(Promoted to the front page by Susanhbu.)
I was at my gf’s apt last night. TV-news on in the background while dinner is being prepared – I have just logged on to Booman’s. A next-door neighbor, a woman in her early 60s drops in. The news is pretty much wall-to-wall Terri Schiavo and we all express outrage at the bizarre legal maneuverings of the parents, Congress and the Bush-brothers. Anyway, given that that story pretty much pre-empts everything else I ask my gf and the neighbor if they were aware of the Kyrgyz situation. No and no. So I explain to the best of my ability, and … MORE below [ed. by Susanbhu]
since I am there with the laptop open on the Tribune, I show them Susanhbu’s picture diary and soj’s last two diaries on Kyrgyzstan. I also add a bit to the story since I visited Kyrgyzstan back in 1993 (more on that below) and they both appreciate the update. Nothing on the TV-news though that we observed, which was quite disappointing.
But I also noticed that Susan’s and soj’s diaries received a surprisingly low number of comments. Given Booman’s focus on “World Diaries” I would have expected that the Tribune-membership had many users with the extra interest for such stories. So I was wondering why the response was so comparatively low. Is it because Kyrgyzstan is simply too remote to us? Or do we know so little about the issues there that we hesitate to comment? Should we at least recognize the effort made by the diarist with a one-liner of appreciation or a reco? I’d like to know your opinions on this.
Now to my own experience. My only visit – so far – was in October of 1993, not yet 2 years after independence. Part of the central mountainous regions were struck by a severe earthquake in August 1992. Luckily, the region is sparsely populated, but infrastructure such as public buildings and schools were leveled. The schools did not close, as the kids had schooling in military-type tents during the subsequent winter. The winters in the valleys of the Tien Shah (a side arm of the Himalayas) are severe, with consequent health issues for the pupils. The international community took some interest and a contribution from the Governments of Norway, some add-on funds from Denmark as well as some UN-funding materialized in the spring of 1993 and translated into a project to rebuild two schools in a community in the Toktogul region (capacity for total of 300 pupils in 1st -7th grade). I had just started in a new post when this project landed on my desk. As project manager, I had to do the required contracting to actually deliver the schools – according to quake-resistant specifications. Completion before the new snow of the coming winter (usually mid/late-October).
Fast-forward about 6 months – it’s around 10 October, and my occation to go to Kyrgyzstan is the inauguration of the schools. International involvement was quite limited and the UNDP Res Rep had made it into a big story. At the time there were only a handful of embassies that had opened in Bishkek (I recall Turkey, Germany, Russia, USA and China). The Turkish ambassador had a heart condition and could not go, as the transportation from Bishkek to Toktogul were old USSR military helicopters, non-pressurized and we were flying over the Tien Shah range at close to 20,000 feet. The entourage also included the minister of education and other education officials. A total of some 40 persons boarded the two rotary-wings.
Two hours flight later, we have flown over the Tien Shah – absolutely spectacular views of the sharp peaks and the deep valleys. Barely a sight of human intervention or even existence. We are now over a much wider central mountain valley and soon approach the community where the two schools were built. Again, we are treated to an unusual view. Down from the surrounding hillsides we see hundreds of people on horseback approaching the village where there are already a huge crowd lined up around a field in front of the two schools.
We circle the village once for another view of this spectacle before landing just a mile off from where everyone is congregated. Russian-built limos take us there, where the Governor of Toktogul and the local mayor receive us in front of a very friendly, though somewhat undisciplined crowd which by now must count 3-4,000 of which at least a thousand on horseback. Plaques are uncovered, a quick tour of the facilities (the contractor had done a fantastic job).
Then the local authorities hosted a cultural show in the field in front of the schools. Song and dance numbers, wrestling – including wrestling from/on horseback, tug-of-war – all considered national sports.
The backdrop could not have been more dramatic; crisp, clear mountain air in October, deep blue skies and a few miles away – the 16,000 feet peaks covered in snow. But the fun was not over; a banquet lunch was next on the Governor’s agenda. To take place in several yurts at a different field a few miles away. A total of 10 yurts, each holding 14-15 persons. But there is a new development.
It turns out that the Speaker of the Parliament, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Minister of Defence have arrived unannounced to the village during the show. They were on an unrelated trip to inspect reconstruction efforts in the region.
