Posts Tagged summer

The Difference a Month Makes

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on August 12, 2010

So, we always joke about how little things change around here in quiet little Naryn, but after working so hard to make it your home, the little things become just so important.

While I was cavorting about the Great Middle Kingdom, Naryn was seeing summer and its festivities in full force.

As the lady who runs my banya said, “we Kyrgyz don’t go on vacations. We save our money and have weddings!” In the three weeks I was gone, the big fat sheep came  down from the mountains and fueled countless summer galas: there were two weddings for people I knew directly alone, and the day I got back, my host-family left for Kazakhstan to attend another one. Since being back, the streets have been loud with hooting young men, jutting up through the sunroofs of their fast-moving wedding processions, honking up and down the main drag. This truly is summer in the city.

As well as having missed these weddings, I also missed, perhaps, the greatest concert I could ever have been privy to. See, in Kyrgyzstan, there are primarily two cell phone companies. The once great Mobi was recently purchased by a Russian company, renamed Beeline, and has been making great headway uniting all of Kyrgyzstan in wireless coverage. They were putting their homegrown rivals, MegaCom very much to shame. While I was away, though, MegaCom reasserted their strength.

To coincide with the opening of their new MegaCom branch office in the bazaar (a cool, clean affair spurned on by the six month old Beeline office down the street), they held a bash, a jam: a bona fid Mega-Concert (see what they did there?)

This day-long no-fee extravaganza hosted not one or two, but 10 of the biggest pop-stars that Kyrgyzstan has to offer. It was held outdoors in the Naryn city stadium. Everyone was welcome, and it went long into the night. In between acts, they even brought out a break dancing troupe and a band of comedians. While it may be true that I attended Woodstock ’99 (Thanks Uncle Chuck!), I don’t even think that compares to what this event would have been like (had of course, I attended.)

But all this might lead someone to believe the Kyrgyz Summer is all play and no work; that is hardly the case. Right now, the number one project on my plate is attempting to organize an extensive 6 session workshop series to teach 100 rural woman how to dye their shyrdaks and other felt handicrafts with the natural grass and flowers found all around them. These are skills once known, but lost during the Great Modernizing Soviet times. I one a big grant to do the work, and paired with a number of local groups to get it down, and now, through countless setbacks and frustrations, it looks like things might actually work out for ol’ Kyrgy Carl.

Never fear, once all is said and done, I’ll rain down with pictures and videos to make your proverbial socks roll up and down all your proverbial legs. So, stay tuned.

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Summer and the Final Bell

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on June 1, 2010

So, here in Sunny Naryn, during the winter, I seemed to reference the biting, bone chilling cold every week. These days, I just can’t get enough of the warm weather.

These Kyrgyz folks, so conscious about not getting cold, are walking around in skirts and t-shirts. I hardly even need a jacket to ward of a chill at night. We’re out and about without the armor that kept us warm all winter. The hills have turned green, and the animals have all gone out to pasture. The weather extremes, folks, make this place just all the more real.

The onset of warm weather has also brought another summer steadfast – kanykul­­, or, as we know it so faithfully at home – Summer Vacation. But before they’d let the kids out of their classrooms, we first needed to observe the tradition of akyrky kongoro – the last bell.

This is the ceremony where the old kids graduate, and the everyone celebrates. We were outside in the weather, and there was singing and dancing, and costumes and fun. But that was just at the regular school.

At the music school, where my 14 year old host sister was just finishing up, a recital commenced. There were piano players, a flute player, a kid who sang with an accordian, and lots and lots of komuz players. The komuz is the traditional Kyrgyz guitar type instrument, carved from the wood of the apricot tree. For those of you who saw the Trees for the Kyrgyz final video, you heard it played there, amongst a host of other traditional instruments. In the grand finale of the recital, all of the players plus their teacher got on stage for a powerful strumming string session of bliss.

The last bell, akyrky kongoro, has heralded far more than simply seeing the kids march about the streets in their new found free time. It also means all the happy summer things that I didn’t know I missed are coming back.

First off, kymys, the fermented horse milk that shocked me (and everyone else) on  arrival has started to flow from the mountains. It is much lighter than the cow kymys I’ve been drinking all winter, and carries an almost woody flavor. Nostalgia is a funny thing.

There are also sheep. Lots of sheep are around these days, and the prices are going down. Over the weekend, my host father simply informed me that we’d run out of meat at home, and a koi soi, or sheep slaughter, was in order.

This time around, though, I’ve seen it done, and I’m getting confident. As I have now decided that I would like to slaughter a sheep for my American family when they arrive a month from now, I decided it was time to get my hands dirty.

Now, while they won’t let me slit the throat yet, I am learning to skin the beast with my fist.  This stuff is Peace Corps, through and through.

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Summer Camps for the Children of Tomorrow

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on August 22, 2009

So, summertime in Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan is camp time. Country wide, oblast by oblast, volunteers host a variety of summer-camps for local Kyrgyz school children. They come in different lengths and with different themes.

Currently, we have a “leadership” camp running here in Naryn city, hosted out of a local high school, where 40 kids come from 9 to 5, and do activities ranging from anti-smoking sessions, to dancing in the afternoon, to “English for Fun!” In the mornings, I lead a session on “critical thinking.”

What this means, really, is that for half an hour I encourage the kids to be creative, where they are given problems and every answer is correct. One day, the scenario was, “you have two stools, but three people, what do you do?” One group replied, “we’ll sell the two, and buy three cheaper stools,” another replied, “we’ll play Musical Chairs,” and another, “we’ll all just dance.”

For another situation, I asked the students to explain rather mundane occurrences, like, “the sun is not shining,” in both a realistic, and fantastical way. For this example, one group first replied, “because it is cloudy,” and second, “because the sun is offended.” Needless to say, this has been one of the high points of my work out here.

But along with our 40 students, we also have 10 some odd extra volunteers in town helping us run the camp. For the old volunteers, this means seeing those people who winter makes it so difficult to see, and for us new volunteers, this means meeting the old guard, and seeing how work gets done.

It also means after camp, we all get to hang out together. 10 twenty-somethings in an apartment together, cooking, playing cards, just generally being happy. It all reminds me that I joined the Peace Corps not only to do good work, but also because they work hard to build community among us, the volunteers, and remind you that as hard as it is to live so far away, and for so long, you always have good, familiar people close at hand.

So at 10:30 this evening, after stuffed peppers, whipped-cream pie and more Euchre than a person should play, I came home, ready for anything, and that’s just what I found.

Standing before the single hanging bare-bulb in the garage were three generations of thick Kyrgyz men, staring down the gutted carcasses of 7 cows and horses. The oldest of them was hacking apart a spine with an axe while the youngest was separating the rib cages, and throwing them onto a pile, with one of the hides protecting them from the concrete floor. Some of the carcasses, legs cut off at the knees, we just hanging on hooks on a rack. Like a scene from a horror film, whoever would have imagined that a boy from Chicago, hog butcher to the world, could be so fascinated by a room full of slaughtered cows.

Originally Written July 2nd, 2009

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