d been recalling her tears when I left and my promises to send her letters and photos. I’d never gotten around to it and I reminded myself again. Now it’s too late and I feel guilty.
I’d given her a substantial amount of money when I left. I wondered whether she was able to use it to make her last year more comfortable, whether she saved it and it ended up some random neighbor, or if someone was able to con her out of it, as had happened to her before.
I think of how she survived on $20 a month, how she lived alone, selling chicken eggs to make a little money. How she had no family to turn to, despite her advanced age.
I’ve been in the States almost a year now and have started to get used to spending the amounts of money an average American does. Thinking of her make me remember the need in the world and my responsibility to do something. I’ll start by sponsoring another babushka. This woman’s name is Masha and she is 71 years ago. She’s a little bit better off in that she has children. But her daughter is in Russia and doesn’t contact her. Her 22-year-old son lives with her, but is handicapped.
This is her description:
Masha Sergeyevna was born in Frunze city, finished school there and entered the Road-transport College. From 1957 the babushka started working as a technician in the “Frunze” factory, as a secretary in the “Iron” factory then as a methodologist at Road-transport, Pedagogical and Energetic-Construction Colleges in Russia. From 1987 she worked as a manager of household in Tokmok town and from there got retired. At the moment babushka Masha lives with her son (22years), who is handicapped. She lost her husband in 2006. Babushka has a daughter in Russia, but she does not keep contact. Masha Sergeyevna suffers from high blood pressure, ischemia, arthritis, heart and other senile diseases. The apartment, where she lives has 2 rooms and needs minor repairs. The babushka’s pension is pension is not enough to purchase sufficient food, medicine and pay for public utilities.
Life is calm and pleasant these days. But I miss living in a place like Kyrgyzstan, where I learned so much every day and where I felt my work made a positive difference.
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Prudent Land of Exhibitionism
One thing I’m having some trouble adjusting to in readapting to the U.S. is the hypocrisy between the commercialization of the body and the lack of acceptance of the body in its natural functions. It’s no surprise that images of barely dressed people fill the media, and sometimes the streets. Recently in Washington, DC I saw a woman walking in a public area with nothing more on than a bikini and a mesh cover-up. As long as the couple of strategic points are covered, it’s OK to bare a lot of skin.
Yet the sensitivity about those strategic points – the nipples and the genitals – is so extreme as to make me wonder what happened to make Americans so ashamed of their bodies. Is it the Puritan tradition, the influence of religion, or just never reaching the point of accepting the body as something other than a sexual symbol?
I recall a European friend in Kyrgyzstan telling me how different it was to get a bikini wax in the U.S., versus in Europe or Muslim Kyrgyzstan.
“In Kyrgyzstan I go in with no underwear on at all. The woman who does the waxing looks at me and talks to me normally, as though there is nothing out of the usual. She looks right at my pubic area and does her work, without making me feel there is anything wrong with me.
“In the US, I asked if I should take my underwear off. The woman said no, and just moved it to the side as she was working. It made me feel so dirty.”
Yesterday I got a prenatal massage. It was a nice, clean, professional place, very careful in making the conditions safe during pregnancy. However, I was so covered up in sheets and pillows I wondered if I was in another country. The masseuse removed only the part of the sheet she was working on while she massaged the back and legs. When she massaged my hips, she did so through the sheet. It made me think of my friend in Kyrgyzstan. Was I too dirty to be touched there?
I’m also concerned about breastfeeding in the U.S. It seems to still be considered something dirty to do in public, with books advising working women to go into bathrooms, to lock the lunchroom, or otherwise hide out in uncomfortable places. I see ads for slings advertising their ability to help with “discreet breastfeeding” and showing pictures of mothers on park benches, their baby completely covered by the fabric so as not to offend anyone.
Is the sight of a partial breast so offensive, or so disturbing that a baby should either be denied sustenance, or be kept in a hot and dark environment? Or is it only offensive to the idea that a woman’s breast is a sexual tool? Seeing it used for practical purposes could break some of the mystique.
Since I’m not too eager to hang out on toilet seats in order to feed my child, I went online to check what the laws are. La Leche League publishes a helpful list of current legislation by state. In most places, including where I live, breastfeeding in public is perfectly legal, and is not an obscene act or indecent exposure, even if the breast is exposed. In most areas, a woman has the right to breastfeed in any public place that she herself has the right to be in. I printed out the law for my state and plan to carry it with me. But I find the fact that such a right needs to be legislated rather sad. And I don’t look forward to having to defend my child’s right to be fed.
Having grown up in the U.S., I went overseas with this same prudery I’m now having trouble understanding. I never went to the public baths in Siberia, ashamed to be naked among my neighbors and co-workers. I was shocked the first time I got a massage and had to lie bare-chested on my back as the masseuse worked. I was mortified when I went to the doctor’s for a chest x-ray and I had to walk across the entire room naked, with no gown or other covering. But with time, as I saw them react to the human form as nothing special, I could accept it that way myself. What’s the big deal? We are over six billion people, with three billion or so of each gender. No individual really has anything that someone hasn’t seen before.
I can understand the countries that take a position on either side. Either they hide the body fully, in public and private. Or they accept and embrace it. Here I find a strange middle ground – where many seem to take pride in showing the maximum permissible outline of their shape and form. But once you pull back the little cover, what’s underneath is something lurid and shameful.
Yet the sensitivity about those strategic points – the nipples and the genitals – is so extreme as to make me wonder what happened to make Americans so ashamed of their bodies. Is it the Puritan tradition, the influence of religion, or just never reaching the point of accepting the body as something other than a sexual symbol?
I recall a European friend in Kyrgyzstan telling me how different it was to get a bikini wax in the U.S., versus in Europe or Muslim Kyrgyzstan.
“In Kyrgyzstan I go in with no underwear on at all. The woman who does the waxing looks at me and talks to me normally, as though there is nothing out of the usual. She looks right at my pubic area and does her work, without making me feel there is anything wrong with me.
“In the US, I asked if I should take my underwear off. The woman said no, and just moved it to the side as she was working. It made me feel so dirty.”
Yesterday I got a prenatal massage. It was a nice, clean, professional place, very careful in making the conditions safe during pregnancy. However, I was so covered up in sheets and pillows I wondered if I was in another country. The masseuse removed only the part of the sheet she was working on while she massaged the back and legs. When she massaged my hips, she did so through the sheet. It made me think of my friend in Kyrgyzstan. Was I too dirty to be touched there?
I’m also concerned about breastfeeding in the U.S. It seems to still be considered something dirty to do in public, with books advising working women to go into bathrooms, to lock the lunchroom, or otherwise hide out in uncomfortable places. I see ads for slings advertising their ability to help with “discreet breastfeeding” and showing pictures of mothers on park benches, their baby completely covered by the fabric so as not to offend anyone.
Is the sight of a partial breast so offensive, or so disturbing that a baby should either be denied sustenance, or be kept in a hot and dark environment? Or is it only offensive to the idea that a woman’s breast is a sexual tool? Seeing it used for practical purposes could break some of the mystique.
Since I’m not too eager to hang out on toilet seats in order to feed my child, I went online to check what the laws are. La Leche League publishes a helpful list of current legislation by state. In most places, including where I live, breastfeeding in public is perfectly legal, and is not an obscene act or indecent exposure, even if the breast is exposed. In most areas, a woman has the right to breastfeed in any public place that she herself has the right to be in. I printed out the law for my state and plan to carry it with me. But I find the fact that such a right needs to be legislated rather sad. And I don’t look forward to having to defend my child’s right to be fed.
Having grown up in the U.S., I went overseas with this same prudery I’m now having trouble understanding. I never went to the public baths in Siberia, ashamed to be naked among my neighbors and co-workers. I was shocked the first time I got a massage and had to lie bare-chested on my back as the masseuse worked. I was mortified when I went to the doctor’s for a chest x-ray and I had to walk across the entire room naked, with no gown or other covering. But with time, as I saw them react to the human form as nothing special, I could accept it that way myself. What’s the big deal? We are over six billion people, with three billion or so of each gender. No individual really has anything that someone hasn’t seen before.
I can understand the countries that take a position on either side. Either they hide the body fully, in public and private. Or they accept and embrace it. Here I find a strange middle ground – where many seem to take pride in showing the maximum permissible outline of their shape and form. But once you pull back the little cover, what’s underneath is something lurid and shameful.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Last Day in Bolivia
Yesterday I had a taxi driver only on the job five days and not yet jaded by the endless queue of passengers. He told me about a festival for the Holy Child that would be taking place in a small town this weekend. He was planning to go and urged me to consider it, saying it would be a beautiful sight.
A call came in from the dispatcher, ordering his taxi to his mother’s house. I laughed.
“Is your mother your customer?” I asked.
“She makes empanadas and when someone wants a delivery of empanadas, I transport them,” he said. “If you ever want a wonderful empanada, you should try hers. She’s been making them for 27 years.”
I had a busy day yesterday, finishing up my work and all the errands I wanted to finish in Santa Cruz. It was better to be busy than not though, as I’d reached the point where I was just counting the hours until my departure. In the evening, several of my colleagues took me out to dinner – a delicious meal of fried yucca pieces with various sauces, a chicken breast in cheese sauce, vegetables and potatoes. My Spanish teacher Oscar gave me our first baby blanket – a soft, pretty yellow blanket with a little arc full of animals on it.
The light was soft and gentle when I left this morning, the sun rising from a mottled sky, the palm trees on the way to the airport waving in the light breeze. There were no blockages, no protests, just the quiet normality of a city getting ready to go to work.
Overall, the city and the country have been good to me. I’ve met a lot of kind people and have generally had good experiences over the last five months. However, the country hasn’t taken a hold on my heart the way Kyrgyzstan did. It was painful to leave the land and the people of Kyrgyzstan as I felt it had become a part of me. Here, I remained a visitor, someone here temporarily. I was glad to have a final chance to spend time with colleagues. But I don’t have a connection with the land. And rather than with regret, I leave happily, eager to start a new adventure in the U.S., happy for the first time in years to be able to set up a home and family, however short-term it may be.
A call came in from the dispatcher, ordering his taxi to his mother’s house. I laughed.
“Is your mother your customer?” I asked.
“She makes empanadas and when someone wants a delivery of empanadas, I transport them,” he said. “If you ever want a wonderful empanada, you should try hers. She’s been making them for 27 years.”
I had a busy day yesterday, finishing up my work and all the errands I wanted to finish in Santa Cruz. It was better to be busy than not though, as I’d reached the point where I was just counting the hours until my departure. In the evening, several of my colleagues took me out to dinner – a delicious meal of fried yucca pieces with various sauces, a chicken breast in cheese sauce, vegetables and potatoes. My Spanish teacher Oscar gave me our first baby blanket – a soft, pretty yellow blanket with a little arc full of animals on it.
The light was soft and gentle when I left this morning, the sun rising from a mottled sky, the palm trees on the way to the airport waving in the light breeze. There were no blockages, no protests, just the quiet normality of a city getting ready to go to work.
Overall, the city and the country have been good to me. I’ve met a lot of kind people and have generally had good experiences over the last five months. However, the country hasn’t taken a hold on my heart the way Kyrgyzstan did. It was painful to leave the land and the people of Kyrgyzstan as I felt it had become a part of me. Here, I remained a visitor, someone here temporarily. I was glad to have a final chance to spend time with colleagues. But I don’t have a connection with the land. And rather than with regret, I leave happily, eager to start a new adventure in the U.S., happy for the first time in years to be able to set up a home and family, however short-term it may be.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Where the Action Is
Last night the office hosted a karaoke contest among its female employees. It rented out an entire disco club and the employees from throughout the city gathered there at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.
It wasn’t too far from my house. We drove down San Martin avenue in Equipetrol, which is the hang out place for upper class youth. I had known this, and seen it. But never had I seen so many people gathered as I did late on Saturday night.
The street was lined with SUVs and trucks parked on either side of the street. A steady stream of vehicles moved slowly down the street, checking out the scene, deciding where it might be worth it to stop.
Many vehicles had large stereo systems installed in the back. Young women in tight, low-cut tank tops and high heels and muscular young men sat on the hoods, in the trunks, or rested against the sides. Jewelry, make-up and colorful clothing glittered under the streetlamps. Some couples embraced, or French-kissed, in public. Some danced. Most held a bottle of beer.
Among these crowds of privileged youth walked an Indian woman, her braided hair covered with a hat, a colorful striped cloth tying a bundle to her back. It was such a contrast between the traditional Indian woman and the carefree modern youth, such as could be seen in any cosmopolitan city. Other lower-income entrepreneurs roam the crowds, selling snacks, drinks, and cigarettes.
The karaoke concert was nicely organized, and for a work function, was a fun way to spend an evening. We listened to quite a bit of mediocre singing, as well as a few people with talent. It was scheduled to begin at 11. My colleague, Maria, is very timely, especially for Bolivia. We arrived by 10:30 and the place was virtually empty. It started a little after 11:30.
Today I decided to join in the custom of eating Sunday lunch out. I walked through an area where I thought I could find some restaurants. Almost everything, except the supermarket, a few kiosks, and some restaurants, is closed on Sundays and the streets were almost deserted. But I quickly realized how to find a place to eat – look for large numbers of SUVs concentrated in one area.
This signal led me to several options. I ended up choosing a steakhouse, where they advertised the best meat in the world (and Oscar, my Spanish teacher, told me they had especially good meat, backing up their claim). It was an attractive, classy restaurant, packed to the rafters, the staff buzzing professionally around, the owner (who looked Argentinean) monitoring the action.
Their specialty was grilled meat, which was served with a plate of green salad, rice, French fries, fried yucca, bread, spiced mayonnaise and salsa. I’d guess the average patron spends about $8 there, which is definitely higher end. Yet every table was full. I looked around at the patrons, the comfortable, middle and upper class families, enjoying their nice meal while their “employee” had the day off. Such families exist everywhere. But what is remarkable here is that there are so many of them. And that these differences in lifestyle seem to be taken as a matter of course (although, not by the President, Evo Morales).
