KYRGYZSTAN ~ Lost on the Silk Road (Sept 11, 2011)

Temporary Duty in Kyrgyz Republic. Gorgeous country. Two elections. Eclectic cafes & ethnic riots.

Alatoo Mt. switchbacks, Kygyz Republic

Suddenly, I’m no longer in Turkmenistan.  As surprising as it was to find myself in that country where I’d never had intention or curiosity to go, it’s even more surprising to find myself further off-track.

Career out of control

When I decided to do a late-in-life career change, from international education to international development, I pictured myself teaching small children and young mothers in a refugee camp in eastern Africa.  Now, five years later, I find myself in Kyrgyzstan, a poor, landlocked country with an amazing energy to become all things modern and prosperous.  The range of snow-capped Tien Shen Mountains overlooks the bustling capital Bishkek, and glaciers, high altitude lakes, and some of the world’s best treks beckon to us who are living down in the valleys.

As for my career, I feel it’s taken off without me, a bus careening down a mountainside with no one in the driver’s seat, me hanging on to a back bumper, a bit bruised.  Or perhaps I caught Nomadic Fever:  I’m now in a land where there are still people living in yurts, slowly herding goats and sheep across mountain passes in search of grasslands. 

Roadside rest stop yurt, Too Ashoo

What happened to Turkmenistan?  Poor Turkmenistan!  The government wrote us a note last spring, suggesting we NOT bring our planned intake of 25 Volunteers, and instead bring only 10 the following year.  Is this diplomatic language for “Yankee, go home?”  Any organization must make radical changes to downsize.  Our wonderful staff, which I had immediately liked and admired, with hundreds of cumulative years of experience and commitment to Peace Corps, was suddenly despairing of lay-offs, worrying about their children bound for university or their handicapped children needing  special care.  Volunteers were disappointed about new friends they’d imagined soon to arrive.  It was as if Peace Corps had promised them these friends.  It was a summer of discontent. We appealed the government’s decision;  many Volunteers grew glum and dissatisfied;  staff drew upon their deep stoicism, a gift of Soviet times.

Finally, after three months of complete silence, the appropriate ministry responded to our appeal, re-stating the same suggestion to downsize.  I was the first fatality.  HQ suggested I might help out neighboring Peace Corps Kyrgyz Republic, which has 90 Volunteers, substituting for a staff person in my same position who’d had to take a medical leave.  Off I went  – no time to pack.  All my possessions remain in my Ashgabat apartment.  Continue to use that address for mail, for now.  My ticket says I’ll be back there on November 2, 2011.

Emerging from my Turkmen cocoon

Ashgabat’s linear white marble buildings

In the developing world and southern hemisphere, it seems all flights arrive and depart at either midnight or 4 am in the morning.  The luxury of going to the airport in the DAYtime apparently belongs to rich countries.  I lugged two suitcases to the small airport in Ashgabat at four am, ready for a grueling travel day via Istanbul, Turkey (which is like flying from Philadelphia to New York via Los Angeles).  Seeing Istanbul from the air made it all worthwhile.  Istanbul must certainly be one of the world’s spectacular cities.  It sprawls over two continents, mosque spires poke up everywhere, the sparkling Bosphorus Strait and Marmara Sea are peppered with hundreds of fishing boats and imposing luxury cruise liners heading north to the Black Sea or south to the Mediterranean Sea.

I hadn’t realized how insular I’d become in Ashgabat.  It was as if I was hunkered down.  Long traffic delays, trying to get to work while the President’s entourage closed all streets, had become normal. Living in a desert city filled with fountains and gleaming white marble buildings had become normal.  Seeing people on the streets, who don’t seem to smile at strangers, in low-key conversations about family (I imagined), had become normal.  Living in the world’s cleanest city, where masked women swept streets 24 hours a day, had become normal.  A certain careful, choreographed, energy-less-ness had become normal.

Suddenly I am back “outside”, where streets are dirty, people are laughing in outdoor cafes or jogging on the streets.  A certain president’s picture no longer hangs in every room and store.  Architecture is jumbled, cities unplanned, and there is no white marble in sight.

