Two Stops Past Siberia
- Projects
- Handicrafts
- Books
- A History of Inner Asia, Svat Soucek
- Beyond the Sky and the Earth, Jamie Zeppa
- Chasing the Sea, Tom Bissell
- Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Christopher I. Beckwith
- Erica Marat, The Tulip Revolution: One Year After
- High Adventure in Tibet, David V. Plymire
- Setting the East Ablaze, Peter Hopkirk
- Shadow of the Silk Road, Colin Thubron
- The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, Chingiz Aitmatov
- The Great Arab Conquests, Hugh Kennedy
- The Lost Heart of Asia, Colin Thubron
- This is Not Civilization, Robert Rosenberg
- Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
- Informations
Archive for March, 2010
More on Spring, and a Year from Home
Spring, it seems, is finally on it’s way. There is a warming in the air, and with it, in the people. Everywhere I go lately, I seem to run into people that I met, in one way or another, during these long months of winter. Now though, instead of brief, bundled passings, we’re shouting out “hulloo!” across the street.
The smells of Spring are also out and about. The air is often moist, heavy with the scent of mud, but on sunny days, the roads dry out, and dust is in the air. The roads are also a bit of a surprise. During the winter, they were in valleys of snow, thick with ice, and mostly level. Today, they have grown, in places, to twice their width, thanks to the snow melt. But we are also reminded now as to how bad the potholes are. Where they had hidden under the ice for many months, today traffic weaves and dodges, paying far more attention to the holes than the yellow lines.
This olfactory stimulation is also transporting me back to my training village, it looks like now, oh, a full year ago.
That’s right folks, I’m a year out of America, and looking at roughly 15 more months to go. That, frankly, is a long time to be away from home.
Some things are getting normal, like dodging the mud puddles, and switching between Kyrgyz and English as a matter of practice. I’ve have now brought some friends home to my house, and as my family learns more about me through them, I learn more about my family. Our relationship is deepening far beyond the polite or convenient. We have now seen each other in many circumstances, both the comfortable and the non.
My language is coming along well, though progress is hard to gauge. I couldn’t say for certain what I was understanding before, what I wasn’t. I am still all too cognizant of my limitations. Fluency seems like a mythical beast, and the more I learn, the more I wonder what the word even means.
And work. Work is the wild card in the whole system. My experience here hasn’t been what I read in Peace Corps stories of old. We weren’t sent out here to build fish ponds or improve water systems; no one committed resources to us before our arrival. Instead, we were taught how to engage in a community, given a site with a vague order to “help,” and then sent on our way.
I feel like I have spent the lion’s share of my time learning the people, the problems, the motivation. I’ve helped with a few trainings to date, asked for some money and sold 25 laptop sleeves, at roughly 12 dollars a piece.
It’s a small contribution to a place I’ve come to call home, but barely to understand. I miss Chicago, my friends and my family on a daily basis, but the Internet helps people be close when they’re far away. It’s work, it’s life, it complicated. I’ve plenty of time left here to help, and most of all, it’s exactly what I want to be doing.
Laptop Sleeves, Like the World Has Never Seen
Posted by KyrgyCarl in Bonus Content! on March 23, 2010
In our continuing effort to pair traditional Kyrgyz art with modern consumer culture, out here in Sunny Naryn we’ve been building our repertoire of felt laptop sleeves. These suckers, designed entirely by the local women here, sport the wonderful damask designs of traditional Kyrgyzstan. Plus, they come in all manner of colors and sizes. One day, if you’re lucky, even these little netbook sleeves will be available at an outlet near you!
Congratulations on New Years! (Just Try to Doge the Snowballs)
In Kyrgyz, a common holiday greeting is the idiomatic “congratulations.” While this is standard, its direct translation into English never ceases to make me chuckle. With that in mind, we’ve just celebrated the traditional Muslim New Years, called Noruz here, marking the vernal equinox.
That would lead the reader to assume Spring was on its way, marching steadily towards Sunny Naryn. However, with mountains of snow still lining the streets, and a fresh three inches for the holiday, us locals are feeling otherwise.
With the lion’s share of my family in Bishkek, it was just my host father and Kalima, the oldest daughter left with me at home. Kalima and I went out to check out the festivities in the town center at noon, and found the take-down of a concert in progress, as well as some remaining hundreds of people eating, taking pictures, and just generally enjoying themselves outdoors.
Kalima and I walked around, and I bought some ice cream, on sale in the street for the first time all year. At this point, 
I’d love to show a wonderful picture of Kalima eating hers with a snowy, crowded Naryn in the background, but when I asked to stage such a thing, she said succinctly, “If I eat mine now, the boys will throw snowballs at me.” To be 14 here, it seems, is to be 14 anywhere on earth.
