Two Stops Past Siberia
- Projects
- Handicrafts
- Books
- A History of Inner Asia, Svat Soucek
- Beyond the Sky and the Earth, Jamie Zeppa
- Chasing the Sea, Tom Bissell
- Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Christopher I. Beckwith
- Erica Marat, The Tulip Revolution: One Year After
- High Adventure in Tibet, David V. Plymire
- Setting the East Ablaze, Peter Hopkirk
- Shadow of the Silk Road, Colin Thubron
- The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, Chingiz Aitmatov
- The Great Arab Conquests, Hugh Kennedy
- The Lost Heart of Asia, Colin Thubron
- This is Not Civilization, Robert Rosenberg
- Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
- Informations
Posts Tagged Peace Corps
Close of Service, and Hi-Ho! Farmer Dan!
Re: 20/20 – Safety and Security, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan
Posted by KyrgyCarl in Bonus Content! on January 15, 2011
First, as a disclaimer, I cannot directly speak to the stories portrayed in the recent 20/20 piece, or the other stories that ABC news has recently promoted, as I have had no personal experience with the people or countries involved. However, as an actively serving volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, I can speak about the safety and security situation here.
First, for context, Kyrgyzstan is a small, post-Soviet nation in the heart of Central Asia. The country, with a population around 5 million and the land area of North Dakota, rests on China’s far western border. It is heavily impoverished but boasts the only parliamentary government in the region. Where on the one hand, Kyrgyzstan has one of the poorest performing economies in the area, it has also been called Central Asia’s “Island of Democracy.”
Democracy, then, being a messy affair, has also led to some trouble here. Most recently, as Google Trends can attest, we have seen civil unrest, a new government, and ethnic violence. In light of these events, thankfully, and worthy of much praise, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan may be considered the opposite of the image 20/20 has recently portrayed:
We didn’t lose a single volunteer, and no volunteer suffered bodily harm. Volunteers were evacuated from their sites when their safety was threatened. Volunteers who witnessed violence were provided professional counseling. Sites that displayed signals that violence might continue were closed permanently.
Furthermore, both long before any hint of nationwide violence was in the air, and since, our safety and security team has aggressively prepared us for emergencies, from the scale of the individual to that of the nation. We have multiple phone numbers to call, from hard power connections with local police to our Peer Support Network. Between the solutions staff provides, and the local support network they have helped me cultivate, I have never once felt seriously threatened.
It is the opinion of this volunteer that the stories presented in the recent news must be given appropriate gravity, however they must also not be taken out of context. Working and living abroad comes with its own unique brand of personal safety concerns. Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, however, having seen more than its fair share of recent violence, gets high marks in my book, the context of this blog act as testament to that.
For anyone with questions or comments, please feel free to post below.
Furthermore, for the official Peace Corps response, go here. And for their official statement on volunteer safety, see the safety section of their website.
Hillary Clinton Loves Peace Corps (But We’ve Still Miles to Go)
Let me get to the meat of it folks, I shook hands with Hillary Clinton. That’s right, I said it. Her hand was soft. None of that, of course, explains the grin captured on my face in this official US Embassy photo, however. I thought I was just smiling sweetly the whole time, but I’ll let you all be the judge of that.
It was a funny little moment, to have such an important visitor come to such a little country. She was fresh from a spell in Kazakhstan, and her time in Bishkek was little more than a layover, as she left not 6 hours after arrival for Tashkent. Between those two countries, however, she was able to meet with the president, shake many of our hands, (“Peace Corps? The rowdy ones!”) and field some interestnig questions at the local university.
“Mrs. Clinton!” Came a shout from the back, “How can we get more Peace Corps volunteers?”
“I love Peace Corps!” She said, “I look into it!” Now we’re all looking in to what that really means.
But as she left Kyrgyzstan’s great capital, so did we, and in Naryn again, it was business as usual. Personally, I found myself in one of the places I love the most, a tiny village, with poor cell phone coverage and hardly two nickles to rub together. I was out monitoring a training, where one local euntrepreneur was teaching village women to make slippers.
“Before I came here,” she told me, “these women couldn’t make more than one variety of slippers, now they can make 12.”
I took pictures and smiled, and even got a pair for myself. And then, I sat back, and appreciated the moment.
The house I was in was covered in traditional art, from rugs to wall hangings. There were only 4 rooms in the place, and only three were heated. The women were working feverishly. The trainer, one of the women who led my natural dyes training, had agreed not only to lead the sessions, but also to comission 100 slippers from her students. Her plan is to sell them at a festival in Germany in January, along with the products of other trainings, and from her own co-op. Fast forward, 6 weeks from now, to the clean and warm and comfortable world these slippers will enter. How will they even remember the tiny corner of our Earth, cold, where so little grows; that place where they came from?