Bishkek ~ eclectic cafés and ethnic riots

Kyrgyzstan orange, Turkmenistan red.  Map from www.lib.utexas.edu

I arrived in Bishkek at 2 am, met at another small airport by a guard named Bucket, and my new Country Director sleeping in the back of the car.  A few hours later, in the light of day, I went to my new office, a beautiful old building on a tree-lined street.  Bishkek calls itself, “City of Trees.”  A marvelous garden, full of blooming flowers, reassured me that all would be well.  At an afternoon staff meeting, the gardener Luba (whose name means “love” in Russian) showed staff her slides from a trip to Poland, a life’s dream, to attend a landscaping conference.  Back in the world where people can travel, where new ideas are sought, where foreigners are welcome!

Kyrgyzstan is a “stan” so differences and similarities abound.  It’s more “Russian” than Turkmenistan;  the foods (sashlik and monty and samsa – which you know as kebabs and pot-stickers and samosas) are similar.  The bread is still white.  Plov (rice pilof) is still daily fare. Unlike Ashgabat city but like Turkmen villages, the roads have huge pot-holes and the sidewalks are so bumpy that I switched immediately to my Nikes for my walk to work, so as not to wear out my office shoes.  Like Turkmenistan, public transport is impressive, if crowded – buses, trolleys, little vans called marshrutkas.  Unlike Turkmenistan, women are dressed in modern fashions, and body shapes tend toward dumpy, ankles thick, complexions ruddy.  Gone the lovely olive skin, svelte figures and high, handsome cheekbones.

Blue roofs in Osh were rebuilt after riots

The most recent group of Peace Corps Volunteers arrived in June 2011 and are already half-fluent in either the Kyrgyz language, similar to Turkmen, or Russian.  As for my faltering Turkmen, people can understand me, but I cannot understand them.  When I speak they smile, needing to figure out every word  - both its dialect form and my pronunciation and haphazard grammar.  It’s disconcerting to find 100% of signage and print in the Cyrillic alphabet, something I’ll have to learn quickly.

Just a year ago, there was a resurgence of ethnic riots between Kyrgyz and Uzbek people in the South, inspired by dissatisfaction over elections. 400-700 people were killed, mostly Uzbek;  400,000 Uzbeks fled across the border to Uzbekistan.  Peace Corps Volunteers living in two southern provinces were evacuated, and all gathered up at Manas Air Force Base.  (While its presence here is controversial, the base contributes $100 million annually to the economy.  It is a key transit center for supplies and personnel enroute to and from Afghanistan.)

Another Presidential election is scheduled for October 30, 2011, the current woman president being just temporary.  Candidates from 90 parties have registered, some listing occupation as “Unemployed.” It’s predicted that things will go more smoothly, but there’s trepidation.  And it’s one reason I was sent here to sub for two months.

Old man wearing traditional tolpak, Chaek Apple Fest 2011

Kyrgyzstan, the size of South Dakota, with 7 million people, borders China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.  It is a spectacularly beautiful country, and community-based tourism is flourishing, as backpackers discover trekking, hang-gliding, horseback riding and white water rafting in the mountains.  It is the “stan” most open to outsiders and business ventures, and my plane was fully packed with multi-nationals, coming for university, business, and a pulmonary heart convention.  Unlike our Peace Corps Volunteers in Turkmenistan, Volunteers here start public radio stations, micro-businesses, do summer camps of every variety, and have abundant mini-funds to bring resources to their mountain villages.

Sad to leave Turkmenistan

I had complained about Turkmenistan, but I was truly sad to leave suddenly.  In my short 8 months, I’d made friends in the international community, hosted many gatherings in my luxury apartment, and had come to deeply admire our Peace Corps staff of 30.  I’d studied the Turkmen language from Day 1, learned to shop and bargain at the outdoor bazaars, and as the city’s only woman bicyclist, had sped amidst jostling cars and frowning police. Seeing Volunteers, mostly in their 20’s, struggle and succeed in a repressive culture made me reflect yet again on what it means to be American – resourceful, creative, fun and funny, uncompromising about human rights, impatient with corruption.  Meeting Turkmen helped me understand what it means to be a citizen in an emerging nation, actively defining itself, casting off a Soviet past, determined to become a 21^st century player, though sometimes short-cutting or not understanding the global tete-á-tete needed (transparency, human rights, open 
borders, free press). 
 

These are mere first impressions, from a couple days of transitions.

(Above) Kyrgyzstan’s flag symbolizes the top crossbars of a yurt and the 40 tribes of ancient days.

Pronunciation:

KEER – giss – stan (Kyrgyzstan)

KEER – giss (Kyrgyz Republic, Kyrgyz people, Kyrgyz language)

Sent as Public Letter 5 on September 11, 2012 to friends and family.