My host father showed no interest in celebrating. “I’m young,” he said, “now is the time for working, not partying.” Instead, he was happy to point out subtleties in the pictures I had taken during last week’s wedding.
“See these boys?” he said, “can you tell they are from Bishkek? They look more cultured. And these boys? They’re a little rougher. They’re all Naryners.”
“And what I about this boy?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s the worst of the bunch.” Naturally, we were talking about me.
Then, as the sun was setting on this, the last time the light won’t overwhelm the dark until Fall, I found myself watching a movie when my family got home. I was enjoying a Russian dubbed version of “Doomsday,” a tasteful film which follows the exploits of a small band of modern soldiers stranded in a post apocalyptic Scotland, as they run from tribes of equally barbaric urban punks and rural knights, all the while seeing advertisements at the bottom of the screen in Kyrgyz: “For a fat mare, call…” and “House for sale, city center, fruit tree, shop and banya on premises…”
My mother had left about a week ago, for a medical conference in the capital, and had brought the children with her. When she returned, the quiet house I had been growing accustomed to filled up again. The drying laundry ha been washed wrong, the 2 year old was spilling his tea on the table, and the shoes needed polishing.
All’s happy, well, and normal here in Naryn, folks. One day the snow will stop, but no one is quite sure when.
A Real Humdinger
We’ve had a real humdinger of a week out here.
We started out the week with a team of wool specialists from Ohio who came out on a fact finding mission on the possibility of setting up a mill here. After copious village visits, plenty of meat and greets, and a whole handful of fiber samples, they said,
“Carl, how has no one discovered the potential of this place already?”
“Because,” I told them, “this is Naryn.”
In truth, it was more than that. Not a lot of folks with this kind of know-how are willing to relocate their families all the way out here. But, for the few that are, like these, the potential is endless.
Next, my grandmother came back to Naryn from her wintering in Bishkek. It’s just for a visit, though. She’s in town for a wedding.
See, it’s my father’s little brother’s wedding. Now, while he (thankfully) didn’t steal his bride, that tradition did play a part. First, surely, as was mine, your curiosity is piqued. “Why,” you must be asking, “is this young fella’ getting married in the winter? The sheep are expensive now!” I asked these questions myself, and discovered, among other reasons, the timing of this wedding was dictated by his fiancé getting stolen, by another man.
“It’s a funny thing,” the groom told me, “if he had gotten her past his house, there would have been nothing I could do. But my friend stopped them on the road. Then I got there, we talked for maybe 20 minutes, and then I got her back.”
“Did you go alone?” I asked.
“Oh no. There were 20 of us.”
I can only make inferences as to what happened behind those decidedly casual sentences. But either way, he then went on to tell me how wonderful she is, and how much he loves her. And unlike an American wedding, she spent the whole weekend whisking around, quietly busy, cutting vegetables and pouring tea. And she did it all with an ever present smile. As my little sister and I headed out of the house one day together, and I asked her,
“Do you like the bride?”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“Do you think they will be happy?” I asked.
“I think so,” and she smiled, “the borsok was good. That’s a good sign.”
And if all this magic wasn’t good enough, I’ve also succeeded in one of my other, long standing 
goals: to enrolled at Naryn State University. While “enroll” is really a strong word, what I mean is that I finally got the nerve to ask if I could sit in on a college level Kyrgyz language course. In my experience, the greatest obstacle to language acquisition is getting too comfortable with your abilities. This course, thus far, is proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to show me how limited my knowledge really is.
Programming: The International Language
Posted by KyrgyCarl in Bonus Content! on March 14, 2010
“Needs Assessments” are activities we Community Developers engage in to find out what the people we are trying to help need. The great thing about them is not just the answer we get, but the little bonuses, the positivie externalities.
During the visit to the last village on our agenda, a place called Ming Bulak, or “A Thousand Springs,” we found ourselves in an IT classroom. Besides the 17 women eager to tell us about the felt making machines they wanted to produce more, higher quality shyrdaks, were lots of computers and hand-painted, plywood signs, in Kyrgyz, detailing how to write code.
Some cool little bits. The letters are all cyrcillic. Most of it is transliteration of words we know, like байт for byte. You guys who know about programming can surely figure out what all is going on.
Welcome to Women’s Day!
