While not a big holiday in America, May 9th, Victory Day, marks the defeat of Nazi Germany. WWII memorials are a ubiquitous feature in the Kyrgyz landscape. Soviet losses during WWII were among the greatest in the entire war, and their victory was a rallying point for all citizens of that once great empire.
That history has a long fingers in Kyrgyzstan. Among those are the Victory Day celebrations.
We started here in Sunny Naryn with a festival. Near the center of town there is a park with a giant memorial. Here thousands of people gathered. The entrance was lined with school children dressed to the nines in formal, quasi-military uniforms. We had a small march of soldiers, a 21-gun salute, and speeches by WWII survivors. These men, relics of an older time, came covered in medals. One, pushed in a wheel chair, brought an Uzi.
From there I made my way out to my new second home, the hamlet of Orto Nura. I had been invited under the auspices that they’d be slaughtering not the mainstay sheep, but a supple little lamb. This folks, I just couldn’t resist.
As for my part, I brought some of the fresh produce that has been showing up in the bazaars. Last week I saw radishes for the first time in months, and a large crowd around them. Since then, tomatoes and cucumbers have appeared, and their prices have been dropping. Since they first appeared, prices have dropped by half. My 1 kilo of tomatoes still cost and outrageous 2 dollars, but after we made the steadfast Kyrgyz favorite, tomato and onion salad, it was all worth it.
Before dinner I walked around the village, and checked out some of the new trees, and shopped around my Tree Growers Association. Then, after soft, soft lamb, and it’s intestines tied in knots, we headed out for a walk.
The mountains around Orto Nura are a wonderful thing. While across the river they are immediate, large and foreboding, on the Orto Nura side, they are smaller, accessible. Half an hour in, following one branch of a Naryn River tributary, we found a little house. It was neat an tidy, with trees and a little potato patch. There was a low animal barn around back, and kids in front. As we approached, the matron came out to greet us.
“Come inside!” we her first words, “we’ll have yogurt.”
This was Kyrgyz hospitality at it’s finest. They asked about us, where we came from, what we did. We asked to our own interests, like where the solar panel on the side of their house came from, and if they lived here year round (“no, no,” she said, “we move out in the summer, to the mountains.”)
And then, when I said I hailed from the Great Windy City, she just laughed, “oh! My brother lives there. He drives a taxi, you’ll have to look him up.” The world folks, just keeps getting smaller.
