Two Stops Past Siberia

I am as excited to write this letter to you all as I have been about any in ages. It is the chest-tingling kind of letter that reminds me all about why I am here, and why I love this work so much.

So, folks, I’ve got my delightful friend, Farmer Dan, here by my side, and he has been that way for over a week now. Dan is good natured and patient. He likes my stories. He is six two and built like the farm boys of old. When he walks into a room, he is quiet and respectful, and always waits to see how the locals act before doing anything himself. This, folks, might sound like shyness, but put him in a garden, and he springs to life.

The state of the state this past week has been trainings. We traveled to nine villages in 5 days and taught upwards of 120 farmers the details of composting, and the basics of soil nutrients and crop rotation. We’ve been a monster team: I talk; Farmer Dan answers questions; and my fellow volunteer Corey sits in the background, watching the crowd, answering questions, taking notes, and facilitating the little games that we’ve set up for the participants to play. (Namely index cards with crops on them so the people can practice rotation patterns.) Then, when we get to the end of the classroom portion, I always ask the groups, “Who lives nearby? Let’s make a compost pile!” And that’s when Farmer Dan in his plaid shirts and sandy hair springs to life.

I can’t keep Dan’s hands away from pitchforks, and he can’t help himself but gather fresh manure. He mixes mounds of moldy hay like he’s been doing it since birth, and waters them like they are his own progeny. He explains his actions with the simplest of terms, and then I translate. After we leave dusty villages and snowy ones, I can’t help myself but to beam: for the first time since coming here, I am directly in the field with a concrete skill to offer. No connection building or grant writing. No esoteric goal setting. I am teaching people concrete skills to improve their lives. No more burning leaves, no more smokey spring evenings, just healthy soil. We are making a difference.

But it hasn’t been just me who has been impressed out here. Dan had the great fortune of being here for Noruz, the traditional Kyrgyz (Muslim) New Years, just yesterday. We took two of my host-sisters to the center of town where we bought ice-cream and watched traditional dancing, had lots of fried food, and even listened to a professional teller of the Kyrgyz epic, The Manas. Dan also got to see the famed At Bashy Animal Bazaar. We bid on a baby yak and trudged around in the mud. We ate grilled meat and drank skunked beer and vodka just after noon, and Dan told us it was reminding him all of college.

Furthermore, my host family has been absolutely taken with ol’ Farmer Dan, despite his chewed finger nails and muddy shoes. He came bearing incredibly thoughtful gifts for the family as a whole (sent by our mothers in America), and brought out candied nuts and other healthy sweets for the Noruz celebration. Between all of these gifts and the honesty which brought him here, my host family couldn’t help but to dote. At the present time, much to the jealousy of nearly everyone around, Farmer Dan is happy the owner of his very own shyrdak, or felt rug. This one made by my very own host mother. When they presented it to Farmer Dan, he was speechless.

Now, folks, as Dan and I have been saying, our talk is going national. Tomorrow we head down to the Chuy valley, where we’ll be teaching the skills of composting to the students of two separate farmer schools. We are curious what kinds of things will go well there: will the participants already about crop rotation? Will our samples of finished compost still make them go gaga?

Then, after Chuy, we head up to Corey’s home base, and will deliver the talk four times in villages around Talas. However it goes, it can’t be more of a roller coaster ride than just the trainings we had today. We started in the most desolate of all the villages we’ve seen. Dan has me looking at soil these days, and this place was practically all white, and the residents said they didn’t have any irrigation at all. When we arrived, the community organizer wasn’t there, and we ended up delivering the talk to an impromptu group of 20 VERY drunk men with our posters taped to the back of a car. They did little more than badger me about how I hadn’t brought anything to give them, and only one came out to actually make a pile. But then, in the second village, we found 9 very sober women. They were quiet and curious, and very graciously corrected my Kyrgyz. Theirs was the most productive village we’ve seen yet, and we built the best compost pile there so far. The ladies hung on my every word, and absorbed everything I could say. It was a nightmare of a morning that turned into a paradise of an afternoon.

How will the rest of our weeks together turn out? Stay tuned, and your very own Kyrgy Carl will be sure to tell.