The Governor quickly grasps this opportunity. The new arrivals are promptly invited for the lunch. There is symbiosis in this – since Kyrgyz TV is actually covering our event the invitation is immediately accepted. Politicians all over the world crave to be associated with a happy story like these schools.
Off we go in limos again. The yurts are arranged by rank (level of VIP-ness). I discreetly stay in the background, but one of the hosts grabs me by the elbow and gently insists that I go to the VIP’est yurt. He had caught on to the fact that I had been the PM for the project, and this, apparently, accorded me sufficient status.
The yurts look unassuming from the outside, but can be richly decorated on the inside. Layers of colorful rugs cover the ground as well as the lower walls. The tablecloths were also colorful, but barely visible due to the countless serving trays full of local foods; horse meat and mutton in many varieties, local fish and fowl. Fruits and pistachios. Lots of local and regional wines and ‘champagne’ (all of reasonable or good quality, we were probably getting the very best). The aperitif was a large mug of fermented mare’s milk, not as bad as many may think and probably what saved us from acute alcohol poisoning as the lunch proceeded. A series of musicians would come, perform and leave as we stuffed ourselves on this incredible buffet. We were 14 guests in the yurt – I was clearly the junior in age as well as rank, the others being the senior government and UN officials and the Ambassadors mentioned above. All male (as am I).
As per tradition, there had to be toasts. In locally destilled vodka (of great quality). Not chilled. Shotglass to be emptied. Starting at the head of the table, the ‘seniors’ all congratulate each other in their respective speeches – all of them have apparently been absolutely essential for the success of the project’s realization. Well, well.
We’re 2 hours and 10 toasts into a 3-hour lunch by now. It’s getting frighteningly close to the end of the table, where I am seated. The gent next to me – the Dep Minister of Defence (who barely speaks English, me zero Russian) – discreetly, but convincingly makes me aware that tradition demand that all of us at the table must give at least one toast. Courage my friend – 10 shots down and 3 to go before your turn (my inner voice being very persuasive). My turn and the hell with it; I get up and proceed to praise the contractor’s team that came in to supervise and the local laborers whether skilled or not, that they hired. How they had worked long hours during hot July and August and pushed on through September to finish a week ahead of contractual schedule in early October. I noticed a slight embarassment initially-no one had yet mentioned anyone that had actually done the work. But the awkwardness soon disappeared and I got a good round of applause at the conclusion.
A few more toasts by the seniors then all – a bit unsteady now – back to the helicopters.
Fast forward to late 1994. The UNDP Res Rep in Bishkek contacts me back in Copenhagen (where I was based at the time). He had been back at the schools for a one-year anniversary celebration. The schools looked as when first opened – no scratches, no grafitti, nothing. Looked unused. The RR inquires what is going on. He is told that the community and the students are extremely proud of the facilities. Schools of such standard do not exist elsewhere in the country. Not only are they in full use. The actually have two full “shifts” of kids (8-1 and 1-6), hence a total of 600 kids benefited including kids from neighboring villages. The RR was so impressed with the care and motivation in this community that he requested help to find funding for A/V equipment, computers and various educational video programming to further improve these schools. I was in the fortunate position to be able to secure such funding and a few weeks later, the school had a small LAN installed as well as A/V facilities.
These remote village schools were now better equipped IT-wise than the university in Bishkek (another project was soon to improve the IT-facilities at the university, but that’s a different story).
I had dug up some old pictures from the trip. Had them converted to jpeg’s and tried to host them on Imageshack (this is the first time I have ever attempted to attach an image). However, Imageshack only accepts up to 1024 KB size, my properties show my images to be in the 4.5-5.0 MB range. I don’t know how to reduce the size. If someone can give me an easy walk-through I’ll give it another try.
Happy Easter to all!
go there and download the program. It will let you reduce your images to a good size. large images are not a good idea for posting anyway because it will choke dialup peasants like me and we will not even be able to read the stories.
Kyrz has unique embroidery. Very simple, very stark.
Let’s see if I can make it work:
These serious horsemen were not shy! They had come down from the mountains – never saw them leave the horseback. They would look intently at anyone with a camera/video, point to themselves and look at the equipment. Once the picture was taken, it was all smiles.
The image is reduced to about 800 KB and should not be too painful for loading. I have the first one hosted at ImageShack, but I don’t understand the code for a link
(I used < img src=”url” > without the spaces at the tags) – where’s the error?