In Kyrgyzstan I felt it much easier to integrate into various aspects of society. I lived in an apartment with normal people – students as well as families and professionals – across the street from a brothel. Sometimes I ate at the upper end restaurants. Other times I went to little holes in the wall. And it didn’t really make a difference either way. I walked, biked, took the buses and taxis, and was fine however I chose to travel.
Here, because of the differences in income, and because of the safety threat, I feel much more of the need to segregate myself with the middle and upper classes. I live in a condo with 24 hour security, when I need a car I order a taxi by phone that picks me up by name, and I even hired an “employee” to clean and cook a few times a week. The best I do at integration is taking the bus to work in the morning. But it’s dangerous to walk, it’s dangerous to take a taxi off the street, and it’s dangerous to stroll into unknown neighborhoods carrying anything of value.
This I find unfortunate. As much as I like the weather and people, I don’t like the segregation of the population and the inability to move freely.
This week I spoke to a Bosnian/German colleague here, who is interested in working in Colombia. I asked whether she was concerned about the security situation there and she told me she liked the people a lot.
“Yes, you have to be careful and you have to go from place to place in a car, but it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
I guess if you are OK with moving from one sheltered space to another, it’s true, it is OK. You can work, go to the gym, go shopping, visit your friends, and take vacations, all in safe, upper-end places. But for someone who wants to move and breathe and interact with one’s surroundings, to have a symbiotic relationship, it’s hard to consider it living.
It wasn’t too far from my house. We drove down San Martin avenue in Equipetrol, which is the hang out place for upper class youth. I had known this, and seen it. But never had I seen so many people gathered as I did late on Saturday night.
The street was lined with SUVs and trucks parked on either side of the street. A steady stream of vehicles moved slowly down the street, checking out the scene, deciding where it might be worth it to stop.
Many vehicles had large stereo systems installed in the back. Young women in tight, low-cut tank tops and high heels and muscular young men sat on the hoods, in the trunks, or rested against the sides. Jewelry, make-up and colorful clothing glittered under the streetlamps. Some couples embraced, or French-kissed, in public. Some danced. Most held a bottle of beer.
Among these crowds of privileged youth walked an Indian woman, her braided hair covered with a hat, a colorful striped cloth tying a bundle to her back. It was such a contrast between the traditional Indian woman and the carefree modern youth, such as could be seen in any cosmopolitan city. Other lower-income entrepreneurs roam the crowds, selling snacks, drinks, and cigarettes.
The karaoke concert was nicely organized, and for a work function, was a fun way to spend an evening. We listened to quite a bit of mediocre singing, as well as a few people with talent. It was scheduled to begin at 11. My colleague, Maria, is very timely, especially for Bolivia. We arrived by 10:30 and the place was virtually empty. It started a little after 11:30.
Today I decided to join in the custom of eating Sunday lunch out. I walked through an area where I thought I could find some restaurants. Almost everything, except the supermarket, a few kiosks, and some restaurants, is closed on Sundays and the streets were almost deserted. But I quickly realized how to find a place to eat – look for large numbers of SUVs concentrated in one area.
This signal led me to several options. I ended up choosing a steakhouse, where they advertised the best meat in the world (and Oscar, my Spanish teacher, told me they had especially good meat, backing up their claim). It was an attractive, classy restaurant, packed to the rafters, the staff buzzing professionally around, the owner (who looked Argentinean) monitoring the action.
Their specialty was grilled meat, which was served with a plate of green salad, rice, French fries, fried yucca, bread, spiced mayonnaise and salsa. I’d guess the average patron spends about $8 there, which is definitely higher end. Yet every table was full. I looked around at the patrons, the comfortable, middle and upper class families, enjoying their nice meal while their “employee” had the day off. Such families exist everywhere. But what is remarkable here is that there are so many of them. And that these differences in lifestyle seem to be taken as a matter of course (although, not by the President, Evo Morales).
In Kyrgyzstan I felt it much easier to integrate into various aspects of society. I lived in an apartment with normal people – students as well as families and professionals – across the street from a brothel. Sometimes I ate at the upper end restaurants. Other times I went to little holes in the wall. And it didn’t really make a difference either way. I walked, biked, took the buses and taxis, and was fine however I chose to travel.
Here, because of the differences in income, and because of the safety threat, I feel much more of the need to segregate myself with the middle and upper classes. I live in a condo with 24 hour security, when I need a car I order a taxi by phone that picks me up by name, and I even hired an “employee” to clean and cook a few times a week. The best I do at integration is taking the bus to work in the morning. But it’s dangerous to walk, it’s dangerous to take a taxi off the street, and it’s dangerous to stroll into unknown neighborhoods carrying anything of value.
This I find unfortunate. As much as I like the weather and people, I don’t like the segregation of the population and the inability to move freely.
This week I spoke to a Bosnian/German colleague here, who is interested in working in Colombia. I asked whether she was concerned about the security situation there and she told me she liked the people a lot.
“Yes, you have to be careful and you have to go from place to place in a car, but it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
I guess if you are OK with moving from one sheltered space to another, it’s true, it is OK. You can work, go to the gym, go shopping, visit your friends, and take vacations, all in safe, upper-end places. But for someone who wants to move and breathe and interact with one’s surroundings, to have a symbiotic relationship, it’s hard to consider it living.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Bringing in the New Year - Uzbek Style
On the last day of the years, shops buzzed with frantic last minute buyers stocking up for the holiday weekend. Even the tiniest entrepreneurs, those who sit behind a small card table arrayed with cigarettes, matches and candy bars, had expanded their selections, sometimes offering things like oranges or cookies in addition to their usual wares. I walked past a bakery shop selling cake for $11 per kilogram. A line of customers covered the display cases, as the three bakers, men dressed in white aprons, handed over one cake after another.
I bought some bananas and oranges to give to the family, as well as Choco-Pies and candy bars to give as presents to the three boys in the household.
Me, Nigora and Shavrat, and their three sons, Faruh, Habib and Faruh, gathered around the table at 6:30. Nigora uses one of the rooms adjoining mine as the place to receive guests and to hold events. A sofa and several chairs line a low table and they had brought in the TV and stereo system. As part of the “summer” section of the house, it’s unheated. So they plugged in a portable heater, and prepared what they called a sandal – they put a small heater under the table, covered the table with a heavy blanket before putting on the tablecloth, and instructed us to put our feet under the blanket, which effectively trapped the heat.
“If your feet are warm, everything will be warm,” Shavrat said. “Back in the time when there was no heat and no electricity, this is how my grandparents stayed warm, using coal under the table.”
For the first time, I saw Nigora dressed in normal clothing and also for the first time, I saw her hair. Given that so many of her household tasks are outdoors – from cooking and washing dishes to sweeping the paths, doing laundry and lighting the stoves or banya, I had so far only seen her wrapped in layers of non-descript old clothes, a scarf around her head. On New Years eve, she wore a beige turtleneck, a beige and black long plaid jumper and a thick gold chain. Her wavy dark hair fell down to her shoulders. Later in the evening, she put it up in a ponytail, much like a schoolgirl. She suddenly looked years younger. She has a small, round baby face and a pretty smile, gold teeth on the upper left side of her mouth, square white teeth the rest of the way across.
She pointed out to me that she has two crowns on her head, one on the left side of her forehead and the other, like most people, at the back of her head.
“I guess I have two brains in there,” she said.
“Then you must be pretty smart,” I replied.
“My husband doesn’t think I’m smart.”
Habib, her 17-year-old son, a friendly and handsome young man with her bright smile, interjected. “My mother has a university education and my father only finished school. But he somehow thinks he’s smarter.”
“It’s not that I think I’m smarter,” Shavrat defended himself. “I just believe that the man should always be above the woman. That is how it should be.”
“But it doesn’t always happen, huh?” I asked, and the boys laughed.
“I’m content letting him be the head and I’ll be the shoulders,” Nigora said.
Nigora said that she didn’t prepare a special meal, since it was only the family gathering and if she prepared a lot, everything would just be left over. When I returned from work in the afternoon I immediately noticed that our turkey population was down to one. Shavrat had killed one that morning and she used it to make turkey and potato soup, followed by a selection of premade “salads” – beet salad, soy meat salad, some kind of meat with milk and water added to make it gelled, an unidentifiable meat salad, and Chinese rice and starch noodles with carrot salad. We also had fresh fruit, rolls, cake and chocolate.
Nigora poured small cups of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a gift she’d received from an English friend, while Shavrat drank Georgian cognac, a gift from a Russian friend. Shavrat gave the first toast, hoping that everyone could make a wish and work to make it come true in the coming year.
“I wish that my dad wouldn’t drink,” Lufulo said. Shavrat had just announced his plans to quit smoking and drinking starting with the new year, but no one seemed overly optimistic. Shavrat refused his wife’s offer of a $100 bet.
“He really hates it when his dad drinks,” Nigora said.
Shavrat told me how he stopped drinking for five years. But after a colleague who he really respected unexpectedly died in an avalanche while mountain-climbing, he began to drink to dull the pain. His friend’s body was never found and he dreams of joining an expedition to find and bury him.
This was my third New Years spent in the former Soviet Union and it was definitely the lowest key of the three. We just sat around, ate, talked and watched TV. Every so often, the boys would go outside to see what was happening on the streets. As the night progressed, we’d hear more firecrackers being ignited on Technicheskaya Street, just outside our window. It was also a nice opportunity for me to get to know the family a bit better. I had imagined we’d eat dinner together every night, but instead, Nigora brings me food into my quarters. I’ve never been in their section of the house and last night was the first time I’d seen all the boys together and was able to imprint their names and faces into my memory. Before then, I may have passed them on the street without recognizing them.
Shavrat told me that he has a long history with this street. He himself was born and raised in this house and most of the neighbors have also passed their houses along through the generations, so they know everyone near by. He stepped out to say hello to the man who lives across the street. He has a two-year contract working as a welder in South Korea and is now back on his annual one-month vacation. He earns $1,000 a month there and is able to live on $250 a month, sending the rest home to his wife and children. They’ve bought a Mercedes with the money and when he returns, he plans to revive and modernize the family tire repair business.
Shavrat and Nigora told me about their marriage. They had a funny beginning in that they were both 25 and neither of them wanted to get married. Shavrat’s grandparents were looking for a wife for Shavrat and they found Nigora and spoke to her grandparents. They arranged a meeting and Nigora said no, she wasn’t interested. She was a Communist party member working as an engineer in Tashkent and she was happy with her career and her apartment. She didn’t want a family, especially given the expectations that went with marriage among the Uzbeks – that she’d have to take almost full responsibility for cooking, the home and children.
“I couldn’t believe that she refused,” Shavrat said. “I told her that I’d come in the night and steal her. I was a very attractive guy then and there were at least 50 girls who wanted to marry me. Whenever they said they wanted to marry me, I said that was the end. I wasn’t interested.”
“Listen to him praise himself,” Nigora said, smiling. Their sons were also smiling, as though they’d heard all this before.
“I couldn’t believe that someone didn’t want to marry me and that made me want to marry her,” he continued, as though he hadn’t been interrupted.
“But Uzbeks don’t steal each other, do they?”
“No, that’s only the Kyrgyz,” Habib said.
“I refused,” Nigora explained. “But my mother was very tricky. She started to say that she was sick, and she did become seriously ill. She said that her blood pressure was really high and she was going to die. So I said OK, OK I’ll get married.”
She was a Communist pursuing a career. Shavrat hated the Communists and said that through his musician friends, he foresaw their demire.
“I told her in 1984 that the party was going to end and she didn’t believe me,” he said.
I asked her how it felt when it did come to an end.
“By that time, I was at home, raising children, cooking and doing laundry, so it didn’t affect me that much. Of course, it’s painful when you believe in something and it’s torn down. It’s even worse to find out that what you believed in was wrong. But if I’d been working at that time, it would have been really hard.”
While Shavrat isn’t highly educated himself, he seems to be fairly smart and is very concerned with his sons’ educations. He told me how his two eldest sons studied at the elementary school nearest their home.
“They would come home with all fives (As). Even in Russian, they had 5, 5, 5. And I knew that they didn’t speak Russian very well and they couldn’t have received 5s. But Nigora doesn’t speak Russian very well, so she didn’t notice. And at the school, all the teachers and all the students were Uzbek and Kyrgyz. There wasn’t a single Russian there. So how could they learn Russian? I realized that it was a bad school and I wanted my sons to transfer.
“We have rules here though that children are required to go to the school nearest their home. But I took them to another school, showed the administrators their reports and told them – “Look, you need good students like these, don’t you?” They said yes and they took my sons.”
Habib explained. “The first year, we received twos and threes (Ds and Cs) in almost everything, but by the time we were in fifth grade, we were getting fours (Bs) and even fives (As). Now everything is OK.”
Habib is in the eleventh grade and will be going to the university next year. Faruh is currently a first year university student in the finance and credit department. He was admitted to a Turkish university in Bishkek, but they couldn’t afford to send him there. They are thinking of allowing him to transfer after he’s completed a few years here.
Faruh, a thin 19-year-old with a darker, mouselike face, told me how he is currently having a problem because his Kyrgyz history teacher refuses to give good marks to anyone who doesn’t pay. Shavrat refuses to pay any bribes to teachers.
“I’ll pay the tuition and that’s it,” he said. “There are so many students now who just pay and don’t study at all and don’t learn anything. I want my son to have to learn these things.” That’s a rather bold move in a society with such prevalent corruption.
As we talked, they would occasionally burst out laughing at scenes from an American movie that was on TV, a movie they said was called Black Diamond. It was set in an inner city, many of the cast members were African American and it featured lots of criminal activity and fights.
“This is a movie that everyone has seen several times,” Nigora told me, after they all laughed. “This time they translated it into Uzbek, but they make jokes throughout it. They’ve given all the characters Uzbek names. Right now we know the characters were having a serious conversation, but they translated it as, “So how’s the weather?” and the other guy responding, “I think there is going to be snow.”
During the action scenes, they inserted traditional Uzbek music. One scene that even made me laugh had an African American pizza delivery man, with corkscrew curls, large teeth and an overflowing personality, come into an office building to deliver three pizzas. He was bouncing around the lobby with his three pizza boxes with a lot of energy. Nigora translated for me.