And one of the trainees was as heartfelt as a person can be. “Please,” she said to the trainer, “teach us everything you can. Out here, we have nothing else.”
And from Hillary Clinton, among the most powerful women on Earth, who’s time was so tight that every one of her moves was choreographed by an army of aids, to these women who wanted only to learn how to sew, I had to wonder, really, in the past two days, how far had I come?
Kyrgyzstan Through the Eyes of a Kiwi
I am caught this week spending my time with some very important people from very different areas. Over the weekend, the bigwigs from Bishkek and Washington came in to pay little ol’ Naryn a sunny visit.
Last Saturday night was defined by a fancy dinner involving two people from Washington: the Regional Direction for Eurasia, and a nice man who holds the fairly vague position of “Desk Officer” for our part of the world. The dinner was rounded out by our Country Director, in from Bishkek. We treated them to the local dinnertime hot spot, and they got to know the delightful local custom of employing an off-key karaoke DJ to spice-up the loud, Friday night music.
Then, along with the rising Sunday morning sun, this esteemed crew hopped from one volunteer to the next, viewing our living conditions and working environments. When they got to my house, my family, as always, charmed them to pieces. We had a wonderful breakfast, and my home-stay dad even had the decency to lie on my behalf.
“Yes,” he said, with a wink in my direction, “Carl stays up very late working, and then, like a strong farmer, he rises every morning with the sun.”
But the brass, as always, had a lot to see, and very little time to see it. One minute they were jumping happily around Naryn, and the next they were off to the beautiful Lake Issyk Kul.
In their stead came in the folks from the venerable Kyrgyzstan – New Zealand Rural Fund. For those of you who remember, these are the professional development practitioners who let me tag along with them a bit last year, when I was as green as green could be. This year, they’ve extended me the same courtesy.
The two men I’ve been hanging around with this week are veterans of this kind of exactly the kind of work I’d like to make a career of. They talk about development, about micro-finance, about “giving a hand up, not a hand out.” Finally, with the experience to understand what is going on, they are letting me see what the nuts and bolts of well funded, grass roots development work really entails.
Each day we go to a village where they have, through local staff, organized small scale development programs. Most of these are groups of 5 to 8 people, all nominally organized to accomplish a particular goal. One group might be trying to maximize growing efforts in a new green house; another with goat breeding; another with improved varieties of potatoes. But this is just one portion of the goal. Within each group, members pool a small amount of money each month, and then draw on this money for internal micro-loans. To make sure all of this works well, these Kiwis don’t miss a beat.
I sit and watch as, through a translator, these guys ask the groups how much every individual element of a project costs, from inputs to labor, and the opportunity cost of it all. Afterwards, we have long discussions on the development philosophy behind everything, and how best to help the poorest people in each village. The opportunity is simply profound.
And folks, if all this excitement weren’t enough, from this letter onwards, I will be participating in a 24-hour blogapalooza. That means, once per hour, every hour, for the next day, I will be making a post to my blog. That’s right. For anyone who really wants to know what a day in the life of Kyrgy Carl is like, now is your chance.
Springtime for Bishkek and Kyrgyzstan!
This past week has seen a flurry of activity folks, if for no other reason than my recent trip down to Bishkek, our capital, in the warm Chui Valley. While up in Naryn we’ve endured the ravages of the -30 F cheelde (which has finally chicked) and a powerfully battering of snow, the weather in Bishkek has been considerably less intense. Their winter has been marked by only a little snow, a certain amount of rain, and temperatures that might surprise you. During this trip, while we were still below freezing in Naryn, daytime temps in Bishkek rose to a, granted unseasonably warm, 45 degrees.
Between snow-melt and rain, Bishkek was a grim portent of what spring will be like in Naryn, whenever it finally decides to come. Mud mud mud was the name of the game. Bishkek has plenty more paved roads than in Sunny Naryn, and that bodes poorly for what extremes our mud situation might entail. The high mountains of snow excavated from the neighbor’s driveways and yards leaves me fearful as to how my shoes, socks and pant-cuffs will survive. Thankfully though, that trial is still months away.
I was down in the balmy lowlands for what we call “Culture Committee.” Between myself and a crack-squad of likeminded volunteers, we crafted a book of volunteer stories related to cultural issues and an entire curriculum to be presented to the new batch of volunteers during their training, set to begin in April. We sought to provide a palatable presentation of everything from cultural basics like removing shoes upon entering a house, to more complex, highly emotional issues, like bride kidnapping.
