As you may or may not know, my dear friends and quiet confidants, I am a lover, not a fighter, of all things Chicago. Among all the many things within it that I hold dear, one of them is football’s greatest rivalry. That’s right. I said it. Kyrgy Carl isn’t just a slap happy do gooder. No, not at all. I like football. American football. The game with the giant men who make me look tinier and tinier every day.
Now, for those of you who didn’t know, there was a grand and momentous game played last week: Chicago versus Green Bay Wisconsin. When I heard of the play-off match-up, the first since WWII, I knew wild horses couldn’t keep me from watching it (a surprisingly relevant idiom, considering my present location…) So, folks, battling a soar throat and the onset of a nasty cold, I mustered all the Chicago grit that I could find, and booked myself one ticket to Bishkek, where a local bar had promised to show the game.
Now, seeing a football game in Kyrgyzstan is a little bit harder than in some other countries I’ve been to. In 2007, when I saw the Bears get Super Bowl walloped by the Colts, I was at a crowded ex-pat spot in Beijing, China. I was already living there, so the only special preparations we had to make was buying beers the night before, so we could get good and buzzed when the game started at 6:am the next day. This time, though, it involved a 6 hour ride in a shared taxi on Sunday, waiting in the foreign, big city land of the capital, and then making my way to the one expat bar I even knew of at 2:am.
At first, folks, I was afraid I’d have to watch the game alone, lost in the bar crowd throng. But when two volunteers offered to watch it with me, I was only worried that we’d get there in time to find a table. But when we arrived at the bar at 2:10, just missing the successful and devastating first Green Bay drive, we were amazed at what we found: the bar, while open, featured not a soul. Here I was, having traveled 6 hours, with another 6 to go the following day, and no one beyond my motley crew had thought to come out for the game. I wanted to yell from the roof tops that this was a once in a life time moment, that tickets were averaging $1,000 resail in Chicago, but no one was awake to hear me.
Then, after a painful shellacking, and a call to my father (a very happy Green Bay fan) and my brother (a gently inebriated Chicago fan), we headed out. It wasn’t what I had expected, but here in Kyrgyzstan, what ever is? My two friends and I then wrapped up the remainder of our morning by watching the Steelers make a very definitive start to their game, and headed out into the world.
Not all was lost, of course, we are Peace Corps volunteers, after all. We used our early morning advantage (and the fresh snow) to ambush the Peace Corps staff with snow balls as they headed into work in the morning, at least one member quite aware as to how we happened to be up so early. From there, my heavy head and sniffles worsening all the time, I headed back to the long-distance taxi stand, bought another seat in a taxi, and headed home.
It was an easy ride with three men who were transporting TB supplies to a hospital on the way. Conversation went something like, “in America, do the women thrash their men when they stay out late and get drunk? Good, we thought ours were the only ones.” And, “you don’t mind if we smoke in the car, right? We’re all guys here.” And then, thankfully, it wasn’t long before I was home, doing pull-ups with my host sister, and shooing the three-year-old boy off my bed, desperately pleading that he just wear some pants.