“He’s sayng ‘I have fresh lepushkas (round Uzbek bread) for sale. Fresh, delicious lepushkas, right out of the oven.” He approached a fat Caucasian security guard and tried to sell the lepushkas. “I’m sorry, but I’ve just had samsi (Uzbek meat, fat and onion-filled croissants).”
It was pretty funny to imagine the American characters talking about lepushkas and samsi.
Just before midnight, the lights went out and Faruh took advantage of the darkness to light sparklers in the house. We then went out onto Construction Street. A few minutes before midnight, the street was smoky with the residue of firecrackers being lit off from each household, whizzing and popping noises filled the air as residents, mostly young boys, lit off everything from bottle rockets, to giant colorful fireworks that could be seen from a large distance. I covered my ears and looked all around me, at the explosions occurring from different directions.
The street was full of people, but because it is lined with single-family homes, the people were spread out along the street, each group congregated in front of their home. When I spent New Years with friends in an apartment in Latvia, it was more festive since all the apartment residents went out and congregated together. Some neighbors came by to say hello to Nigora and Shavrat – the man back from Korea, a woman in a scarf and fuzzy wool Uzbek vest.
A man across the street brought out a stereo and set it on a chair in front of his home, then turned on American rock music. A group of children began to dance.
“Last year we had a huge disco,” Shavrat told me. “One of our neighbors has DJ equipment and he set everything up. The street was full of dancing several hours before midnight. This year is calmer. Perhaps he found work playing music this evening.”
We went in to more salads, more champagne, and more Russian and Uzbek festive TV programs. I lasted until about two, Shavrat and Nigora stayed up longer – Shavrat getting drunk with neighbors on his last day before giving up alcohol, Nigora sitting by the TV with her children.
I bought some bananas and oranges to give to the family, as well as Choco-Pies and candy bars to give as presents to the three boys in the household.
Me, Nigora and Shavrat, and their three sons, Faruh, Habib and Faruh, gathered around the table at 6:30. Nigora uses one of the rooms adjoining mine as the place to receive guests and to hold events. A sofa and several chairs line a low table and they had brought in the TV and stereo system. As part of the “summer” section of the house, it’s unheated. So they plugged in a portable heater, and prepared what they called a sandal – they put a small heater under the table, covered the table with a heavy blanket before putting on the tablecloth, and instructed us to put our feet under the blanket, which effectively trapped the heat.
“If your feet are warm, everything will be warm,” Shavrat said. “Back in the time when there was no heat and no electricity, this is how my grandparents stayed warm, using coal under the table.”
For the first time, I saw Nigora dressed in normal clothing and also for the first time, I saw her hair. Given that so many of her household tasks are outdoors – from cooking and washing dishes to sweeping the paths, doing laundry and lighting the stoves or banya, I had so far only seen her wrapped in layers of non-descript old clothes, a scarf around her head. On New Years eve, she wore a beige turtleneck, a beige and black long plaid jumper and a thick gold chain. Her wavy dark hair fell down to her shoulders. Later in the evening, she put it up in a ponytail, much like a schoolgirl. She suddenly looked years younger. She has a small, round baby face and a pretty smile, gold teeth on the upper left side of her mouth, square white teeth the rest of the way across.
She pointed out to me that she has two crowns on her head, one on the left side of her forehead and the other, like most people, at the back of her head.
“I guess I have two brains in there,” she said.
“Then you must be pretty smart,” I replied.
“My husband doesn’t think I’m smart.”
Habib, her 17-year-old son, a friendly and handsome young man with her bright smile, interjected. “My mother has a university education and my father only finished school. But he somehow thinks he’s smarter.”
“It’s not that I think I’m smarter,” Shavrat defended himself. “I just believe that the man should always be above the woman. That is how it should be.”
“But it doesn’t always happen, huh?” I asked, and the boys laughed.
“I’m content letting him be the head and I’ll be the shoulders,” Nigora said.
Nigora said that she didn’t prepare a special meal, since it was only the family gathering and if she prepared a lot, everything would just be left over. When I returned from work in the afternoon I immediately noticed that our turkey population was down to one. Shavrat had killed one that morning and she used it to make turkey and potato soup, followed by a selection of premade “salads” – beet salad, soy meat salad, some kind of meat with milk and water added to make it gelled, an unidentifiable meat salad, and Chinese rice and starch noodles with carrot salad. We also had fresh fruit, rolls, cake and chocolate.
Nigora poured small cups of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a gift she’d received from an English friend, while Shavrat drank Georgian cognac, a gift from a Russian friend. Shavrat gave the first toast, hoping that everyone could make a wish and work to make it come true in the coming year.
“I wish that my dad wouldn’t drink,” Lufulo said. Shavrat had just announced his plans to quit smoking and drinking starting with the new year, but no one seemed overly optimistic. Shavrat refused his wife’s offer of a $100 bet.
“He really hates it when his dad drinks,” Nigora said.
Shavrat told me how he stopped drinking for five years. But after a colleague who he really respected unexpectedly died in an avalanche while mountain-climbing, he began to drink to dull the pain. His friend’s body was never found and he dreams of joining an expedition to find and bury him.
This was my third New Years spent in the former Soviet Union and it was definitely the lowest key of the three. We just sat around, ate, talked and watched TV. Every so often, the boys would go outside to see what was happening on the streets. As the night progressed, we’d hear more firecrackers being ignited on Technicheskaya Street, just outside our window. It was also a nice opportunity for me to get to know the family a bit better. I had imagined we’d eat dinner together every night, but instead, Nigora brings me food into my quarters. I’ve never been in their section of the house and last night was the first time I’d seen all the boys together and was able to imprint their names and faces into my memory. Before then, I may have passed them on the street without recognizing them.
Shavrat told me that he has a long history with this street. He himself was born and raised in this house and most of the neighbors have also passed their houses along through the generations, so they know everyone near by. He stepped out to say hello to the man who lives across the street. He has a two-year contract working as a welder in South Korea and is now back on his annual one-month vacation. He earns $1,000 a month there and is able to live on $250 a month, sending the rest home to his wife and children. They’ve bought a Mercedes with the money and when he returns, he plans to revive and modernize the family tire repair business.
Shavrat and Nigora told me about their marriage. They had a funny beginning in that they were both 25 and neither of them wanted to get married. Shavrat’s grandparents were looking for a wife for Shavrat and they found Nigora and spoke to her grandparents. They arranged a meeting and Nigora said no, she wasn’t interested. She was a Communist party member working as an engineer in Tashkent and she was happy with her career and her apartment. She didn’t want a family, especially given the expectations that went with marriage among the Uzbeks – that she’d have to take almost full responsibility for cooking, the home and children.
“I couldn’t believe that she refused,” Shavrat said. “I told her that I’d come in the night and steal her. I was a very attractive guy then and there were at least 50 girls who wanted to marry me. Whenever they said they wanted to marry me, I said that was the end. I wasn’t interested.”
“Listen to him praise himself,” Nigora said, smiling. Their sons were also smiling, as though they’d heard all this before.
“I couldn’t believe that someone didn’t want to marry me and that made me want to marry her,” he continued, as though he hadn’t been interrupted.
“But Uzbeks don’t steal each other, do they?”
“No, that’s only the Kyrgyz,” Habib said.
“I refused,” Nigora explained. “But my mother was very tricky. She started to say that she was sick, and she did become seriously ill. She said that her blood pressure was really high and she was going to die. So I said OK, OK I’ll get married.”
She was a Communist pursuing a career. Shavrat hated the Communists and said that through his musician friends, he foresaw their demire.
“I told her in 1984 that the party was going to end and she didn’t believe me,” he said.
I asked her how it felt when it did come to an end.
“By that time, I was at home, raising children, cooking and doing laundry, so it didn’t affect me that much. Of course, it’s painful when you believe in something and it’s torn down. It’s even worse to find out that what you believed in was wrong. But if I’d been working at that time, it would have been really hard.”
While Shavrat isn’t highly educated himself, he seems to be fairly smart and is very concerned with his sons’ educations. He told me how his two eldest sons studied at the elementary school nearest their home.
“They would come home with all fives (As). Even in Russian, they had 5, 5, 5. And I knew that they didn’t speak Russian very well and they couldn’t have received 5s. But Nigora doesn’t speak Russian very well, so she didn’t notice. And at the school, all the teachers and all the students were Uzbek and Kyrgyz. There wasn’t a single Russian there. So how could they learn Russian? I realized that it was a bad school and I wanted my sons to transfer.
“We have rules here though that children are required to go to the school nearest their home. But I took them to another school, showed the administrators their reports and told them – “Look, you need good students like these, don’t you?” They said yes and they took my sons.”
Habib explained. “The first year, we received twos and threes (Ds and Cs) in almost everything, but by the time we were in fifth grade, we were getting fours (Bs) and even fives (As). Now everything is OK.”
Habib is in the eleventh grade and will be going to the university next year. Faruh is currently a first year university student in the finance and credit department. He was admitted to a Turkish university in Bishkek, but they couldn’t afford to send him there. They are thinking of allowing him to transfer after he’s completed a few years here.
Faruh, a thin 19-year-old with a darker, mouselike face, told me how he is currently having a problem because his Kyrgyz history teacher refuses to give good marks to anyone who doesn’t pay. Shavrat refuses to pay any bribes to teachers.
“I’ll pay the tuition and that’s it,” he said. “There are so many students now who just pay and don’t study at all and don’t learn anything. I want my son to have to learn these things.” That’s a rather bold move in a society with such prevalent corruption.
As we talked, they would occasionally burst out laughing at scenes from an American movie that was on TV, a movie they said was called Black Diamond. It was set in an inner city, many of the cast members were African American and it featured lots of criminal activity and fights.
“This is a movie that everyone has seen several times,” Nigora told me, after they all laughed. “This time they translated it into Uzbek, but they make jokes throughout it. They’ve given all the characters Uzbek names. Right now we know the characters were having a serious conversation, but they translated it as, “So how’s the weather?” and the other guy responding, “I think there is going to be snow.”
During the action scenes, they inserted traditional Uzbek music. One scene that even made me laugh had an African American pizza delivery man, with corkscrew curls, large teeth and an overflowing personality, come into an office building to deliver three pizzas. He was bouncing around the lobby with his three pizza boxes with a lot of energy. Nigora translated for me.
“He’s sayng ‘I have fresh lepushkas (round Uzbek bread) for sale. Fresh, delicious lepushkas, right out of the oven.” He approached a fat Caucasian security guard and tried to sell the lepushkas. “I’m sorry, but I’ve just had samsi (Uzbek meat, fat and onion-filled croissants).”
It was pretty funny to imagine the American characters talking about lepushkas and samsi.
Just before midnight, the lights went out and Faruh took advantage of the darkness to light sparklers in the house. We then went out onto Construction Street. A few minutes before midnight, the street was smoky with the residue of firecrackers being lit off from each household, whizzing and popping noises filled the air as residents, mostly young boys, lit off everything from bottle rockets, to giant colorful fireworks that could be seen from a large distance. I covered my ears and looked all around me, at the explosions occurring from different directions.
The street was full of people, but because it is lined with single-family homes, the people were spread out along the street, each group congregated in front of their home. When I spent New Years with friends in an apartment in Latvia, it was more festive since all the apartment residents went out and congregated together. Some neighbors came by to say hello to Nigora and Shavrat – the man back from Korea, a woman in a scarf and fuzzy wool Uzbek vest.
A man across the street brought out a stereo and set it on a chair in front of his home, then turned on American rock music. A group of children began to dance.
“Last year we had a huge disco,” Shavrat told me. “One of our neighbors has DJ equipment and he set everything up. The street was full of dancing several hours before midnight. This year is calmer. Perhaps he found work playing music this evening.”
We went in to more salads, more champagne, and more Russian and Uzbek festive TV programs. I lasted until about two, Shavrat and Nigora stayed up longer – Shavrat getting drunk with neighbors on his last day before giving up alcohol, Nigora sitting by the TV with her children.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Adaptation
I’ve just spent my second night with my new Uzbek family and things are getting easier. They bought a small portable heater during my absence, but even better, they lit the stove last night. It was wonderful to finally feel warm and I enjoyed learning how to remove the metal rings and to put in chunks of shiny black coal with the metal tongs. It’s my first experience with a coal stove and I think it works pretty well. The coal is less heavy and less work than chopping wood.
Nigora, the woman of the household, told me she prefers coal to other options. “I have neighbors who keep everything neat and tidy by using a gas stove,” she said. “But then the city cuts off the gas and they start to freeze, for one day, two days, a week. They run around shivering and saying how cold it is while we stay warm. I don’t like to deal with such psychological stress.”
I’ve made more progress unpacking and it’s starting to feel a little more like home. I’ve also started to get into routines that make things easier here – always go to the bathroom before leaving work (taking advantage of the indoor toilet), hang my bath towel and what I plan to wear the next day over the heater before going to bed, hang onto any paper trash that could be burned, take a hunk of bread with me when heading to the toilet or shower to build better relations with the dog that barks at me on the way.
There are still some aspects that I’ll have to get used to. I have almost no privacy, as Nigora comes in every hour or two, either to check on the stove, or to bring me tea or something to eat. I have no access to running water without going outside to the toilet. I noticed the absence of that yesterday while finding something sticky as I unpacked my suitcase. I had nothing to wipe it off with. And of course, leaving the warmth of my room to head across the courtyard to the bathroom is never very appealing. To get to the shower this morning, I felt as though I was bundling up for a trip to the Artic. Stepping outside into the morning blackess with plastic sandals over my socks, I walked through a layer of snow that had fallen during the night. Luckily, once I made it to the shower, I found scalding hot water and was very appreciative of that. Returning to my room in a winter jacket, with a towel wrapped around my head, I passed Nigora, who was sweeping the snow off the sidewalk.
There are also the unique sounds of residential life. A car started up across the street and the two caged turkeys gobbled in unison. I’m not sure whether either of them will live past New Year’s. Through my bedroom window, I hear the steady chirp of birds and the banging of pots, as Nigora cooks on her outside stove.