During our meetings, it became clear to me how entirely personal each volunteer’s experience in country can be. We read one submission on the issue of ‘hello.’ This word, one of the most common on the planet, is routinely shouted at volunteers country wide. The article itself was written by a guy in a village who described the practice as overwhelming, often shouted by grown men being intentionally obnoxious.
During discussion of the article, however, it turned out each person in the room had experienced this phenomenon differently. My experience, in the city, was one of children, who seem to be just trying to see if the word they learned in school actually works, and then, lost in their excitement, repeat it ad infinitum. Young women described it coming from teenage boys only once they’d past them, as a weird sexual cut, and the grey haired women amongst us (age being highly respected here) described largely no problems at all.
Alongside work, I spent time with my old host family and other friends, both volunteers and not. I had Chinese food, tasty beer and hot running water. But it was at home, relaxing with my family back in Naryn, that I was truly caught off guard. Upon inspection of a persistent scratching in my luggage, I found a mouse had made a home in an old deodorant tube with my toilet paper rations, and was living quite happily off of my emergency Cliff Bars. As a testament to that company, folks, he sure was hard to catch.
The Vast and Exciting Land of Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan is a vast, exciting and varied country. I spend the vast majority of my time home, in Sunny Naryn, but I’ve just returned for a veritable extravaganza of domestic traveling.
From my jaunt with Tamerlane in Darkon, I headed east to the center of University and tourist life in the northern country. Set on the idyllic shores of Lake Issyk Kul, Karakol surely ranks among the most wonderful towns in the country. It sports 75,000 people, and gaggle of universities. Many Russians (complete with their money and western mentality) never left the place, and that gives it an air much different than Naryn. This air, among other things, includes night clubs, peanut butter and applesauce.
From there it was to the Wisconsin Dells of Kyrgyzstan, Cholpon-Ata. This tourist town on the north shore of the lake, sports high quality hotels, that, in the winter, go for low low prices. This combination led our PDM to offer a strange bit of high luxury. My room, for example, included a Jacuzzi.
After three solid days of socializing, networking and, in tandem with our local counterparts, learning how to design and manage community based projects, on the boot heels of a giant celebratory bon-fire, the vacation was over. While many headed right home, I made my way back to the metropolis of Bishkek.
I was a man on a mission. I had handicraft samples to buy, high INGO officials to meet, and big groups of volunteers to connect with. I started my trip meeting with a supply chain analyst who works at the UNDP. We finished a proposal together for a central web-based marketplace for Kyrgyz cooperatives country wide, and then rolled on over to the Asian Development Bank to present it. Could this be the project that defines my service here? Only time will tell.
From there it was to an underground bar with no name that we PCVs refer to collectively as The Dungeon. It’s a smoky meeting ground for Bohemian youth of all nations, and it brews its own beer. Along with other escapees from the PDM conference, that weekend also included a gathering of PCVs charged with monitoring our safety, namely, those who hold the title, “warden.” With this collection of great minds from all over the country, there was never a dull moment.
And as with all trips away from home, I’m lucky if I can spend some time with friends I’ve made who don’t travel much. This time, it was my homestay family from Ivanovka. I spent just one night with them. They understand me. My 13 year old sister said, “boy, your language hasn’t gotten much better.” And she was right. We spent the rest of our time playing, or talking, explaining things slowly, helping me learn.
I then left in a cheap van through a worsening blizzard surrounded by my best friends in country. When I arrived at home, my family noted my cough and cold and commanded, “eat this lump of garlic. Drink some boiled milk with honey, and then go to bed. We’ll get you healthy in no time.”
Life. Way to go.
Originally Written January 18th, 2010
Cold Friends
So I’m heading out to another Peace Corps Acronym this week, hailed by volunteers as the most valuable of these things, we’re gearing up to be taught Project Design and Management at PDM. This conference will be once again held at the Hot Lake of Dreams, the perpetually unfrozen Lake Issyk Kul. That means travel, and travel on the Peace Corps penny means an excuse to see the country, and visit friends.
This has been my first time out of Sunny Naryn since the winter began, and in the rest of the country, its, different. The main road out of Naryn goes over the Dolan Pass into a region centered around the city of Kochkor (or, Ram). Kochkor is a windy place, and this combined with the surrounding mountains means Kochkor, very much unlike Naryn, was almost barren of snow.
The next stop on the route away from home is Balykchy (Fisherman). Balykchy is a dried up, formerly industrial Soviet city on the south west corner of the Lake. Once prosperous, like an American Rust Belt city, Balykchy has fallen on hard times. Its factories are largely closed, yet it still acts as a transportation hub. Maligned by travelers frequently mistreated by taxi drivers who know their customers have no choice but to come through, and no reason to stay, it exhibits a characteristic particularly reminiscent of home. Balykchy, not cold as Naryn, is nonetheless as windy as Chicago. Biting cold, but nostalgic nonetheless.
