Quick apologies for the slap-dash manner of the last entry. Was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt for not writing in so long and wanted to at least put something.... grammar and punctuation mistakes and all!
-Cara

I have the unfortunate task of trying to write a monumental blog entry without the help of Catherine. The two of us are almost becoming co-dependant on each other! Our writing, our cooking, our fumblings in Russian- all have become enhanced by our combined efforts. We’ve been thinking about how we have become each other’s family out here and what a change it will be when I go back to the U.S. and Cat stays out here… I’m going to miss her so much!!! And I must say that I am quite jealous. I think Central Asia has worked its way into my blood. So much so that I am already plotting ways to come back out here this summer. Another legal internship perhaps? It’s a thought…

Well, it’s another cold, snowy evening in Bishkek. Cat is out with a friend, Boris, a local guy of Ukrainian origin who has a very cute curly mop and is interested in her North Face-sellin’ self… I’m passing the evening as usual at the office, working on a paper for law school, and listening to Russian MTV in the background. I was thinking I ought to write a bit about what our days are like here in Bishkek. We are so busy that we don’t have time to write often, and here’s why….

8:30 Cat has Russian lessons (I used to attend lessons also, but the pressure of getting my law assignments done as well as the internship work has become too much, and I’ve had to let this go- while I tell myself that I will try really hard to study Russian in the evenings). Russian lessons last until 11:30. It is 3 hours of grueling one-on-one combat with a robust and boundlessly energetic Russian woman who seems to be just a little drunk at times…

I go to work at the same time- normally to the Legal Aid Center for the morning. There, I do random tasks helping Altynai with translations or legal issues, drink lots and lots of tea, and hope that there are no explosions that cause the power to go out for hours on end. Sometimes I am left to my own means at the office, when I try to answer the phone in Russian and communicate that the caller needs to call back later.

Cat usually goes home for a shower and a mini-break after Russian lessons and then meets me at the office around 1:00 or 1:30. We normally have a pile of errands to get done- post office, bazaar, tailor, administrative tasks errands for the office, travel agent, etc.

Then around 3:00 or 4:00 we make it out to the main office where the real work starts. We battle our way to a computer and get working on our various projects. For example, Cat just completed a rather involving report on Child Protection Systems in the US, and I am now starting a report on Juvenile Justice issues in the US. We also put in a lot of time preparing a recent publication in English: Monitoring Human Rights in Orphanages and Boarding Schools for Abandoned Children in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Sometimes we make it out of the office by 7:00 or 8:00 pm, but oftentimes not. In fact, Cat has taken to sleeping on the floor at the office lately! (a direct result of this child protection report).

We also have a good circle of friends and a pretty busy social life here. Many evenings are full with dinners and outings with friends. We go out dancing at least once or twice a week on weekends. It’s doubly insane now for Cat now that she has this North Face job on weekends. She gets up at 6:30am to go to work and gets back from the Base around 9:30 or 10:00 pm, and usually meets us straightaway for a night on the town.

My weekends lately have been full with the usual work or some huge projects for the organization. Last weekend I spent the entire time preparing for the organization’s 8th birthday. I made little paper hats for 10 hours!! That was enough artistic creativity for one day…. I thought I never wanted to see a paper hat again. They were smash hits at the party, although I secretly thought we all looked like giant ice cream cones bobbing around on the dance floor.

Well, I am being summoned- business dinner with people from the OSCE. They were out here for a conference yesterday regarding human rights in orphanages. So, this is going on and on, but I still can’t come up with an adequate conclusion…. Desolee!

Written by Cara

Whenever we get back to Bishkek everything returns to the work routine, life slows down, and we no longer have interesting anecdotes to relate in this blog! Winter has definitely come to Kyrgyzstan- we had our first snow this weekend and it is still lingering. The cold has set in, and we are shivering our way to work in the mornings, and trying to avoid the gray mood that can come with the onset of winter.

Cat had her first post office experience yesterday, which was soooo frustrating. Imagine, waiting in a huddle for nearly an hour with approximately 8 other people all trying to shove their way to the front of the counter, eventually never to be served. A pointless waste of time. It reminds me of Morocco when I had to buy my books and ended up waiting in line for 2 hours, even though there were only two people in front of me. One of the things one really grows to appreciate while travelling or living abroad is the American sense of efficiency and service. It's also rather disheartening to think about the fact that if these societies cannot even run a post office efficiently, how are they supposed to develop and run a democracy and capitalist market economy?