Now that it’s warmer, I think I’ll like living here. It’s excellent in terms of safety, it’s nice to have dinner prepared and I like having someone outside work to talk with. But best of all, I hope I’ll be able to learn more about local life and culture. If I were back in my apartment, I don’t know what I’d do for New Years, possibly the most important holiday of the year here. But now that I’m living with a family, I automatically have people to spend the holiday with and I’m sure it will be much more interesting.
Nigora, the woman of the household, told me she prefers coal to other options. “I have neighbors who keep everything neat and tidy by using a gas stove,” she said. “But then the city cuts off the gas and they start to freeze, for one day, two days, a week. They run around shivering and saying how cold it is while we stay warm. I don’t like to deal with such psychological stress.”
I’ve made more progress unpacking and it’s starting to feel a little more like home. I’ve also started to get into routines that make things easier here – always go to the bathroom before leaving work (taking advantage of the indoor toilet), hang my bath towel and what I plan to wear the next day over the heater before going to bed, hang onto any paper trash that could be burned, take a hunk of bread with me when heading to the toilet or shower to build better relations with the dog that barks at me on the way.
There are still some aspects that I’ll have to get used to. I have almost no privacy, as Nigora comes in every hour or two, either to check on the stove, or to bring me tea or something to eat. I have no access to running water without going outside to the toilet. I noticed the absence of that yesterday while finding something sticky as I unpacked my suitcase. I had nothing to wipe it off with. And of course, leaving the warmth of my room to head across the courtyard to the bathroom is never very appealing. To get to the shower this morning, I felt as though I was bundling up for a trip to the Artic. Stepping outside into the morning blackess with plastic sandals over my socks, I walked through a layer of snow that had fallen during the night. Luckily, once I made it to the shower, I found scalding hot water and was very appreciative of that. Returning to my room in a winter jacket, with a towel wrapped around my head, I passed Nigora, who was sweeping the snow off the sidewalk.
There are also the unique sounds of residential life. A car started up across the street and the two caged turkeys gobbled in unison. I’m not sure whether either of them will live past New Year’s. Through my bedroom window, I hear the steady chirp of birds and the banging of pots, as Nigora cooks on her outside stove.
Now that it’s warmer, I think I’ll like living here. It’s excellent in terms of safety, it’s nice to have dinner prepared and I like having someone outside work to talk with. But best of all, I hope I’ll be able to learn more about local life and culture. If I were back in my apartment, I don’t know what I’d do for New Years, possibly the most important holiday of the year here. But now that I’m living with a family, I automatically have people to spend the holiday with and I’m sure it will be much more interesting.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Christmas in London
I’m on my way back to Kyrgyzstan after an enjoyable 3.5-day Christmas holiday in London. It was a rather luxurious departure from Osh. My boyfriend found an internet special for a four-star hotel in the heart of London. We were greeted with glasses of champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries and pampered with access to a health club and Jacuzzi, a regular supply of Christmas mince pies (bite-sized pies filled with a mixture of dried fruits), and giant $30 English breakfasts delivered to the room.
I hadn’t been especially excited about London as a destination, a bit leery of the weather and the food, but it turned out to be a nice place to spend the holiday. There was no snow on the ground and in comparison with the recently frigid air in Kyrgyzstan, London almost felt balmy.
There was plenty to do. We started out our visit with a West End production of The Producers. It was shown in the Drury Lane theatre, the oldest theatre in London and the place that the West End theatre district built itself around. One of the lead actors, Nathan Lane, didn’t show up for that performance. Either he was sick or he decided to take Christmas Eve off. Even with the understudy in the lead role, it was still enjoyable, a huge difference from the one musical I’ve seen in Kyrgyzstan – where drama students in costumes made from scraps performed the first Kyrgyz musical in an unheated hall.
The city effectively closed down on Christmas day. But crowds of tourists still wandered around, looking for holiday entertainment. The few cafes and restaurants that were open, mostly run by foreigners, did a brisk business. We decided to turn down the $100-$150 Christmas lunch options on offer at several hotels and on Thames River boats. Instead, we joined a giant horde of tourists on a two-hour walking tour. It was supposed to cover Dickens in London, but instead seemed to be a patchwork of information from other walking tours on offer – telling us about different haunted sights, giving us some insight into history and architecture, as well as a few anecdotes about Dickens. It did add a little life to the scenery though to see the place where Eliza Doolittle met Henry Higgins, to hear how a woman’s head was knocked off near Trafalgar Square when her carriage emerged from a hotel with a low overhanging, to see where Benjamin Franklin lived, to hear of Dicken’s boyhood experiences working at a blacking factory.
We had our holiday meal at our hotel. For some reason, lunch seems to be the main meal on Christmas, so dinner was half the price. I had parsnip soup, turkey with carrots, spinach and cranberry sauce, and winter fruits with ginger ice cream. We were each given a “cracker” at the meal, a tradition we’d learned about during the tour. A “cracker” looks like an oblong holiday gift. They are available for purchase, ranging from the very cheap to the extremely expensive. If you receive a cracker, you pull the ends and it bangs open with a pop, similar to the sound that Pillsbury croissants or cinnamon rolls in the blue cardboard rolls make, and a present falls out of the center piece. Inside, we found paper crowns (so that’s why many of our fellow diners were wearing colored crowns), remniscent of the kind Burger King provides to children, and a measuring tape. We guessed these crackers must have been amongst the cheaper versions.
On Sunday, Boxing Day (so named because it used to be the day when people would give service workers, like milkmen, boxes with tips or gifts for the holidays) we attended the Chelsea versus Aston Villa premiership soccer game. This was an event my boyfriend had been looking forward to for ages and it was what drew us to London for this visit. I hadn’t been to a soccer game in a very long time and I knew virtually nothing about English soccer. Nevertheless, I donned the blue and white striped Chelsea scarf my boyfriend bought me and I joined the ranks of fans streaming into the stadium. The game was virtually sold out, with close to 40,000 people packing the stands. I learned how the opposing team fans are relegated to a tiny little corner of the stadium and that they stand up for almost the entire game, that games are played outside in an unroofed stadium, even in the middle of winter, that fans sing songs that don’t seem to have a lot of relation to the players or the game (one song went; “One man went to mow a meadow,”), that numerous guards in fluorescent orange and yellow vests line the stands on the lookout for hooligans, that beer is sold on the premises, but not allowed into the stands, that the thin billboards that line the rim of the field change simultaneously, making an entire colorful ring of ads for a single company and that overall, the fans, while largely male, were quite enthusiastic, but well-behaved. Chelsea won, 1-0.
On Monday, the first day a number of stores were open, we decided to go shopping. We both hoped to purchase winter coats, but neither of us was successful. Walking down Oxford Street in the center of London was like wading through a virtual sea of shoppers. The dense pack of humans extended as far as we could see, slowing our pace to a crawl, making us pay more attention to not getting separated than to what was in the shop windows. Inside the stores was even crazier. At Marks and Spencer, shoppers attacked the sale racks like ants around a breadcrumb. The staff couldn’t keep up with the shoppers and the merchandise had become disorderly. The only fitting room I could find was out of service until the new year, and those who found items to buy then waited in a tremendous line just to pay.
At Selfridges, a very expensive department store, the staff managed to keep their merchandise neat and shiny and the crowds were more orderly. But that may have been helped by the fact that not many people could actually afford to buy anything there. The only long coat I found was on sale for $500. The coat my boyfriend was interested in was also on sale, for a mere $700. The line for Subway sandwiches went out the door and the line for the Gucci department at a department store wrapped around the building.
We took refuge from the crowds in an Indian restaurant, where a piece of naan bread went for $5, as did a side of plain rice.
We spent our final afternoon playing merry-go-round in the subway, as the Piccadilly line was halted due to the smell of smoke, available again, halted, slowed, finally puttering along at a slow pace to the airport.
During my time in London, I missed the more reasonable prices of Kyrgyzstan, as well as the spicy excitement of the unknown and unexpected that fills the air there. But I also enjoyed a short reprieve into a world that was fairly orderly, where people use soft white toilet paper instead of hard brown cardboard, where a herd of 100 tourists can be processed with an ease that comes from practice, where the bright reds of the telephone booths and double-decker buses, the black taxis, and the ivories, greys and browns of the elegant buildings provided a sense of stability and where the quality of life is high enough that people can afford to pay $4 for a hot chocolate at the corner café.
I have to admit that I didn’t actually meet anyone, I didn’t have the chance to engage a Brit in casual conversation to ask about the details of daily life. In fact, one of our most memorable encounters was during our walking tour, when a grey-bearded, thick waisted man in his 50s, dressed in trousers and a suit jacket, barreled down the narrow alley toward us, crying out in a deep, angry voice, “Get out of my way, fucking tourists! You cunts – go back to where you came from!” The tourists and the tour guide moved slowly, uniformly, in shock, then returned their attention to the tour as though nothing had happened.
That’s the uniqueness of London - the city is set up so that one can live, eat, be entertained, travel and learn while remaining distinct from the masses, an anonymous little atom of humanity, able to move through the streets without bumping into others, averse to causing chaos amidst the order.
I hadn’t been especially excited about London as a destination, a bit leery of the weather and the food, but it turned out to be a nice place to spend the holiday. There was no snow on the ground and in comparison with the recently frigid air in Kyrgyzstan, London almost felt balmy.
There was plenty to do. We started out our visit with a West End production of The Producers. It was shown in the Drury Lane theatre, the oldest theatre in London and the place that the West End theatre district built itself around. One of the lead actors, Nathan Lane, didn’t show up for that performance. Either he was sick or he decided to take Christmas Eve off. Even with the understudy in the lead role, it was still enjoyable, a huge difference from the one musical I’ve seen in Kyrgyzstan – where drama students in costumes made from scraps performed the first Kyrgyz musical in an unheated hall.
The city effectively closed down on Christmas day. But crowds of tourists still wandered around, looking for holiday entertainment. The few cafes and restaurants that were open, mostly run by foreigners, did a brisk business. We decided to turn down the $100-$150 Christmas lunch options on offer at several hotels and on Thames River boats. Instead, we joined a giant horde of tourists on a two-hour walking tour. It was supposed to cover Dickens in London, but instead seemed to be a patchwork of information from other walking tours on offer – telling us about different haunted sights, giving us some insight into history and architecture, as well as a few anecdotes about Dickens. It did add a little life to the scenery though to see the place where Eliza Doolittle met Henry Higgins, to hear how a woman’s head was knocked off near Trafalgar Square when her carriage emerged from a hotel with a low overhanging, to see where Benjamin Franklin lived, to hear of Dicken’s boyhood experiences working at a blacking factory.
We had our holiday meal at our hotel. For some reason, lunch seems to be the main meal on Christmas, so dinner was half the price. I had parsnip soup, turkey with carrots, spinach and cranberry sauce, and winter fruits with ginger ice cream. We were each given a “cracker” at the meal, a tradition we’d learned about during the tour. A “cracker” looks like an oblong holiday gift. They are available for purchase, ranging from the very cheap to the extremely expensive. If you receive a cracker, you pull the ends and it bangs open with a pop, similar to the sound that Pillsbury croissants or cinnamon rolls in the blue cardboard rolls make, and a present falls out of the center piece. Inside, we found paper crowns (so that’s why many of our fellow diners were wearing colored crowns), remniscent of the kind Burger King provides to children, and a measuring tape. We guessed these crackers must have been amongst the cheaper versions.
On Sunday, Boxing Day (so named because it used to be the day when people would give service workers, like milkmen, boxes with tips or gifts for the holidays) we attended the Chelsea versus Aston Villa premiership soccer game. This was an event my boyfriend had been looking forward to for ages and it was what drew us to London for this visit. I hadn’t been to a soccer game in a very long time and I knew virtually nothing about English soccer. Nevertheless, I donned the blue and white striped Chelsea scarf my boyfriend bought me and I joined the ranks of fans streaming into the stadium. The game was virtually sold out, with close to 40,000 people packing the stands. I learned how the opposing team fans are relegated to a tiny little corner of the stadium and that they stand up for almost the entire game, that games are played outside in an unroofed stadium, even in the middle of winter, that fans sing songs that don’t seem to have a lot of relation to the players or the game (one song went; “One man went to mow a meadow,”), that numerous guards in fluorescent orange and yellow vests line the stands on the lookout for hooligans, that beer is sold on the premises, but not allowed into the stands, that the thin billboards that line the rim of the field change simultaneously, making an entire colorful ring of ads for a single company and that overall, the fans, while largely male, were quite enthusiastic, but well-behaved. Chelsea won, 1-0.
On Monday, the first day a number of stores were open, we decided to go shopping. We both hoped to purchase winter coats, but neither of us was successful. Walking down Oxford Street in the center of London was like wading through a virtual sea of shoppers. The dense pack of humans extended as far as we could see, slowing our pace to a crawl, making us pay more attention to not getting separated than to what was in the shop windows. Inside the stores was even crazier. At Marks and Spencer, shoppers attacked the sale racks like ants around a breadcrumb. The staff couldn’t keep up with the shoppers and the merchandise had become disorderly. The only fitting room I could find was out of service until the new year, and those who found items to buy then waited in a tremendous line just to pay.
At Selfridges, a very expensive department store, the staff managed to keep their merchandise neat and shiny and the crowds were more orderly. But that may have been helped by the fact that not many people could actually afford to buy anything there. The only long coat I found was on sale for $500. The coat my boyfriend was interested in was also on sale, for a mere $700. The line for Subway sandwiches went out the door and the line for the Gucci department at a department store wrapped around the building.
We took refuge from the crowds in an Indian restaurant, where a piece of naan bread went for $5, as did a side of plain rice.
We spent our final afternoon playing merry-go-round in the subway, as the Piccadilly line was halted due to the smell of smoke, available again, halted, slowed, finally puttering along at a slow pace to the airport.
During my time in London, I missed the more reasonable prices of Kyrgyzstan, as well as the spicy excitement of the unknown and unexpected that fills the air there. But I also enjoyed a short reprieve into a world that was fairly orderly, where people use soft white toilet paper instead of hard brown cardboard, where a herd of 100 tourists can be processed with an ease that comes from practice, where the bright reds of the telephone booths and double-decker buses, the black taxis, and the ivories, greys and browns of the elegant buildings provided a sense of stability and where the quality of life is high enough that people can afford to pay $4 for a hot chocolate at the corner café.