My next destination was at the fabled home of my old teacher, Tamerlane, the Hero King. The snow had recently fallen here. Upon arrival, there was no need to call my friend because, as a teacher in town, there isn’t a soul who doesn’t seem to know him, or know where he lives.
I found him hiding in his kitchen, cooking with his wife, watching the two six year olds cavort around like elephants, and his 2 year old take short, choppy steps. Over the next couple of days, we hid inside from the cold, eating, watching nature movies, and talking with his family. Dinner our first night was Kyrgyz dumplings, called monty, made of mutton, fat, onions and potatoes, with a side of pickled garlic and tomatoes. His mother, bedridden, always with something interesting and specific to tell me, was feeling passionate about how Hitler and WWII were terrible, and it was good that we live in peaceful times. Sometimes we’d do chores together, like chopping wood, or stoking his furnace.
And it was one ironic image that I thought would stick with me. My teacher, starting a coal fire, with the torn pages of a book entitled simply “Leninism.” But instead, it was the freshly fallen snow on the road out of town. Thick and unplowed, cars, vans and trucks competing with cows, sheep, and horse drawn wagons for space on the road.
From there, it was off to the Karakol volunteers, and their world of consumer goods, Russian influence, and skiing. Volunteers here do much of what we do in Naryn, though their material life a bit more advanced.
There seems to be nothing happier than visiting good people on cold nights. I wish you all, my friends, this same success.
Originally written Januay 11th, 2010
IST (and Other Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) for Your Enjoyment)
Maybe it was the military that went acronym crazy first, then our government, in its infinite wisdom, followed suit, maybe it was the other way around. Either way, Peace Corps (PC), is now, and perhaps has always been, afflicted with the same disease.
I, a Peace Corps Volunteer, am a PCV. I am in the Sustainable and Organizational Community Development (SOCD) program, and most of my friends Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). During Pre-Service Training (PST), the PCVs who had volunteered to Train us were PCVTs and the Host Country Nationals (HCNs) who Facilitated our Language and Cultural learnings were LCFs. I wrote to you all some time ago from my program (SOCD)’s Advanced Community Development Conference (SOCD ACDC) and in a couple of months will write again from the Project Design and Management (PDM) conference. But today, I’m writing about the recently completed Inter-Service Training (IST).
We volunteers get few opportunities to visit the booming metropolis of Bishkek, and fewer yet to all congregate together, so this is a highly anticipated event. A general phenomenon with Peace Corps worldwide is that, by IST, male volunteers lose ten pounds, and girls pick them up. But as we met together, in the glory of the Issyk Kul hotel, dripping with its Soviet grandeur, these physical changes (if they had occurred at all) couldn’t be farther from our minds.
Instead, we gathered and basked in the pleasure community, the comfort of shared experience. None of us came to Kyrgyzstan knowing what we’d find, and as different as our experiences have been, what we have all shared is very real, and the resulting sense of camaraderie profound.
At IST we had daily trainings on language, safety and security, health awareness, and for my SOCD group, organizational planning. During these sessions, we shared all that we had been learning these past few months. But it was after the mandatory gatherings that the real development happened.
We went out to eat together at fancy Bishkek restaurants, we saw a culturally invigorated performance by a troupe named after the first sound in Kyrgyz music, Kambarkan. We shared pictures and we gathered in each other’s hotel rooms, like dorm rooms in college. The urge to be with each other was tangible, tantalizing. Working and living abroad, I believe, can be a lonely experience. But with the PCV bond, no one needed to be alone.
On the last night of the training, we had a talent show. No one knew it would be happening before we got there, yet two guys had come equipped with guitars. We had singers, joke tellers and improvisers. We played there, on the top floor of that Soviet hotel, just enjoying each other’s company. Everyone had a skill, and everyone was happy to see it. It was, in no way, performance for the performer. It was people wanting to be together, and finding every reason to do so. Somehow, I imagined, if JFK, the father of the Peace Corps, could have seen us engaging, so happily, so simply, in that moment, he’d have given us a wink, and just been proud.
Apples and the Metropolis of Bishkek
To the Fine Folks of America and Beyond!
I’ve just come back from a professional development conference on cross-sector cooperation. To prove it, I’ve a head full of knowledge, and a fancy certificate.