I checked the source and it seems you’re taking the url straight from the browser’s address bar(?) (you used “http://img66.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img66&image=horsemen3rk.png“), which is a php script designed to display a webpage. try right-clicking the image and selecting “copy image source” and then pasting it in the quotes.
ah-ha! The url you need is http://img66.exs.cx/img66/3084/horsemen3rk.png — in the future, just do as I described above — right-click the picture and select “copy image location”.. that’s the url you need for img src. And I like the picture, btw.. those guys look kick-ass!
(everyone else, go see ask’s comment above for the pic description!)
(Du forstaar vel noe norsk, du er islandsk forstaar jeg.)
I’ll upload 2 or 3 more and see if I can get it right.
Ekkert mál! og Norskan mín er ekki góð, en ég get giskað 😉
Hopefully the uploading goes well!
They automatically reduce any image over 1.5 or 2 MB, can’t remember which. You can also further reduce the size by editing the pics in your photobucket album.
But I’ve been having fun learning how to post pictures. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 (I do actually own a “real” Photoshop, but I haven’t run into anything I wanted to do that I couldn’t with PE, so I’m sticking with the “lite” version.) Elements has a command “Save for web” that compresses the file size. I’ve been told that “real” Photoshop doesn’t have this – I’m sure you can do the same thing but it’s probably called something else and takes 15 steps.
I start off by opening the picture in PE, “Duplicate Image” (so as to leave the original as is while I mess around), “Resize” to 2-4 inches width and 120 pixels/in (by trial and error I’ve found this works, size-wise so as not to have an image too wide for a monitor), then “Save for web.”
Go to Photobucket.com and upload it, copy the “Tag” line under the pic and paste into the comment or diary. I find Photobucket easier to work with than ImageShack. And then the most important advice of all – hit that Preview button.
This one started out enormous from my friend Rick’s new I-am-really-serious 8 megapixal camera. He compressed it to 728kb to send it to me via email, by the time I was through with it, it was down to 20kb.
Not to hijack your great diary with a picture of something totally unrelated (that would be James McMurtry) but I wanted to show you that it still looks good even though it’s a small file size.
And again, apologies for the OT post, but I thought maybe someone would find this useful, non-geek to non-geek. I didn’t take your poll, because “Fantastic!” was not an option. And I echo what most everyone else has said about reading, but not commenting unless I think I have a little more to add than “Great diary!”
I think a lot of the time it’s hard to comment on breaking news stories if there isn’t a lot of controversy attached to them – I’m certainly following the Kygrysztan story but don’t know enough to comment, other than I hope it works out for the best. And so far we haven’t had our 800 lb. idiot gorilla (e.g., the Chimp) getting overly involved, so there isn’t a lot to react against. If that makes any sense.
I’d vote “very interesting” or even “extremely interesting,” but you don’t have those options. This is the kind of background information that brings a place to life and gives context for the news stories. So, thank you.
I traveled once in the old Soviet Union, so loved the part about the vodka toasts. 😉
In pix, the people’s faces seemed to me to look – what’s the correct term? – indoeuropean. Like Tibetans, perhaps?
Kyrgyzstan is not far from Samarkand, a main node of the old silk roads. So the population is quite a mix, primarily of Mongol stock, also Turkish and Turkoman minorities.
More recent Russian minority.
Lots of info in Wikipedia
One of my long-time travel wishes, part of a very long list so far only partly realized, has been to travel the Silk Route. However, given current political activity in that part of the world, and that it would likely be quite inhospitable for a woman traveler, it’s not likely I’ll get to do it. So first-hand accounts are doubly valuable.
These days, it’s dicey enough just getting across the country.
You said you traveled the old USSR so you probably know how to look after yourself. Do you (intend to) travel alone?
My youngest sister took the trans-siberian from Moscow to Beijing, then did Tibet and a big chunk of the rest of the far east. She and a girlfriend, both just turned 20 (this was 20 years ago).
here
I’ve been following this kid’s blog for a few days now. He’s a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Kyrgyzstan. In addition to blogging what he’s experiencing, he also links to other Kyrgyzstani blogs (mostly Peace Corps friends of his also in Kyrgyzstan). I highly recommend checking it out.
This one actually seems to be a little more informative — he updates more often and has even more links.