I have to admit that I didn’t actually meet anyone, I didn’t have the chance to engage a Brit in casual conversation to ask about the details of daily life. In fact, one of our most memorable encounters was during our walking tour, when a grey-bearded, thick waisted man in his 50s, dressed in trousers and a suit jacket, barreled down the narrow alley toward us, crying out in a deep, angry voice, “Get out of my way, fucking tourists! You cunts – go back to where you came from!” The tourists and the tour guide moved slowly, uniformly, in shock, then returned their attention to the tour as though nothing had happened.
That’s the uniqueness of London - the city is set up so that one can live, eat, be entertained, travel and learn while remaining distinct from the masses, an anonymous little atom of humanity, able to move through the streets without bumping into others, averse to causing chaos amidst the order.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
The Best Place to Buy a Cow
I got up just before seven this morning and took a taxi to the livestock bazaar, picking up a Kyrgyz coworker, Kanylbek, along the way. My Russian driver had light blue eyes, gold front teeth, bristly red skin and a brown fur hat. He was rather gruff, constantly bantering with other drivers on his CB and showing clear annoyance when my companion was four minutes late. “What are you doing, coming so late?” he asked, when Kanylbek got in. The expert looked at his watch and remained silent.
Children were using ruddered sleds and pairs of short poles to slide down the streets, enjoying the emptiness in the morning pink sky. The roads were covered with a thin, slick layer of snow and ice packed into the dirt.
We arrived at the livestock market and pushed our way through a doorway in the fenced, open-air compound. I was amazed at what I saw. Below us, the entire square was packed with people and animals. All around them, like a second fence enclosing them in, were the white mountains, the peaks glowing pink in the morning light.
“The cows are on the right, the horses on the left,” Kanylbek explained. “The sheep are outside the market, in an adjoining area, so as not to mix them up.”
A local had warned me a few days before, “There is no order at all at the livestock market,” he told me. “It’s not like where you live where they have stalls and line up in order. Here it is just a mess. You’ll be shocked by what you see. And be very careful walking in between the horses. Two people have been killed already this year by walking in between horses and getting kicked.”
A giant mass of people and animals jumbled together. Ninety percent were men and most were Kyrgyz, dressed in dark hats and coats. Few wore kalpaks. “It’s cold already,” Kanylbek told me. The headscarves of the few woman provided small flashes of color among the browns and blacks and ivories of the people and animals.
We were looking for a particular person selling a cow, so we waded through the crowd, trying to find one person among the masses. There was no order. We walked in between muddy cow rears, pulled cow horns to allow us room to pass, and moved with caution when we heard the fountain-like tinkling of a cow urinating or saw steaming fresh cow dung hit the icy ground. It smelled of manure and leather and fresh mountain air. It was also cold, -15 one person guessed, and my feet could feel the ground underneath.
We made several trips from one side of the cow vendors to the other, without luck. We then went to look at the sheep, and finally stood near the stands selling double shots of vodka to men crouched in a circle. Kanylbek went to make one more round through the cow vendors while I went to look at the horses, careful to keep my distance from the regal animals. Several people stood on horseback, rising above the crowd. Occasionally the crowd would bustle, as if a drop of oil fell into water, when a horse would rear up and neigh or one cow would mount another.
I saw people tying up a small cow by its legs and loading it onto a horse-pulled cart filled with hay to take home. I saw a blacksmith hammering horseshoes onto a horse. And I saw people eagerly engaged in transactions, genially bartering, exchanging money, and seeming to enjoy themselves.
I took a picture of several old women selling a cow and they smiled and laughed, especially when they saw the picture.
“How much are you selling it for?” I asked, pointing to the cow.
"18,000 ($450), but we’ll let it go for 15,000 to a pretty girl.”
Finally we found the man we were looking for. He had arrived at the market at 4 a.m. and together with a relative bought three cows, one small one and two medium sized ones. He had just sold the last one when we arrived. Kanylbek told me that the wholesaler sellers arrive at the market at 2 a.m.
“People like this man come very early and buy at low prices,” he told me. “Then they can resell the same animal within hours. The prices rise from the early morning until 9 or 10 a.m., then start to decrease again as sellers worry that they won’t make a sale. By noon or 2 everyone has gone home.”
This man had sold all three cows by shortly after eight and said that he rarely fails to sell what he has bought in the morning. He and a relative together made a $75 profit within several hours – not a bad business, but unfortunately it only happens one time a week.
It was really cold and we were ready to go, so we left the festive atmosphere to find a taxi. We found a taxi and while we waiting to get into the car, another Lada pulled up close by us. A group of men opened the trunk and pulled out a brown sheep.
Our driver told me that he and his father had come to the market today to sell two sheep. They planned to sell one for 2,000 ($50) and the other for 3,000 ($75) som.
“Why are you selling them?” I asked.
“Because we need money at home. We went as guests to people’s homes. And when we do that, we tend to spend a lot of money, 1,000, 2000… I took a loan and now I need to return it.”
In addition to his work as a taxi driver, he keeps 50 sheep (“not bad” as he described it). I’m starting to gain a new respect for the investment value of livestock.
Children were using ruddered sleds and pairs of short poles to slide down the streets, enjoying the emptiness in the morning pink sky. The roads were covered with a thin, slick layer of snow and ice packed into the dirt.
We arrived at the livestock market and pushed our way through a doorway in the fenced, open-air compound. I was amazed at what I saw. Below us, the entire square was packed with people and animals. All around them, like a second fence enclosing them in, were the white mountains, the peaks glowing pink in the morning light.
“The cows are on the right, the horses on the left,” Kanylbek explained. “The sheep are outside the market, in an adjoining area, so as not to mix them up.”
A local had warned me a few days before, “There is no order at all at the livestock market,” he told me. “It’s not like where you live where they have stalls and line up in order. Here it is just a mess. You’ll be shocked by what you see. And be very careful walking in between the horses. Two people have been killed already this year by walking in between horses and getting kicked.”
A giant mass of people and animals jumbled together. Ninety percent were men and most were Kyrgyz, dressed in dark hats and coats. Few wore kalpaks. “It’s cold already,” Kanylbek told me. The headscarves of the few woman provided small flashes of color among the browns and blacks and ivories of the people and animals.
We were looking for a particular person selling a cow, so we waded through the crowd, trying to find one person among the masses. There was no order. We walked in between muddy cow rears, pulled cow horns to allow us room to pass, and moved with caution when we heard the fountain-like tinkling of a cow urinating or saw steaming fresh cow dung hit the icy ground. It smelled of manure and leather and fresh mountain air. It was also cold, -15 one person guessed, and my feet could feel the ground underneath.
We made several trips from one side of the cow vendors to the other, without luck. We then went to look at the sheep, and finally stood near the stands selling double shots of vodka to men crouched in a circle. Kanylbek went to make one more round through the cow vendors while I went to look at the horses, careful to keep my distance from the regal animals. Several people stood on horseback, rising above the crowd. Occasionally the crowd would bustle, as if a drop of oil fell into water, when a horse would rear up and neigh or one cow would mount another.
I saw people tying up a small cow by its legs and loading it onto a horse-pulled cart filled with hay to take home. I saw a blacksmith hammering horseshoes onto a horse. And I saw people eagerly engaged in transactions, genially bartering, exchanging money, and seeming to enjoy themselves.
I took a picture of several old women selling a cow and they smiled and laughed, especially when they saw the picture.
“How much are you selling it for?” I asked, pointing to the cow.
"18,000 ($450), but we’ll let it go for 15,000 to a pretty girl.”
Finally we found the man we were looking for. He had arrived at the market at 4 a.m. and together with a relative bought three cows, one small one and two medium sized ones. He had just sold the last one when we arrived. Kanylbek told me that the wholesaler sellers arrive at the market at 2 a.m.
“People like this man come very early and buy at low prices,” he told me. “Then they can resell the same animal within hours. The prices rise from the early morning until 9 or 10 a.m., then start to decrease again as sellers worry that they won’t make a sale. By noon or 2 everyone has gone home.”
This man had sold all three cows by shortly after eight and said that he rarely fails to sell what he has bought in the morning. He and a relative together made a $75 profit within several hours – not a bad business, but unfortunately it only happens one time a week.
It was really cold and we were ready to go, so we left the festive atmosphere to find a taxi. We found a taxi and while we waiting to get into the car, another Lada pulled up close by us. A group of men opened the trunk and pulled out a brown sheep.
Our driver told me that he and his father had come to the market today to sell two sheep. They planned to sell one for 2,000 ($50) and the other for 3,000 ($75) som.
“Why are you selling them?” I asked.
“Because we need money at home. We went as guests to people’s homes. And when we do that, we tend to spend a lot of money, 1,000, 2000… I took a loan and now I need to return it.”
In addition to his work as a taxi driver, he keeps 50 sheep (“not bad” as he described it). I’m starting to gain a new respect for the investment value of livestock.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Arrival in Karakol
I arrived in Karakol on Thursday evening, after a one hour flight from Osh to Bishkek, then a six hour drive, though a mountain pass, along the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, and then up past apple orchards and along poplar lined roads, up into snowy mountains.
I’m staying in a guesthouse in a residential neighborhood. It was dark when I arrived at 5 p.m., so when I looked out my window on Friday morning, I was treated to a view of boxed village homes. In our yard, there is an annex with some guestrooms, chickens and geese pecking around a pile of hay, a dilapidated outhouse and a barn. The guesthouse owner, a former doctor, is well-off now, but it’s easy to imagine how they used to live.
Bare trees stood in between the homes - small fruit trees, white birch, and a tall tree that glowed a yellowish green. In a line extending across the horizon, rising above all the local scenery, was a ridge of snowy mountains, giant bulks of earth, like clumps of milk-filled breasts, rising up to meet the light morning sky, dusted with a white cloud cover.
I walked to work on my first day, hearing pigs grunt behind me as I left the guesthouse, enjoying the exercise of the 30-minute walk. I imagined walking to and from town every day, forgetting that at night it is cold and dark, like walking through a pitch-black icebox.
Walking straight down a residential street to the center of town, I paid attention to the local architecture and life. Bare poplar trees and little wooden box houses lined the dirt road. I found the roofs to be interesting, some with balconies, others with windows, and of various colors, shapes and sizes. The street was quiet, dotted with sheep and dogs, and I felt as though I could be walking through any small Russian town, except that many of the faces were Kyrgyz. I watched two young boys emerge from their home to throw paper airplanes at cars, saw others pulling wooden sleds across the snowy streets, and watched a broken water pipe splashing water against a tree, which froze in a uniquely shaped clump of ice.
Karakol, now the third largest city in Kyrgyzstan, with a population of about 75,000, was first founded as a Russian fort in 1869, and it still retained that atmosphere, with many more Russians than in a place like Osh, and horse-drawn carts frequently clip-clopping through the city streets, alongside Mosvichs, Nivas and Audis.
My guidebook tells a story of a large storm coming through the city, just as the cartographers were finishing up mapping the Karakol fort. The winds blew away all the contents of the yurts, including the maps. The next day the local Kyrgyz offered to help. Together with the Russians, they formed a line toward the river, searching the land in the direction the storm had gone, and finding all but a few pages. In the 1880s the population grew considerably with an influx of Dungan, Chinese Muslims, escaping persecution in China.
In 1886 Karakol was renamed Przhevalsk, in honor of a Russian explorer who died here while preparing for an expedition to Tibet (I’ll soon write more about him). Lenin returned the name Karakol in 1926, until Stalin gave it back to Przhevalsk in 1935 (did these guys really have nothing better to think about than the name of a city on the very fringes of empire?), the name it retained until 1991 when it again became Karakol (which means “black wrist”)
The center of town was pretty dull. I walked through the central square, where some photographers were set up with stuffed animals, and signs that said things like “Happy Students Day” or “Happy Birthday, Karakol, 2004.” There are several shops, a small market, and a few cafes in the center of town. There are also a lot of universities. As the capital of the Issyk-Kul region, Karakol hosts five universities and a large population of students.
Today I took a quick look at the attractive wooden Russian church, built in 1895. Fourteen old Russian woman and one Russian boy, probably accompanying his grandmother, stood at attention for the service in progress.
On my way home, I walked through a mini-market on the way home, impressed by the salad sellers lined up under a roofed marketplace with no walls. Most of them sold white noodles in a bowl that buyers could eat there, a Dungan dish that reminded me of Vietnamese pho.
On the way home, I watched a man fill a bucket from a streetside pump, watched others cart water home in tin canisters on wheels, watched children playing on old-fashioned sleds with rudders and watched young adults sliding along the icy streets.
I find this a completely different world from Osh and it’s pretty remarkable that they are part of the same small country. In my one month in Osh, two male local staff members stole female staff members. Bride stealing happens here, but as far as I know, it’s not so common that it affects our staff. It’s generally calmer here, there is a bit more of a Russian mentality, and there aren’t the concerns with fundamentalists, terrorists, and cross-border problems that are issues in Osh.
I’m staying in a guesthouse in a residential neighborhood. It was dark when I arrived at 5 p.m., so when I looked out my window on Friday morning, I was treated to a view of boxed village homes. In our yard, there is an annex with some guestrooms, chickens and geese pecking around a pile of hay, a dilapidated outhouse and a barn. The guesthouse owner, a former doctor, is well-off now, but it’s easy to imagine how they used to live.
Bare trees stood in between the homes - small fruit trees, white birch, and a tall tree that glowed a yellowish green. In a line extending across the horizon, rising above all the local scenery, was a ridge of snowy mountains, giant bulks of earth, like clumps of milk-filled breasts, rising up to meet the light morning sky, dusted with a white cloud cover.
I walked to work on my first day, hearing pigs grunt behind me as I left the guesthouse, enjoying the exercise of the 30-minute walk. I imagined walking to and from town every day, forgetting that at night it is cold and dark, like walking through a pitch-black icebox.
