The organ meat, the bone marrow, the horse milk mixed with salty oil-water, the cognate-less language, the never-rush culture, the post-Soviet people, all these things are just pieces of one big sweet pie. The greatest challenge to adapting to this place, by far and away, has been the outhouse at 20 below zero, centigrade.
In fact, we had our record low the other night, -35 C (that’s -31 F, not including wind chill, wink wink). Coming home in the cold with a frozen nose is bad enough. But knowing you’ll have to return to that cold, to do nothing but squat over an open hole in a small room is the icing on the cake.
As winter slowly approached, my growing habit had been to wait as long as possible to endure this tribulation. That might have put me at once every three days. Needless to say, my midsection was getting less and less comfortable.
Ironically, it was the vaguely offensive luxury of that hotel (see the video here!), however, that has got me aggressively adjusting to my icy outhouse. See, I got a little ill in the bowels at last week’s PDM, and of my fancy indoor toilet, I took full advantage. It was that little taste of the good life that reminded me how wonderful it is to be comfortable in the plumbing, and how a quick run outside is really worth the trouble.
So I’m working at it now, folks, rest assured. And truth be told, its never as bad as ya’ think it’s gonna be. Sure, I have to put on a hat, but I generally am already wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Plus, it’s also amazing how quickly you can go when you really need to.
Otherwise, this week is marked by some new “real” work I’m up to. Through some mean cajoling and pestering, I got the UNDP and local Aga Hun supported University of Central Asia to sponsor a course teaching rural handicraft cooperatives business skills. As a good community developer, however, I insisted the course syllabus not be drawn up until we conducted a needs assessment of the ladies we’d like to teach. What that means, really, is just more of the dream.
Thus far, we’ve been to 4 villages and met with 41 women. To date, these meetings have been entirely in Ak-Tala rayon, the poorest rayon here in Naryn, the poorest province of Kyrgyzstan. And for whatever reason, I feel like I have experienced the greatest honest luxury in recent memory.
We drive as many as two hours outside of the city, with the fingers of the mountains coming down to our left, covered in velvet snow. The women we meet with bear no signs of timidity. They tell us aggressively of their issues: they want accounting skills, to learn to harness capital, advanced felt production technology, guidelines for pricing, and most of all, more orders: no one’s askin’ for hand-outs here.
Then, inevitably, before we leave, they’ll show us their workshops, and with each visit, their work gets more and more impressive. For those details, tune in next week.