In response to the line in your diary:
“””So I was wondering why the response was so comparatively low.”””
This is my take:
I think a lot of us are on issue overload. There is just no end to the list of problems areas in the world at this time and I have chosen to limit my focus to what I am most interested in and can intectually asborb without going crazy trying to keep all of the facts of all of these situtations in my head.
In addition many times, I just don’t know what to say in response, as a question was not asked and I have no niche with which to frame a comment. One of the things I like best about this site is the diaries are not filled with such “good job” comments, but rather serious, thoughtful and reflective comments.
I don’t post “good job” comments, if I have nothing more to add to the mix than that, and when I going thru diaries that are filled with “good job” or “woo hoo” comments I find it very tedious wading through all of them to get to a comment of merit. I do however give a good rating in the tip jar if there is one for a good piece that I have nothing to add to.
I responded to this comment not because of the issue you raised but because of the question you asked, so thanks for asking.
Your poll doesn’t give your story enough credit. I found it very interesting. I love stories that put a human face on areas of our world I know little to nothing about. I agree with another poster that I do limit myself on topics to be conversant in because of information overload. It’s hard to concentrate on every piece of the puzzle without going mad in the process. Right now my focus is on local issues by necessity. Because of my lack of knowledge on the subject, I’m hesitant to comment on it. But I did read the excellent diaries, as well as yours. I simply had nothing to add to the information presented.
Very interesting tale, ask. Don’t make your poll so self-effacing. I followed the link to FantAsia and read that background on the yurts, too.
because excellent wasn’t a poll option.
Much of soj and s.b.h’s diaries on Kyrgyzistan have been so well done that they didn’t need a comment. Not that I’m shy about fine points of Kyrgyz etymology when appropos.
What I want to know, do any of the new leadership have Chagataid pedigrees 😉
Trying again:
Inside the VIP-yurt. At the head of the table (from left): The UNDP RR, Dep Prime Minister, Speaker of the Parliament and UNDP Regional Director for Europe and the CIS.
I see the memory failed me. The tableclothes are white!
The stage and the entertainment field. Maybe you can see the musical group on the stage.
Thanks for all the help on how to post images.
This quick promotion to the front page was a shock. I had hoped that some of the readers would find the story interesting and mildly entertaining for a Friday evening, but did not expect such great response.
I appreciate the encouraging comments, and find the responses I got the the question very valid. I often share similar sentiments.
I am afraid that I cannot offer any expertise on the political developments. I recall back in 1993 that people were open and optimistic, even as the GDP was in free-fall. The society appeared more open than any of the other ‘stans’ at the time. But my area of work shifted away from the region and I did not keep current with developments there. Hence, so sad and worried when news of protests started to percolate to the surface – a week ago, or so. Seems to be over now, with only minimal bloodshed. But they have a tough road ahead. Hopefully, there are more reporters making their way there now for wider and more reliable coverage.
Fantastic Diary and hope to see more of the same…
Just wanted to add that I believe that the “fermented mare’s milk” is the national drink of the Kyrgyz people. My understanding is that Bishkek, the capital, is also the name for this drink.
Oops, I see that Bishkek is the name of the churn that makes the drink itself. The old name for the city was Frunze so you can see how important it is to the culture that they changed the name of the capital for it.
Either way, your story was great and it’s experiences like those that make traveling abroad worthwhile!
Pax
Aaaah further research tells me that the name of the fermented milk drink is kumis.
Pax
Thanks soj (how should that be pronounced? rhymes on?).
Your diaries were the main reason and source for bringing back those memories and also inspiration to look for additional info. You had it pretty much covered, though…
You’ve probably had breakfast already. Here in the NY-metro area it’s past midnight. Maybe I should rap up soon and check back in the morning.
But there are still several diaries i’d like to read…
Thank you for sharing this story. It helps make the people come alive beautifully.
I actually went to Soj’s blog from here to read all three parts, and then linked to her from my blog.
So I didn’t think to comment over here, but I very much appreciate the coverage of such important news that we don’t get very easily in the US>
I just saw your fantastic entry, ask. Thanks for sharing your inspiring and fascinating story.
Projects such as these are a big part of what the UN is all about, yet Elisabeth Taylor marries more often than the media reports them. I hope you will post more stuff like this!
Continued Happy Easter.