Lets take it from the top. The largest neighboring city to Sunny Naryn is At-Bashi, or “Horse’s Head.” This town sports one of the largest animal bazaars in all of Kyrgyzstan. Every Sunday through most of the year, herders descend upon this place en masse, selling everything from sheep and goats, to camels and yaks.
Along with this cohort of creatures subsequently come other merchants, toting all manner of things, from cheap China-made toys and trinkets, to clothing, produce, bootleg DVDs, traditional handicrafts and most other things one can imagine.
So my friends and I went to see this bazaar grow fat with animals returning from summer pasture in the hills. In the middle of the madness, we parked ourselves under the hull of what looked like a huge, wintertime stable, used currently as host to a collection of small restaurants. We sat, devouring a fresh watermelon, seven Kyrgyz shish-ka-bobs called “shashlik,” two pots of tea and loads of bread, all the while resting before the might of the snow-capped At-Bashi mountain range. The whole experience cost us less than 2 dollars apiece.
Meanwhile, at home, school is coming back into session, and the city seems as though it is beginning to flesh out.
Before this, I had not thought of my home here to be light on people, by any means. But as school has begun again, groups of school children are visible on the streets in the afternoon, and University students out and about at all hours, as any good University students should be.
Also exciting to note, the electric cables that run over the length of our main street are once again sporting trolley buses. These models of transportative efficiency, which don’t run in the winter, returned just in time for the first day of school, after spending the summer in Bishkek, for rest and repair.
Along with the students, returns their insatiable urge to learn English. While this is not my primary duty here in Naryn City, as a declared responder to self-addressed community needs, I cannot, in good conscious, completely ignore their requests. Consequently, I have acquiesced to monitoring an English language discussion club, for which I have set strict requirements to join, and rules stricter yet for attendance. This all to hopefully ensure that either I get a committed crew of students onto whom I can impart my goals for development of their country, or the club won’t form at all.
I feel I should take a minute to explain. Between college and my time developing countries, I have come to believe improvements in community development should be necessarily intrinsic. I.e. improving quality of life by helping people “want what they have,” instead of giving people ever more extravagant tools to “have what they want.”
Considering the overwhelming beauty I encounter here on a regular basis, I firmly believe, if one cannot appreciate life here, no amount of English (or anything else) could ever make one happy at all. But, on the other hand, if one can be happy here with these simple pleasures (with out without my help), one will then have the requisite skills to be happy anywhere.
But there I go, running my mouth off again. Happy Autumn, from my little corner of the world. Do yourselves all a favor, and find yourselves a hayride, on me.
Originally Written September 6th, 2009