Walking straight down a residential street to the center of town, I paid attention to the local architecture and life. Bare poplar trees and little wooden box houses lined the dirt road. I found the roofs to be interesting, some with balconies, others with windows, and of various colors, shapes and sizes. The street was quiet, dotted with sheep and dogs, and I felt as though I could be walking through any small Russian town, except that many of the faces were Kyrgyz. I watched two young boys emerge from their home to throw paper airplanes at cars, saw others pulling wooden sleds across the snowy streets, and watched a broken water pipe splashing water against a tree, which froze in a uniquely shaped clump of ice.
Karakol, now the third largest city in Kyrgyzstan, with a population of about 75,000, was first founded as a Russian fort in 1869, and it still retained that atmosphere, with many more Russians than in a place like Osh, and horse-drawn carts frequently clip-clopping through the city streets, alongside Mosvichs, Nivas and Audis.
My guidebook tells a story of a large storm coming through the city, just as the cartographers were finishing up mapping the Karakol fort. The winds blew away all the contents of the yurts, including the maps. The next day the local Kyrgyz offered to help. Together with the Russians, they formed a line toward the river, searching the land in the direction the storm had gone, and finding all but a few pages. In the 1880s the population grew considerably with an influx of Dungan, Chinese Muslims, escaping persecution in China.
In 1886 Karakol was renamed Przhevalsk, in honor of a Russian explorer who died here while preparing for an expedition to Tibet (I’ll soon write more about him). Lenin returned the name Karakol in 1926, until Stalin gave it back to Przhevalsk in 1935 (did these guys really have nothing better to think about than the name of a city on the very fringes of empire?), the name it retained until 1991 when it again became Karakol (which means “black wrist”)
The center of town was pretty dull. I walked through the central square, where some photographers were set up with stuffed animals, and signs that said things like “Happy Students Day” or “Happy Birthday, Karakol, 2004.” There are several shops, a small market, and a few cafes in the center of town. There are also a lot of universities. As the capital of the Issyk-Kul region, Karakol hosts five universities and a large population of students.
Today I took a quick look at the attractive wooden Russian church, built in 1895. Fourteen old Russian woman and one Russian boy, probably accompanying his grandmother, stood at attention for the service in progress.
On my way home, I walked through a mini-market on the way home, impressed by the salad sellers lined up under a roofed marketplace with no walls. Most of them sold white noodles in a bowl that buyers could eat there, a Dungan dish that reminded me of Vietnamese pho.
On the way home, I watched a man fill a bucket from a streetside pump, watched others cart water home in tin canisters on wheels, watched children playing on old-fashioned sleds with rudders and watched young adults sliding along the icy streets.
I find this a completely different world from Osh and it’s pretty remarkable that they are part of the same small country. In my one month in Osh, two male local staff members stole female staff members. Bride stealing happens here, but as far as I know, it’s not so common that it affects our staff. It’s generally calmer here, there is a bit more of a Russian mentality, and there aren’t the concerns with fundamentalists, terrorists, and cross-border problems that are issues in Osh.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
what's been going on lately
I'm sorry that I haven't been posting much lately. It's been a busy time during the past couple of weeks, but I hope to get back to posting soon. For those wondering what's been going on lately, I'll fill you in on the highlights. I finished my training and started working in earnest. During the last half of November I took over for someone on vacation and managed a regional program with 90 staff. It was challenging and a lot of fun. I'll be getting my own region to manage in February and until then will be traveling quite a bit, learning some more and filling in for staff on vacation. Right now I'm on my way to Karakol. I don't know too much about it other than that it is supposed to be a very beautiful and popular destination for tourists in the summer. I'll fill you in about this town in the winter after I arrive tomorrow.
In other news, I had my first visitor. My boyfriend came to visit for a week and I had fun showing him Kyrgyzstan and seeing many things again through fresh eyes. We took a two-day trip to the southern mountains and also attended a wedding in Bishkek, the first Kyrgyz wedding either of us had experienced.
Also, I decided to move from my nicely furnished foreigner-style apartment. When I return from my travels, I'll be living with an Uzbek family. I think that will make for much more interesting evenings and weekends and I'm looking forward to learning from them - though I'm not so excited about having to go outside to use the toilet or shower in winter.
That's it for now, but I promise I'll be in touch soon.
In other news, I had my first visitor. My boyfriend came to visit for a week and I had fun showing him Kyrgyzstan and seeing many things again through fresh eyes. We took a two-day trip to the southern mountains and also attended a wedding in Bishkek, the first Kyrgyz wedding either of us had experienced.
Also, I decided to move from my nicely furnished foreigner-style apartment. When I return from my travels, I'll be living with an Uzbek family. I think that will make for much more interesting evenings and weekends and I'm looking forward to learning from them - though I'm not so excited about having to go outside to use the toilet or shower in winter.
That's it for now, but I promise I'll be in touch soon.
Friday, November 05, 2004
A surprise protest
Yesterday, while walking to work, I noticed a rusted, old trolleybus sputter by, packed so tightly that the bus tilted to the left and the wheels were barely visible. I marveled that such an ancient contraption could still run and could attract so many passengers. I wondered why I didn’t notice before how full they were.
A few hours later, I sat in the car with Malan, the Uzbek office driver. He poined out the large crowds of people standing on the sides of the street.
“There are no marshrutkas today,” he said. “They are on strike.”
Marshrutkas are minivans that seat about 14 people and serve as the main source of public transportation throughout Kyrgyzstan, both within urban areas and between cities. Drivers register for a numbered route and post the number in the front window. People can stand along the street anywhere on the route and wait for their number to come along in the endless flow, like waiting for a lottery number to be drawn, or the final number to be called on a winning bingo card. When they see it, they wave the marshrutka down and the drivers swerve over to pick up as many passengers as they can.
“Why are they are on strike?” I asked.
“I think they want to pay less taxes.”
“I watched the local news last night. Why didn’t I hear anything about this?” I’d seen all kinds of footage of Kyrgyz President Askar Akeav shaking hands and smiling, and similar footage of the President of Kazakhstan. Why wouldn’t they mention that the city would be without public transportation?
“Because this isn’t America,” Malan answered. “If you talk too much, people come for you in the middle of the night.”
Back at the office I asked Anton, a Ukrainian coworker if he knew more about the situation.
“Due to the high price of gasoline, the drivers want to raise the marshrutka fare from four som (10 cents) to five som (12.5 cents). But the government doesn’t agree.”
His answer to why it wasn’t announced in advance was that maybe the drivers decided to strike just this morning.
I asked a few people whether they thought the drivers demand for a five-som fare was just. In Bishkek the fare is five som.
One student in my aerobics class said, “Given the high price of gas now, five som is fair. But during normal times, it should go back down to four.”
Gulnara, our 24-year-old office manager, thought that five som was too much to ask. “Salaries in Osh are low,” she said, citing the example of her friend who got a job teaching English after graduating from the university and was paid $20 a month. When she moved to Bishkek, she was paid $50 for the same work.
It wasn’t until I asked a third person, a taxi driver, about the strike that I got a complete picture. “Four som isn’t enough for the drivers because they are being asked to pay very high taxes. So they need five som to compensate for the taxes.”
Most people reacted to the strike by either walking or taking the stuffed, slow trolleybuses. Since the trolleybuses get their power from electric wires, they aren’t dependent on gas prices.
Vika, the same student who bathes after aerobics in order to access hot water, told me, “I live near the Kyrgyz National University, where I study, so I didn’t hear about the strike until I was already at my classes. My classes end at 3:30 and then I have English at a different institute at 4. I had to walk 45 minutes there and was late for my lessons.” She told me that she planned to walk the hour and a half home after aerobics.
“Isn’t it dangerous at night?” I asked.
“No, because my friend is waiting for me. His lessons end at eight and we’ll walk home together.”
I had planned to take a taxi home, but when she exclaimed how close my neighborhood was, I felt bad about my easy ability to afford a dollar for a taxi and decided to walk and feel what it’s like to not have transportation available. Other than the close glimpse I got of a rat running alongside a building and under a door, it was actually a nice walk, especially since there were more people than usual on the roads.
The strike continued into the next day. In the morning, it was clear from the large number of pedestrians on the street and the occasional trolleybus passing by, stuffed to the edges, that the marshrutkas still weren’t running. By afternoon, the first drivers returned to the road and quickly filled their vehicles. As I watched people piling in, well beyond where one might think the minivan was full, I was glad to know that people would have a safe means of returning home in the evening. Whether or not the drivers achieved their demands, I still don’t know. There was no mention of it on the evening news.
A few hours later, I sat in the car with Malan, the Uzbek office driver. He poined out the large crowds of people standing on the sides of the street.
“There are no marshrutkas today,” he said. “They are on strike.”
Marshrutkas are minivans that seat about 14 people and serve as the main source of public transportation throughout Kyrgyzstan, both within urban areas and between cities. Drivers register for a numbered route and post the number in the front window. People can stand along the street anywhere on the route and wait for their number to come along in the endless flow, like waiting for a lottery number to be drawn, or the final number to be called on a winning bingo card. When they see it, they wave the marshrutka down and the drivers swerve over to pick up as many passengers as they can.
“Why are they are on strike?” I asked.
“I think they want to pay less taxes.”
“I watched the local news last night. Why didn’t I hear anything about this?” I’d seen all kinds of footage of Kyrgyz President Askar Akeav shaking hands and smiling, and similar footage of the President of Kazakhstan. Why wouldn’t they mention that the city would be without public transportation?
“Because this isn’t America,” Malan answered. “If you talk too much, people come for you in the middle of the night.”
Back at the office I asked Anton, a Ukrainian coworker if he knew more about the situation.
“Due to the high price of gasoline, the drivers want to raise the marshrutka fare from four som (10 cents) to five som (12.5 cents). But the government doesn’t agree.”
His answer to why it wasn’t announced in advance was that maybe the drivers decided to strike just this morning.
I asked a few people whether they thought the drivers demand for a five-som fare was just. In Bishkek the fare is five som.
One student in my aerobics class said, “Given the high price of gas now, five som is fair. But during normal times, it should go back down to four.”
Gulnara, our 24-year-old office manager, thought that five som was too much to ask. “Salaries in Osh are low,” she said, citing the example of her friend who got a job teaching English after graduating from the university and was paid $20 a month. When she moved to Bishkek, she was paid $50 for the same work.
It wasn’t until I asked a third person, a taxi driver, about the strike that I got a complete picture. “Four som isn’t enough for the drivers because they are being asked to pay very high taxes. So they need five som to compensate for the taxes.”
Most people reacted to the strike by either walking or taking the stuffed, slow trolleybuses. Since the trolleybuses get their power from electric wires, they aren’t dependent on gas prices.
Vika, the same student who bathes after aerobics in order to access hot water, told me, “I live near the Kyrgyz National University, where I study, so I didn’t hear about the strike until I was already at my classes. My classes end at 3:30 and then I have English at a different institute at 4. I had to walk 45 minutes there and was late for my lessons.” She told me that she planned to walk the hour and a half home after aerobics.
“Isn’t it dangerous at night?” I asked.
“No, because my friend is waiting for me. His lessons end at eight and we’ll walk home together.”
I had planned to take a taxi home, but when she exclaimed how close my neighborhood was, I felt bad about my easy ability to afford a dollar for a taxi and decided to walk and feel what it’s like to not have transportation available. Other than the close glimpse I got of a rat running alongside a building and under a door, it was actually a nice walk, especially since there were more people than usual on the roads.
The strike continued into the next day. In the morning, it was clear from the large number of pedestrians on the street and the occasional trolleybus passing by, stuffed to the edges, that the marshrutkas still weren’t running. By afternoon, the first drivers returned to the road and quickly filled their vehicles. As I watched people piling in, well beyond where one might think the minivan was full, I was glad to know that people would have a safe means of returning home in the evening. Whether or not the drivers achieved their demands, I still don’t know. There was no mention of it on the evening news.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
The value of hot water, transport and communications
Sometimes I forget about the everyday realities of poverty here. It can be hard to remember that people who appear to be educated and urban are surviving on pennies.
I met a student named Vika during aerobics who told me that she lives in a dormitory and doesn’t have a phone. After class, she undressed and prepared to take a shower. Someone asked why she was showering in the evening.
“They have hot water here and I don’t have that at home,” she said. “We just have a teapot and gas.” I thought back to the year I spent washing with a teapot and understood what a treat a hot shower could be.
I left the health club and tried to take a marshrutka home. At the bus stop, people waiting there told me that buses to my neighborhood weren’t running at that time of night and I’d have to walk to a different stop. That stop wasn’t far away and I was going to walk there. But I met a couple of girls who said they were also going to my neighborhood.
“We’re moving and have heavy bags, so it would be hard to walk to the other stop. But we don’t have money for a taxi, so we’re trying to figure out what to do.”
One of them suggested to me, “Maybe if you could chip in some money we could get a taxi together.”
I agreed, they negotiated a price with the driver and I got in together with the three girls and their belongings, wrapped in blankets. One was a computer science student, another had a degree in English and was working as an English teacher. I figured they’d expect me to pay more and I was prepared to pay more than half. But they all got out before my stop and didn’t seem to have contributed anything.
“Did you give anything to the driver?” I asked.
“You’re paying,” the driver said, looking at me.
“No, not yet,” the English teacher told me. “We don’t have any money.”
“Can you give him 15?” I asked, asking them to contribute less than half. The money wasn’t really an issue, I just couldn’t tell if they were trying to take advantage of me or not.
“We only have small money,” she said. “We were preparing to just seat one girl in the marshrutka.”
I really didn’t know what to think. I resented being used to rent a taxi for all of them, when I myself was planning on taking a marshrutka. But if they were so poor that this girl only owned two blankets full of belongings and couldn’t afford a 30 cent contribution to a taxi, I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.
“I’ll be your free translator for a week,” she told me.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll send someone to bring you the money.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Both the girl taking the shower and the girls who couldn’t afford a taxi reminded me of the real poverty here, so often disguised by educated speech and a middle-class appearance.
On another topic, someone asked about language here. I use Russian as my means of communication. Those who have studied English are eager to practice with me, but given that I need a really high level of Russian for my work, I try to avoid speaking English when possible.