For those of you who may have been caught unawares, this past Monday, March the 8th celebrated International Women’s Day. This holiday, once a domestic affair in the Soviet Union, has, since it’s fall, burst with excitement onto the international stage. (That last line was a blatantly sensationalized way of reporting that this holiday is still celebrated in the former USSR countries…)
That being said, it really is a wonderful affair. Where some women complain that it serves as just another excuse for their husbands to take them out to eat, and then get drunk themselves, all the while patting themselves on the back, this was not my experience (not exactly, any way.)
On Women’s Day Eve, my dad made dinner, all by himself, and the family girls all received it to high acclaim. The dish, a winter time variant of dimdama: beef, onions and potatoes cooked together in oil, was tasty. Unfortunately, by no fault of my father’s, we had to eat carefully, as we’re getting down to some of the rougher cuts of the winter cow, and little bone fragments are becoming more frequent.
The next day, Women’s Day proper, was a bona fide feast. After being called to dress a slim 30 minutes before the guests would arrive, I found myself in the dining room with 5, only one of whom I’d met. Four were women, and the fifth was a short, happy little Kyrgyz guy with a round face. When I introduced myself, as I do, as Kanibek, he laughed aloud and told me his was Michael.
Lunch was defined by salads, fruit, and the famous Kyrgyz boiled meat and noodles, the national dish we call besh barkmak. Plus, of course, booze. Usually I refrain, but I had a headache, so matched Mike shot for shot. We shared toasts all around, and he had fun with me, among other things, admiring my golden, curly hair, and the high quality of my shoes, which he insisted I open a business importing.
At the end of the meal, after many toasts to the women among us, conversation took a turn towards the most recent hot topic, democracy.
“Kanibek,” Michael said, “which country that you’ve visited has the best democracy, China, Vietnam or India?” Then there was some stifled laughter, “or here?”
I thought about Chinese censorship, and the travel restrictions I found in Vietnam. I thought about Kyrgyzstan, and then said, “India.”
“But Kanibek,” one woman with a row of gold teeth asked, “there is so much difference between rich and poor there, how can their democracy be real?”
I had to think for a second. “Every country has this problem,” I said, “but India is on the right path.”
It hadn’t been my intention, but this last comment silenced the room. We just sat then, thoughtful, wondering, before my parents, the excellent hosts, gathered everyone up for an “omin,” the traditional finishing of a meal, and we moved on.
The day wasn’t over yet, though. My sisters, having seen me down shots, wanted to, among other things, play chess with me. Needless to say, they were delighted with the results.
Meat with Rice is Good
So, that warm snap I encountered in Bishkek last week has been creeping towards us Naryners here in the highlands. Where Bishkek was a mud puddle, we are simply awash with melted snow.
I guess I had forgotten how much snow we got over the winter, and how, in most places, it was never removed, but simply packed down. Aside from the heaps of snow piled in the limited green space along (and in) the roads, many of those roads and sidewalks sport ice or heavily packed snow as much as 6 inches thick!
This all means the amount of slushy water that has infiltrated the city is beyond the pale. I have never seen puddles this big in my entire life. They’ll occupy entire an intersection at the end of an alley, and submerge your foot to the ankle, like after a big rain in Chicago. But these puddles have no plans of going anywhere. Furthermore, they’re filled with snow and slushy ice, and bear an uncanny resemblance to the regular snow and ice we’ve had since October. That means, unless the guy in front of you just made waves, you’re unlikely to be able to tell the wet from the dry.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the melting icicles on the eaves of tall buildings are big like lightning bolts, and scare even the savviest of men. People can be seen marching around on their roofs, shoveling off big sheets of snow. I’m just waiting for another cold snap though, when these giant puddles turn our fair city into the largest urban skating rink the world has ever seen.
But, like all good cold-weather people, this nonsense hasn’t put a damper on a thing, and its business as usual. At work, our handicraft business course, which was originally supposed to start today, has been delayed, for a second time, to the 15th. Something about money, overlapping skill-sets, and an inkling suspicion that this same thing has been done before…
And at home with my lovely family, my homestay mom has just celebrated her 40th birthday. No one told me about this until I got home from work, but that was okay, as the whole celebration was decidedly subdued. We had cake. My dad gave silly, yet meaningful toasts. Aijamal, the six year old, presented a book half filled with pictures she drew of horses and mermaids, put it in a bag, and tied it all up with a scarf.
In fact, it was Aijamal, the Christmas whisperer, who really stole the show. She’d been a bundle of energy all day, just laughing and saying anything that’d come into her head. And one of those things, she said, while standing on her chair at the dinner table, after taking a bite of her rice with carrot shreds and boiled beef, was simply, “meat with rice is good, huh,” as if she was having it for the first time.
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Kyrgy Carl, Making Waves!