In the spirit of working within different sectors, the conference, help on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul, was given in two language sectors, Russian and English. However, my language here is Kyrgyz. This meant that in order for my counterpart and I to discuss what was going on, we had to listen in either Russian or English, translated from the other, and then discuss it in my broken Kyrgyz.
When you try to identify all that you take for granted in life, how often do you include, “conversing with native speakers of my language” as one of them?
Now, in the spirit of living in Kyrgyzstan, I took this travel opportunity to do all the guesting I could.
Before the conference, I and two other guys from my training group went to visit our old host families. I brought mine some Kymys (the fermented mare’s milk), and a pyramid of bread. It was like visiting a favorite relative. We talked and caught up, but then their lives went on, and they put me to work. One night, dad got home, and told me to go to the shop and keep the 12 year old daughter, Jildiz, safe after dark while he took a banya, and caught up a little later. It was easy and comfortable, just like visiting family should be.
Then I made my way to Bishkek. I had been warned that Kyrgyzstan’s capital is so Russified that Kyrgyz speakers there can be hard to find. To quite the contrary, while at the gigantic Osh Bazaar, bargaining in Kyrgyz, I got an excellent deal on some well faded, heavily creased, “Dolce & Gabana” blue jeans: the height of Kyrgyz Fashion.
Since the conference ended, I’ve spent this last weekend at my former teacher’s house, Tamerlane the Hero-King. When I arrived, he was picking apples in his back yard. With around ten trees, each brimming with fruit, he was busy picking them and preparing them for sale, and I was eager to help. He gave me a ladder, and I twisted the apples one by one, setting them gingerly in my bucket. I watched the branches spring back towards the sun once I’d gathered their load. Our pace wasn’t the most efficient, and didn’t seem ideal for making money, but it sure was fun.
The next day, we found ourselves at an “Apple Festival” at my teacher’s school, filled with local products and happy people. Among other festivities, this place sported a wide ranging cook-off. While vying for tastes of each delight, I learned that if Kyrgyz people can do one thing quickly, its grab food. God bless ’em.
Love Always,
Kyrgy Carl
P.S. As a result of the conference, I know have a project all to myself here in KG, and I’m gonna try to make it work. I know lots of you folks have been asking about pictures, so I’m going to make an new section of the website dedicated to projects. Photos included. Have a gander.
Originally Written Oct. 3rd, 2009
What is Peace Corps? (9_24_09)
Posted by KyrgyCarl in Bonus Content! on October 6, 2009
What is Peace Corps?
Now, I’m only 3 months into my permanent service, and I can only speak for my personal impression of the SOCD program in Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan. I’d be curious to see how my opinion changes over the course of my service, and how it compares to other volunteers in this country and others. That being said:
I feel like Peace Corps is more of a professional organization than anything else. Granted, a really sweet one that pays my bills, but still.
Explanation:
First off, when someone says: “I just got back from Peace Corps,” what do we think that means? This question got me thinking.
See, here at my site, I really have very little interaction with anyone who doesn’t live in town with me (and, no PC staff lives here…). I see my family everyday, my fellow volunteers, and my coworkers. I make connections with other locals, and try to arrange projects and work to do. That’s life, day in, day out.
So, where does “Peace Corps” fit in? Really, it is the social connections, the community they provide with other volunteers, that safety blanket. Everything else is either a convenient bonus or a bureaucratic necessity i.e. Peace Corps wants to know where I sleep every night. Also, there are invitations to various training events, and other newsy type updates: how to prepare for winter, relevant vocabulary and sometimes bureaucratic type issues. And then of course there are the nickels they deposit into my local savings account.
And This Means:
I am a professed “community development worker.” With no skills under my belt, and essentially no money to introduce into the local economy, my doings basically involve getting to know as many people as I can, getting to know this place as best I can, and at some point beginning to help these people improve their quality of life.
Peace Corps doesn’t really seem present there, does it. As far as I can see, Peace Corps is an amazing vehicle to get me into this community, they are my foot-in-the-door. The rest is up to me: do work, be happy, show that Americans are nice people, etc. You can see here, if I had some other way of getting in the door, really, (aside from the convenient little time frame PC imposes, and the clear resume addition it can become) I could do all of this without them.
(That being said, I should aside that being part of Peace Corps does give me the confidence to believe that within my two years, I will get something done. If I were on my own, I imagine I’d have to be pretty haughty to believe that.)
I think, before, I maybe thought that “Peace Corps” would be a more concrete thing. That when people said, “yeah, I did Peace Corps,” that it meant something specific. That, like, there was some box that that statement fit into. But they are just so surprisingly and delightfully hands-off, that I just don’t know what that could be.
Originally written Sept. 24th, 2009
Clustr Map
Kyrgy Carl, Making Waves!
