Two Stops Past Siberia

This happy day catches yours truly freshly home from a tradition set forth by my father, and his father before him: the business trip. Unlike in the stories of old, however, my trip was neither a sales call nor a networking event in the Bahamas; I left on the mundane errand of buying sewing machines. But things are not always as simple as they seem.

I got a call last Monday night, vaguely frenetic, insisting that we leave the following morning.

“Have you called the store? Have you placed an order?” I asked, not really believing the answers held any relevance.

“Yes, yes,” they assured me.

Then I called Peace Corps. “I need to leave my site, tomorrow morning, for Bishkek. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, or where I’ll be staying.” This was highly unorthodox, but by some grace of God, my manager had faith in me.

“If you need to go,” she said, “then go! We’ll take care of the details tomorrow.”

It is a day’s drive to Bishkek, and by evening time, I found myself in the home of a relative of my coworker. She was a prosperous woman who’d made good in the sock business. Her sister, my true partner, was engaged finding other machines elsewhere, and had roped this woman into her service. She, in turn, had roped her brother into caring for us and it was in his house we were staying. He was a trained economist who now worked with wood.

“Will you write a project for me?” he asked.

“But you already have all the machines you need,” I said. “You know how to use them, and have plenty of wood to work with. What help can I give?”

“Ah,” he sighed, “asking for help is just our way. Our president asks for help. Even our millionaires ask for help.”

The next day started out with promise: we headed out for a sewing machine store, were met by an impeccably dressed fashion designer, and set to picking out the proper machines. I think the pretty Russian girl behind the desk just thought I was quiet, and her jaw hit the ground when she, at last, heard me rant not in Russian, but Kyrgyz. This meeting, however, was not to be.

“If we buy the machines here,” they finally told me, “they will charge us a 12% value added tax. That just will not do.”

What then commenced was a jaunt, a journey, a day on the town. We may have visited every sewing machine dealer Bishkek had to offer. We talked with Uighur peddlers in a sewing supply bazaar, with small Kyrgyz shop owners, with a man who just seemed to have connections, and even a local Turk named Taliban who made polite conversation by informing me on the value that a kidnapped foreigner (like myself) might fetch in Tajikistan.

The sister griped constantly, bemoaning the process, and I just followed, carrying my giant stack of Kyrgyz bills close at all times. In the end, a nice Kyrgyz shop-owner agreed to deliver the machines to the house where we were staying. When we finally made that deal, it was the third time we had set foot into his establishment. Then, that night, after dinner, I finally grew tired.

“Here,” I said to the sister, a woman who now held my total confidence, “here is the money for the machines, just get this done.”

In many ways, however, this is as it should be. I swap money for work, that’s my bag. In their own way, they worked hard, and got the job done. All I had to do, really, was ride in, and write a check. If only it could all be so easy.