In Bishkek, a much more Russified city, Russian was undoubtedly an acceptable means of communication. Sometimes local staff would communicate with clients in Kyrgyz. Usually those people understood Russian, but were more comfortable in Kyrgyz. But that was more the exception than the norm. I sometimes heard Kyrgyz on the street, but heard at least as much Russian, if not more. In our headquarters office, no one, including the ethnic Kyrgyz, are fluent enough in Kyrgyz to be able to speak and write.
In Osh it’s different. Not only are there very few Russians, Ukrainians, ethnic Germans and others who would primarily use Russian, but there is a sizeable Uzbek population. Most within Osh speak and understand Russian, but I hear Kyrgyz and Uzbek much more frequently. In fact, one afternoon I was standing in the market area, waiting for a ride, and I realized that not only was I the only Caucasian within sight, but that I wasn’t hearing any Russian spoken in the commotion around me.
The program I work for uses Russian as the language of operation, so all local staff are required to speak Russian. Therefore, I have no problem communicating with people at work. But the local staff here frequently speak with clients in Kyrgyz or Uzbek.
I haven’t had a chance to travel much, but my guess would be that I could have problems communicating in the rural areas around here. While in the small town of Uzgen, the site of fierce ethnic conflict between Kygyz and Uzbeks in 1990, killing 300, I stopped in the market to buy Uzgen red rice, which I’d heard was supposed to be really special. I bought half a kilo and asked the vendor how to prepare it, but she didn’t understand me. I asked those nearby if anyone spoke Russian and no one spoke it well enough to be able to tell me what ratio of water I should add to the rice.
So the obvious question is why don’t I learn Kyrgyz? I asked my boss about learning Kyrgyz and she said to not waste my time. I’m not sure I agree it would be a waste of time, but it depends on where I end up living. Certainly, anywhere in the south or in more remote areas, it would come in handy. And since it seems likely that I’ll end up in the south or in a remote area, I would like to learn something.
The second problem was finding a Kyrgyz language book. I’d looked overseas without luck and I looked in Bishkek without luck. I had easily found good books for English speakers to learn Latvian, Swahili, Bengali and Vietnamese. But there is nothing I know of for Kyrgyz. The only thing I could find was a thin book for Russian speakers that used the formal, grammatical method popular among the Soviets. I didn’t think I could get anything out of that. I needed big, round type and pictures to go along with basic vocabulary, not grammatical theories.
When I met some Peace Corps trainees, they told me that they had a great Kyrgyz language book that was written by Peace Corps employees. I called up the Peace Corps and they kindly agreed to sell me a copy. It is a beautiful book, with the nice, simple style I was looking for. Once I get settled somewhere, I’d like to find a teacher and start studying. Until then, I still have some progress to make in Russian. I’m not doing any formal study, but I carry around Russian-English vocabulary cards, try to speak Russian whenever possible, only watch TV in Russian, and read every third book in Russian (I’ve only read one book in Russian so far, the first volume of Harry Potter. It took me ages and I was really frustrated by the slow pace, but it felt like quite an accomplishment to finish. Now, after enjoying two books in English, I’m starting Chekhov’s Ward Number 6.).
I met a student named Vika during aerobics who told me that she lives in a dormitory and doesn’t have a phone. After class, she undressed and prepared to take a shower. Someone asked why she was showering in the evening.
“They have hot water here and I don’t have that at home,” she said. “We just have a teapot and gas.” I thought back to the year I spent washing with a teapot and understood what a treat a hot shower could be.
I left the health club and tried to take a marshrutka home. At the bus stop, people waiting there told me that buses to my neighborhood weren’t running at that time of night and I’d have to walk to a different stop. That stop wasn’t far away and I was going to walk there. But I met a couple of girls who said they were also going to my neighborhood.
“We’re moving and have heavy bags, so it would be hard to walk to the other stop. But we don’t have money for a taxi, so we’re trying to figure out what to do.”
One of them suggested to me, “Maybe if you could chip in some money we could get a taxi together.”
I agreed, they negotiated a price with the driver and I got in together with the three girls and their belongings, wrapped in blankets. One was a computer science student, another had a degree in English and was working as an English teacher. I figured they’d expect me to pay more and I was prepared to pay more than half. But they all got out before my stop and didn’t seem to have contributed anything.
“Did you give anything to the driver?” I asked.
“You’re paying,” the driver said, looking at me.
“No, not yet,” the English teacher told me. “We don’t have any money.”
“Can you give him 15?” I asked, asking them to contribute less than half. The money wasn’t really an issue, I just couldn’t tell if they were trying to take advantage of me or not.
“We only have small money,” she said. “We were preparing to just seat one girl in the marshrutka.”
I really didn’t know what to think. I resented being used to rent a taxi for all of them, when I myself was planning on taking a marshrutka. But if they were so poor that this girl only owned two blankets full of belongings and couldn’t afford a 30 cent contribution to a taxi, I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.
“I’ll be your free translator for a week,” she told me.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll send someone to bring you the money.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Both the girl taking the shower and the girls who couldn’t afford a taxi reminded me of the real poverty here, so often disguised by educated speech and a middle-class appearance.
On another topic, someone asked about language here. I use Russian as my means of communication. Those who have studied English are eager to practice with me, but given that I need a really high level of Russian for my work, I try to avoid speaking English when possible.
In Bishkek, a much more Russified city, Russian was undoubtedly an acceptable means of communication. Sometimes local staff would communicate with clients in Kyrgyz. Usually those people understood Russian, but were more comfortable in Kyrgyz. But that was more the exception than the norm. I sometimes heard Kyrgyz on the street, but heard at least as much Russian, if not more. In our headquarters office, no one, including the ethnic Kyrgyz, are fluent enough in Kyrgyz to be able to speak and write.
In Osh it’s different. Not only are there very few Russians, Ukrainians, ethnic Germans and others who would primarily use Russian, but there is a sizeable Uzbek population. Most within Osh speak and understand Russian, but I hear Kyrgyz and Uzbek much more frequently. In fact, one afternoon I was standing in the market area, waiting for a ride, and I realized that not only was I the only Caucasian within sight, but that I wasn’t hearing any Russian spoken in the commotion around me.
The program I work for uses Russian as the language of operation, so all local staff are required to speak Russian. Therefore, I have no problem communicating with people at work. But the local staff here frequently speak with clients in Kyrgyz or Uzbek.
I haven’t had a chance to travel much, but my guess would be that I could have problems communicating in the rural areas around here. While in the small town of Uzgen, the site of fierce ethnic conflict between Kygyz and Uzbeks in 1990, killing 300, I stopped in the market to buy Uzgen red rice, which I’d heard was supposed to be really special. I bought half a kilo and asked the vendor how to prepare it, but she didn’t understand me. I asked those nearby if anyone spoke Russian and no one spoke it well enough to be able to tell me what ratio of water I should add to the rice.
So the obvious question is why don’t I learn Kyrgyz? I asked my boss about learning Kyrgyz and she said to not waste my time. I’m not sure I agree it would be a waste of time, but it depends on where I end up living. Certainly, anywhere in the south or in more remote areas, it would come in handy. And since it seems likely that I’ll end up in the south or in a remote area, I would like to learn something.
The second problem was finding a Kyrgyz language book. I’d looked overseas without luck and I looked in Bishkek without luck. I had easily found good books for English speakers to learn Latvian, Swahili, Bengali and Vietnamese. But there is nothing I know of for Kyrgyz. The only thing I could find was a thin book for Russian speakers that used the formal, grammatical method popular among the Soviets. I didn’t think I could get anything out of that. I needed big, round type and pictures to go along with basic vocabulary, not grammatical theories.
When I met some Peace Corps trainees, they told me that they had a great Kyrgyz language book that was written by Peace Corps employees. I called up the Peace Corps and they kindly agreed to sell me a copy. It is a beautiful book, with the nice, simple style I was looking for. Once I get settled somewhere, I’d like to find a teacher and start studying. Until then, I still have some progress to make in Russian. I’m not doing any formal study, but I carry around Russian-English vocabulary cards, try to speak Russian whenever possible, only watch TV in Russian, and read every third book in Russian (I’ve only read one book in Russian so far, the first volume of Harry Potter. It took me ages and I was really frustrated by the slow pace, but it felt like quite an accomplishment to finish. Now, after enjoying two books in English, I’m starting Chekhov’s Ward Number 6.).
Monday, November 01, 2004
7:45 a.m. in Osh
This morning I left my apartment for work. As I began to walk down the five flights of stairs, I saw a creature race down one flight in front of me. Initially thinking it was a rat, I froze in fear, then realized that it was a bird, the source of the loud twitterings I often hear in the morning.
I emerged onto the street in the cool, sunny air. The empty, faded playground stood still. I walked along the Soviet style apartment building, reading the graffiti and marveling that this is one of the most exclusive areas in Osh. I was looking for a garbage can, since I still didn’t know where to throw my garbage away. I saw a pile of plastic bags in the grass near my building and another pile of leaves and garbage on the street, near a bus stop, but no actual bins.
I passed the taxis, lined up in their usual spot, and crossed the street. The vendor who usually sets up a table within the fenced in Foreign Languages faculty hadn’t arrived yet and the street was strangely silent. The swishing sound of the street sweepers followed me as I walked to work. At least four people were sweeping per block, using clumps of branches tied together as brooms. They worked intently, sweeping the dried leaves into gutters, then setting the piles on fire.
No one seemed to be out but me and the street sweepers. The old woman who usually sells sunflower seeds and cigarettes on a corner was just putting out her wares. Usually she sits ready when I walk by, watching the passerbys from her small chair, her head wrapped in a colorful scarf. On this morning, there were no other pedestrians and very few cars. I felt unusually tuned into my surroundings.
Dirty water ran under the sidewalk, appearing in pools and canals tinkling, somehow retaining a blue color. Pigeons cooed and fluttered amidst branches, dropping some of the last dried leaves to the ground. Smoke rose from burning leaves and garbage. With the golden carpet dried up and swept away, my feet tapped against the uneven sidewalk.
I arrived at work and found it dark and empty. The suspicion had been growing and I finally had to accept it - daylight savings time had occurred without anyone telling me. It was actually 6:45 in Osh.
I emerged onto the street in the cool, sunny air. The empty, faded playground stood still. I walked along the Soviet style apartment building, reading the graffiti and marveling that this is one of the most exclusive areas in Osh. I was looking for a garbage can, since I still didn’t know where to throw my garbage away. I saw a pile of plastic bags in the grass near my building and another pile of leaves and garbage on the street, near a bus stop, but no actual bins.
I passed the taxis, lined up in their usual spot, and crossed the street. The vendor who usually sets up a table within the fenced in Foreign Languages faculty hadn’t arrived yet and the street was strangely silent. The swishing sound of the street sweepers followed me as I walked to work. At least four people were sweeping per block, using clumps of branches tied together as brooms. They worked intently, sweeping the dried leaves into gutters, then setting the piles on fire.
No one seemed to be out but me and the street sweepers. The old woman who usually sells sunflower seeds and cigarettes on a corner was just putting out her wares. Usually she sits ready when I walk by, watching the passerbys from her small chair, her head wrapped in a colorful scarf. On this morning, there were no other pedestrians and very few cars. I felt unusually tuned into my surroundings.
Dirty water ran under the sidewalk, appearing in pools and canals tinkling, somehow retaining a blue color. Pigeons cooed and fluttered amidst branches, dropping some of the last dried leaves to the ground. Smoke rose from burning leaves and garbage. With the golden carpet dried up and swept away, my feet tapped against the uneven sidewalk.
I arrived at work and found it dark and empty. The suspicion had been growing and I finally had to accept it - daylight savings time had occurred without anyone telling me. It was actually 6:45 in Osh.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
move to Osh
Hello,
I’m so sorry for the delay since my last post. It’s been a busy few weeks. After a short trip to Osh two weeks ago, I returned to Bishkek and then had to get ready for the first of what may be many moves within Kyrgyzstan. This past Sunday, I took a taxi for the twelve-hour drive to Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan and urban center of the southern region.
There were so many things I wanted to tell you about in Bishkek, such as my first rat sightings, two wonderful Sunday trips to the mountains, meeting some great Peace Corps trainees, a fun evening with my landlord, her friend and the American/Russian internet couple and the story of a coworker who suddenly moved to Chechnya to marry someone she’d met briefly this summer. But it’s probably best to just fill you in on my trip to Osh and to try to stay better caught up from this point forward.
The main reason I drove to Osh, instead of taking a 45-minute flight was due to the hassle of putting my bike and my many bags on the plane. A secondary reason was that I’d heard that the drive was spectacularly beautiful. As far as I know, none of my coworkers have ever driven and I thought this was a good opportunity to see the sights. I had flown when I visited Osh earlier in the month. It was a stunning flight, with mountain peaks reaching up above the clouds and toward the plane windows.
Anatoli picked me up in a silver Mercedes wagon that he’d just recently purchased. He used to have a nice bus that he used for tourists, but he sold it in order to buy this Mercedes as well as a minivan that he gave to his son-in-law to use as a marshrutka (the main form of local transport). His son-in-law has a college degree, but can’t find a job. His daughter gave birth to his first grandson just last month. “He needs a means of supporting his family,” he told me.
It was a long and tiring day, especially since I’m following Ramadan (called Ramazan here) and don’t eat from dawn until sundown. But it was really wonderful to get such a good sense of the country’s landscape. Leaving Bishkek, we followed the road to Sosnovka, where Gulnara had invited me to her parent’s home. We drove past the waterfall where we’d gone hiking that weekend, then continued south into area I hadn’t visited before. The ambient mountains of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too closed in upon us, mauve rock surrounding us in every direction as we wound through the passes. We climbed and climbed until I could look out the window and saw clouds below us. Anatoli stopped, I jumped out to take a picture, and returned winded. We were at 11,765 feet and I could feel the altitude.
From there, the highest peak of our journey, we descended into a wide, barren valley, the Suusamyr, beautiful in its starkness. There were so few signs of humanity or civilization enroute. The little stands selling koumiss (fermented mare’s milk) and bottles of gasoline seemed to be run by some type of intruders to this planet.
