I wrote yesterday about the quality of the fruit trees available to the people in and around Naryn Oblast, the murky information, and the unfortunate issues with timing (available saplings vs. still cold ground). I also said that we were paying a premium for our trees, and today I’m going to explain a little bit about what’s going on there.

The saplings that I showed pictures of yesterday cost between one and two dollars a piece. The trees we are buying cost $3.50 a tree, but it’s more complicated than that, and while the difference is significant, so is the product.

The trees from yesterday came from a nearby nursery. They were dug out of the ground any time within the last two weeks, and transported as they looked there to Naryn city. The roots may or may not have already been allowed to dry.

In order for a person from Orto Nura to get their hands on these trees, they’d need to take a shared taxi to Naryn city ($1), spend their morning buying, lets say, 2 trees ($4) and then take another shared taxi back to Orto Nura ($1).  So far, we’re at six dollars total, three dollars per tree, not including the opportunity cost of spending their whole morning away from their fields in the Spring. They could of course improve the unit price by buying more than two trees, but that gets us to the issue of transportation.

When preparing to bring home their spindly, 6 foot saplings in the shared taxi back to Orto Nura, they’ve got some options. They could, A) push them into the back seat of the taxi, with the other passengers, B) fold them up in the trunk with whatever everyone else is carting home, or C) tie them to the roof. For the already fragile plant, none of these are particularly enticing options. Even if they can find another means of transportation, one which will cause a little less stress to the plant, they’ve still spent significant time and cash money on a very fragile commodity.

(In fact, “cash money” is important here, more than just for teenage parlance. These farmers spend a large part of their lives outside of the cash economy, and most of the cash they do have goes to gasoline for their tractors. Throwing “cash money” at  a risky venture is not the wisest decision.)

Then there is the risk. As the residents of Orto Nura have been quick to point out to me, their village is cold, and has gotten colder. They used to grow lots of wheat here, and I’ve seen the old wheat grinders sitting idle in barns. “The weather broke,” is the simplified explanation I get. Despite the income benefits and health benefits being so high coming from fruit trees, the risks are also high.

After the villager has spent one of his Spring mornings in town buying trees (remember the Kyrgyz axiom: Each Spring day lasts an entire year), he now brings them home to a hostile climate. Already fragile, in the absence of specialized tree growing knowledge, the cold winter is likely to kill these saplings before they ever produce fruit. This makes purchasing a fruit tree such a risky economic decision, people in this village believe that they simply won’t grow.

But that’s where the Trees for the Khirgeez project comes in. First off, with a climate not that different from northern Wisconsin, the professional tree growers have sworn up and down to me that fruit trees, especially apple and apricot, can grow in Orto Nura. We just need to change some of the initial conditions.

First off, we are bringing the saplings in from the Lake a little later in the season, when the ground has had more of a chance to warm up. Next, the cooperative on the Lake will be digging them up the day before they arrive in Orto Nura and then transporting them all the way there, in their own truck, filled with their own top soil: these roots won’t dry out. Next, when we distribute them, we will be teaching the people where best places to plant them are, and how to take care of them during this first, crucial season. The icing on the cake? Thanks to your contributions, we’ve reduced the time and cash input required by the villagers from a morning and three dollars a tree to just twenty five American cents. That’s a pittance, even out here.

So, folks, while the chances that every single tree we get to the people out here will take root is not absolute, we are dramatically changing the economic decisions involved with fruit trees in Orto Nura. But what I’ve explained to you all here, I also need to explain to the residents themselves. Expect some radio silence for at least tomorrow, folks, as I’m heading out to that village again, to go door to door, and explain why this will work, and why the people should, at least, give it a try.

So, in the Trees for the Khirgeez program, we’re paying a premium for our fruit trees. We’re doing this for a number of reasons, and mainly because quality product,  good information and organization out here are scarce commodities, and the NGO we’re working with boasts all of those qualities.

The state of the state out here is that most people don’t have fruit trees. Traditional wisdom has dictated that the climate is just unsuitable. However, I have personally seen homes with thriving trees: apricots, apples, and even cherries. So the question becomes, how come some people can do it, and others can’t?

First I spoke with my homestay family, “where do people normally get their trees?”

“They get them from the forestry department,” my host dad said, “but I just went their with my coworkers, their trees are no good. They’re all dry. You need to buy them earlier.”

This confused me. I had been planting with my host mom in the garden, but she held off our venture, “the ground is too cold,” she had said, “I can feel it.” My friend Rachel and I had gotten similarly rebuffed during our Earth Day subotnik in her village when we tried to plant flowers in front of her school. While people told me that you can plant saplings in Naryn’s cold Spring ground, I imagined this was one of the limiting factors in tree growth.

Next, I headed out to the local forestry service, where folks told me they sell trees. What I found was less than promising. There was a narrow building with nice murals but no one to greet us, and then a large lot with some rows of little trees. We poked around for a bit, wondering what was going on, until a security guard came to shoe us away.

“Who are you?” he shouted from across the lot, “don’t take pictures.”

I greeted him jovially, not wanted to raise suspicion. “My friend and I Peace Corps volunteers, we work helping the villages. We are working with trees right now, and people told us we could buy them here.”

“Here? We don’t sell anything here. Look around, what would we sell?” He made a good point.

“So where can we buy trees from?” we asked.

“There are nurseries, in the villages. Uchkun, Jangy Talap and Eki Naryn. You can go there,” He said.

“And they are selling them now? They aren’t too dry?” I asked, echoing concerns I had heard from Kyrgyz people.

“I don’t know! I don’t sell things, I am security,” and he pulled out his ID, “you can go there, and ask them.” Everything was conducted with a smile, but he was intent on showing us the door.

My host mother, conveniently is from Jangy Talap. So, while I was poking around in the garden that night, I asked her.

“We have a park there, but its not a nursery,” she said.

“Do they sell trees?” I asked.

“Well, they sell raspberry bushes. But they sell those at the Forestry Service in Naryn, too.”

“I was there today,” I said, “they said they don’t sell anything there.”

I had also heard that they were for sale in the bazaar, but that these were no good either.

“The roots aren’t supposed to dry out,” one of my coworkers told me, “but in the bazaar, maybe they were pulled from the ground two weeks ago. Who knows? But they won’t grow.” Needless to say, the gentleman I met who sold saplings in the bazaar disagreed with my coworker’s assessment.

This, folks, is the problem I encounter on a daily basis. Everybody tells me things, but they are never entirely accurate. No matter how much my language improves, there are always little mysteries. Whenever I try to get projects off the ground, whenever I try to start things myself, new information inevitably comes to light. I’m working with the wrong people, the prices are wrong, the season isn’t right.

And that’s why I got so excited with this current project. First of all, it was pioneered by foreigners. That’s a big deal, because it means that somehow, these people already waded through the same language and cultural barrier I live in. Next, I am working with the same person those foreigners are working with. That means he is familiar with us silly little devils. And finally, I’ve double checked all the details over and over. The prices haven’t changed, neither have the requirements. Just as the details were for the other foreigners, so are they proving for me. This folks, is going to happen.

Tune in tomorrow, and I’ll talk about why our price premium isn’t as significant as it seems.