We moved on, crossing the Talas Ala-Too range, then followed a rapidly moving river lined with golden trees and marble mining sites. The ratty tables along this stretch of road were filled with bottles of thick mountain honey, glittering gold in the afternoon sun. We wound past the Toktugul reservoir, a vast smooth blue shimmer amidst the mountain landscape, then wound through another range of mountains. For the last several hours, we returned to flat land, driving through the Ferghana valley, where horse-pulled wooden carts and passengers on donkeys plodded along through cotton, tobacco and rice fields, stretching golden-brownish-green to the sun setting behind the mountains in the distance.
For about two thirds of the journey, the road was great. The Bishkek-Osh road has been recently redone, thanks to financing from the Asian Development Bank, and the northern segment is considered the best road in Kyrgyzstan. During that part of the drive, Anatoli gave me his card and told him to call him whenever I wanted to return. The last several hours went over a horrendous road, alternating patches of asphalt and gravel, long stretches of rocky gravel, and dark, potholed areas that put heavy wear and tear on the cars passing through. During this time, Anatoli couldn’t help but to exclaim his frustration at least every two or three minutes. “I’m not coming back here for the next two years!” he said with determination. “Until they’ve finished this road.” It was dark before we reached Osh and even on the main road heading to the second largest city in the country, there were no streetlights. We drove in darkness and arrived in darkness.
I stayed in a hotel my first night, then found an apartment on my first day. I visited three and chose a nice one about a 15-minute walk from work. The rent of $300 is pricey for this area, but the apartment is newly remodeled and very comfortable compared to local standards. I have a bedroom, a living room, another small room, a kitchen with a stove and refrigerator, and a bathroom. The toilet is in one small room by itself and the bathtub and sink in another room. The TV has a satellite dish with something like 300 channels. I’ve only turned on the TV once and then watched the local Russian news. Part of the deal was that the landlady would use my rent to buy a washing machine. She did that on the first day and will soon have it installed. It’s cold and will remain so until the heat gets turned on in mid-November. The tiny Chinese heater I have only heats a small space. So I very rarely use any space other than the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
My first few days were not short on adventure. A car ran over one of my suitcases (thankfully, it only contained clothing), I woke up to a small fire when the extension cord to my heater exploded, the next day my heater cord melted to the floor, leaving a black burn mark, and the entire city water supply was shut off for 24 hours, overflowing toilets and making the whole city stink.
The work here is intense. It’s very interesting and I’m finally getting a good sense of what I’ll be doing when I finish training at the end of next month. But the hours are very long, 10-12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, which has left me very little time for any exploring. Thankfully, a good portion of the work involves driving around the city and the region, so I’ve been able to get at least a visual picture of where I am.
Osh in the daytime has a color and a spice that I like. I was immediately struck by the darker skin (there are a lot of Uzbeks here and few Russians), the colorful clothing, the women’s headscarves, golden jewelry, flowing skirts and slipper-like shoes, the golden carpets of fallen leaves covering the sidewalk, the fruits and the vegetables, the chaotic commotion and bustle. Everyone in Bishkek has a reaction to “the south.” I was told that the people were “different,” that traditions are stronger, that the mentality is trickier, that the food was cheaper and better, that the weather was warmer. It’s definitely a different world from the much more Russified Bishkek.
Osh at night I don’t like so much, though it doesn’t help that my colleague frightens me with tales of thefts, accidents and high numbers of drug addicts and AIDS cases. I haven’t had any problems, but what I really hate is the darkness. Bishkek is the darkest capital city I’ve ever seen. Osh is definitely among the darkest major urban centers. While Bishkek lacked street lights, at least there were people and cars that would provide some light and activity. Here, by the time we leave work at around eight, it’s pitch black dark, there are few people out, and very few cars. Leaving work requires either crossing a small pedestrian bridge over a river (where my colleague says muggings occur) or walking up a tall flight of stairs through the darkness, to the main road. Even on the main road, I put one step in front of another in the hope that it will land on a solid surface. I often end up walking in the road just to benefit from the occasional headlight coming by. During the day it takes me 15 minutes to walk home. At night it’s definitely slower.
I found an aerobics course and hope to attend three nights a week. The first lesson was really surreal. It was held in a brand new sports center built by a local politician. A young Kyrgyz woman taught the step-aerobics class. During a five-minute break, she talked to her six attendees (all local except me) about her new Mary Kay business and tried to recruit clients. I had walked to the club past a mosque emitting the call to prayer and what I assumed might mark the setting of the sun and the ability for those fasting to eat. I then entered this new sports complex, where everyone has to take off their shoes and put them in boxes at the front door, walked past the mats where at least 50 local men were engaged in wrestling, and up the stairs to where locals engaged in the American traditions of step aerobics and Mary Kay. Tradition and modernity seemed to be fused together here, rather than distinct concepts.
Other than aerobics, I really haven’t had any free time. I’m usually pretty cold and tired when I get home and I tend to spend my spare time in the evenings and early mornings sitting in front of my portable heater and reading. I’m about halfway through Ramadan and have to admit that I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. The hardest day was the third, when I took a trip to the mountains and couldn’t eat during the hike. At this point, I think I’ll last the entire month. Since I don’t eat lunch, I treat myself to dinner out almost nightly. The cafes located between work and home don’t offer as much of a culinary adventure as those I found in Bishkek. Last night I found a really good place, owned by an American married to a local. Not only was it the first place I found milk (I love tea with milk, but no one seems to carry milk here), but they also had beans. I always get excited to see things outside of the ordinary and I don’t think I had a bean during my entire time in Bishkek.
I’ll leave this first update at this and will try to write more frequent and shorter posts in the coming weeks. Also, for those who communicate with me directly, if you haven’t heard from me in a while, please check your junk mail files (or send me another email). It seems as though some of my messages are ending up in people’s junk mail boxes, even though they are sent from an official account. I guess email from Kyrgyzstan is considered suspicious.
I’m so sorry for the delay since my last post. It’s been a busy few weeks. After a short trip to Osh two weeks ago, I returned to Bishkek and then had to get ready for the first of what may be many moves within Kyrgyzstan. This past Sunday, I took a taxi for the twelve-hour drive to Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan and urban center of the southern region.
There were so many things I wanted to tell you about in Bishkek, such as my first rat sightings, two wonderful Sunday trips to the mountains, meeting some great Peace Corps trainees, a fun evening with my landlord, her friend and the American/Russian internet couple and the story of a coworker who suddenly moved to Chechnya to marry someone she’d met briefly this summer. But it’s probably best to just fill you in on my trip to Osh and to try to stay better caught up from this point forward.
The main reason I drove to Osh, instead of taking a 45-minute flight was due to the hassle of putting my bike and my many bags on the plane. A secondary reason was that I’d heard that the drive was spectacularly beautiful. As far as I know, none of my coworkers have ever driven and I thought this was a good opportunity to see the sights. I had flown when I visited Osh earlier in the month. It was a stunning flight, with mountain peaks reaching up above the clouds and toward the plane windows.
Anatoli picked me up in a silver Mercedes wagon that he’d just recently purchased. He used to have a nice bus that he used for tourists, but he sold it in order to buy this Mercedes as well as a minivan that he gave to his son-in-law to use as a marshrutka (the main form of local transport). His son-in-law has a college degree, but can’t find a job. His daughter gave birth to his first grandson just last month. “He needs a means of supporting his family,” he told me.
It was a long and tiring day, especially since I’m following Ramadan (called Ramazan here) and don’t eat from dawn until sundown. But it was really wonderful to get such a good sense of the country’s landscape. Leaving Bishkek, we followed the road to Sosnovka, where Gulnara had invited me to her parent’s home. We drove past the waterfall where we’d gone hiking that weekend, then continued south into area I hadn’t visited before. The ambient mountains of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too closed in upon us, mauve rock surrounding us in every direction as we wound through the passes. We climbed and climbed until I could look out the window and saw clouds below us. Anatoli stopped, I jumped out to take a picture, and returned winded. We were at 11,765 feet and I could feel the altitude.
From there, the highest peak of our journey, we descended into a wide, barren valley, the Suusamyr, beautiful in its starkness. There were so few signs of humanity or civilization enroute. The little stands selling koumiss (fermented mare’s milk) and bottles of gasoline seemed to be run by some type of intruders to this planet.
We moved on, crossing the Talas Ala-Too range, then followed a rapidly moving river lined with golden trees and marble mining sites. The ratty tables along this stretch of road were filled with bottles of thick mountain honey, glittering gold in the afternoon sun. We wound past the Toktugul reservoir, a vast smooth blue shimmer amidst the mountain landscape, then wound through another range of mountains. For the last several hours, we returned to flat land, driving through the Ferghana valley, where horse-pulled wooden carts and passengers on donkeys plodded along through cotton, tobacco and rice fields, stretching golden-brownish-green to the sun setting behind the mountains in the distance.
For about two thirds of the journey, the road was great. The Bishkek-Osh road has been recently redone, thanks to financing from the Asian Development Bank, and the northern segment is considered the best road in Kyrgyzstan. During that part of the drive, Anatoli gave me his card and told him to call him whenever I wanted to return. The last several hours went over a horrendous road, alternating patches of asphalt and gravel, long stretches of rocky gravel, and dark, potholed areas that put heavy wear and tear on the cars passing through. During this time, Anatoli couldn’t help but to exclaim his frustration at least every two or three minutes. “I’m not coming back here for the next two years!” he said with determination. “Until they’ve finished this road.” It was dark before we reached Osh and even on the main road heading to the second largest city in the country, there were no streetlights. We drove in darkness and arrived in darkness.
I stayed in a hotel my first night, then found an apartment on my first day. I visited three and chose a nice one about a 15-minute walk from work. The rent of $300 is pricey for this area, but the apartment is newly remodeled and very comfortable compared to local standards. I have a bedroom, a living room, another small room, a kitchen with a stove and refrigerator, and a bathroom. The toilet is in one small room by itself and the bathtub and sink in another room. The TV has a satellite dish with something like 300 channels. I’ve only turned on the TV once and then watched the local Russian news. Part of the deal was that the landlady would use my rent to buy a washing machine. She did that on the first day and will soon have it installed. It’s cold and will remain so until the heat gets turned on in mid-November. The tiny Chinese heater I have only heats a small space. So I very rarely use any space other than the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
My first few days were not short on adventure. A car ran over one of my suitcases (thankfully, it only contained clothing), I woke up to a small fire when the extension cord to my heater exploded, the next day my heater cord melted to the floor, leaving a black burn mark, and the entire city water supply was shut off for 24 hours, overflowing toilets and making the whole city stink.
The work here is intense. It’s very interesting and I’m finally getting a good sense of what I’ll be doing when I finish training at the end of next month. But the hours are very long, 10-12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, which has left me very little time for any exploring. Thankfully, a good portion of the work involves driving around the city and the region, so I’ve been able to get at least a visual picture of where I am.
Osh in the daytime has a color and a spice that I like. I was immediately struck by the darker skin (there are a lot of Uzbeks here and few Russians), the colorful clothing, the women’s headscarves, golden jewelry, flowing skirts and slipper-like shoes, the golden carpets of fallen leaves covering the sidewalk, the fruits and the vegetables, the chaotic commotion and bustle. Everyone in Bishkek has a reaction to “the south.” I was told that the people were “different,” that traditions are stronger, that the mentality is trickier, that the food was cheaper and better, that the weather was warmer. It’s definitely a different world from the much more Russified Bishkek.
Osh at night I don’t like so much, though it doesn’t help that my colleague frightens me with tales of thefts, accidents and high numbers of drug addicts and AIDS cases. I haven’t had any problems, but what I really hate is the darkness. Bishkek is the darkest capital city I’ve ever seen. Osh is definitely among the darkest major urban centers. While Bishkek lacked street lights, at least there were people and cars that would provide some light and activity. Here, by the time we leave work at around eight, it’s pitch black dark, there are few people out, and very few cars. Leaving work requires either crossing a small pedestrian bridge over a river (where my colleague says muggings occur) or walking up a tall flight of stairs through the darkness, to the main road. Even on the main road, I put one step in front of another in the hope that it will land on a solid surface. I often end up walking in the road just to benefit from the occasional headlight coming by. During the day it takes me 15 minutes to walk home. At night it’s definitely slower.
I found an aerobics course and hope to attend three nights a week. The first lesson was really surreal. It was held in a brand new sports center built by a local politician. A young Kyrgyz woman taught the step-aerobics class. During a five-minute break, she talked to her six attendees (all local except me) about her new Mary Kay business and tried to recruit clients. I had walked to the club past a mosque emitting the call to prayer and what I assumed might mark the setting of the sun and the ability for those fasting to eat. I then entered this new sports complex, where everyone has to take off their shoes and put them in boxes at the front door, walked past the mats where at least 50 local men were engaged in wrestling, and up the stairs to where locals engaged in the American traditions of step aerobics and Mary Kay. Tradition and modernity seemed to be fused together here, rather than distinct concepts.
Other than aerobics, I really haven’t had any free time. I’m usually pretty cold and tired when I get home and I tend to spend my spare time in the evenings and early mornings sitting in front of my portable heater and reading. I’m about halfway through Ramadan and have to admit that I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. The hardest day was the third, when I took a trip to the mountains and couldn’t eat during the hike. At this point, I think I’ll last the entire month. Since I don’t eat lunch, I treat myself to dinner out almost nightly. The cafes located between work and home don’t offer as much of a culinary adventure as those I found in Bishkek. Last night I found a really good place, owned by an American married to a local. Not only was it the first place I found milk (I love tea with milk, but no one seems to carry milk here), but they also had beans. I always get excited to see things outside of the ordinary and I don’t think I had a bean during my entire time in Bishkek.
I’ll leave this first update at this and will try to write more frequent and shorter posts in the coming weeks. Also, for those who communicate with me directly, if you haven’t heard from me in a while, please check your junk mail files (or send me another email). It seems as though some of my messages are ending up in people’s junk mail boxes, even though they are sent from an official account. I guess email from Kyrgyzstan is considered suspicious.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)