Written by Cara

“Tumblings and Ramblings”

So, we left you stranded in a Sanatorium outside of Osh. The seminar, “Teaching Human Rights” for educators ended last Friday, November 7th. It was interesting and we learned many techniques to teach human rights to children and youth. After a night of dancing until the wee hours and saying goodbye to the other participants we piled into a van and were driven back into “civilization”. We stopped briefly at a new marvel, the “Aga Khan” school, where we were astounded by the ornate handiwork and detail of everything from the tiled and patterned wooden floors to windows imprinted with traditional Kyrgyz designs. The fresh scent of wood lingered everywhere.
We moseyed briefly through the bazaar with the girls from the Youth Human Rights Group. Alas, our visit was rapidly cut short because several of the women became lost and the rest of the group waited impatiently. We opted to wander the streets in search of our hotel instead of taking the ride out to the airport and back.
The “Taj Majal” hotel was better than expected, decked out with a TV (with more than one babbling Russian channel) and a rather nice bathroom. Although, we thought we trapped in the North Pole during the night and succumbed to wearing all of our clothes (which incidentally haven’t been removed since, as it is very, very cold). We smartened up the next night and stole the blankets from the proprietress next door (actually, she willingly conceded them).

We’ll save you from more boring details and move on to climbing (actually strolling up) Suleman Mountain (more like a rocky hill) in the middle of the town. Osh actually celebrated its 3000 year anniversary in 2000. Well known historical figures like Alexander the Great are part of Osh’s colorful history. The mountain chill got to us so we went in search of some local art. Cati stopped in a nearby deserted building to leave remnants; the smell emanating from the locally-frequented building drove Cara twenty feet away. There was a side door opening into a dark hallway, and thinking that it was just a typical establishment we entered and peered at drawings lining the walls. We happened upon a man who turned out to be a professor and he gave us a private tour of the gallery and his personal studio.

After much confusion and meandering in the dark in the opposite direction from our hotel we managed to communicate to Mr. Artist that we were staying by the old Demir Bank, not the new one. We passed the night brainstorming ideas of how to “save the world”. It was a nice break from the previous evening of being surrounded by random men in an internet café who kept asking us definitions of words such as “sponge” and “cuddle” in between their heated conversations with internet lovers. The walk home consisted of constant dodging of gangs of prostitutes (it was shocking because these women dressed normally and on first glance were unrecognizable as prostitutes) and vodka soaked men.

Navigating the local transportation seemed daunting, but turned out to be rather fun. We traveled from Osh to Uzgan on a mashrutka and mangled our way through several Russian conversations with fellow passengers. It was overcast all morning and lapping the dirt streets of Uzgan several times in search of the architectural monuments and main bus station made us a fine shade of blue (note the theme of the day, we need to buy more warm clothes ‘cause its frickin freezing).

The red brick mausoleums honoring bygone kings of the 12th century stood determinedly against the pasture and gray sky. They are marvelous testaments to Islamic decoration and architecture. The solemness of the people and weather were tempered by a rather theatrical muddy face plant by Cara. Cat did not come to the rescue as she stood in blatant disbelief of the slow motion tumbling passing before her eyes. A group of youngsters were thoroughly amused by the event and Cara, she took it very well, though she was covered in mud for the rest of the day. Throngs of hard faced men stood in packs along the road (ogling us), and we admitted that it would be a very, very difficult place to be a female Peace Corps worker. After stopping several women and asking directions to the main bus station we wandered into an enclosed area lined with buses and overflowing with head-scarf clad women, and men in long jackets and tall white embroidered felt hats. Different people directed us to different buses supposedly departing for Jalal-abad and at long last a young man approached asking in perfect English, “where are you going?” We followed the other women and climbed on to the bus early to obtain seats and huddled there for several hours while the bus was repaired. The ride passed quickly as we spoke to several young Kyrgyz and Uzbek youths in broken Russian and English. Finally, the broad tree-lined streets (a seeming must for city-planners) of Jalal-abad welcomed us. It is true that there is nothing to do here except eat in cafes and we have taken care of that this evening, eating in three of them. So, we’re moving on tomorrow for the mountains and ancient walnut forests (cat loves walnuts).

Written by Cat and Cara in a dark internet café in Jalal-abad!

Disaster struck. Four times so far- and we thought bad luck only came in threes. It seems that we’ve been cursed this last week… (I have to add that since we wrote this- we’re doing a looong blog update thing by writing during the evenings after a conference- the disasters keeps on multiplying).

It all started on Wednesday night with Cat, deserted in the office, Russian MTV blaring American pop, cramming to finish her project by the impending deadline. An explosion. Shards of glass everywhere. Total darkness. She practically dove under the desk thinking she was the target of some crazy sniper attack. It turned out just to be the induction, “everything goes wrong when you spend you’re first night in the office alone” experience. The exploding light bulb was followed by crashing computers and the disappearance of her document. Many humorous calls were made to Nazgul for help. A sleepless night was followed by semi-conscious Russian lessons. Cara and Cat finally made it home that afternoon barely in time for their rendezvous with Ben and John outside their door (a meeting arranged so that the boys could do their laundry and pick up their pots and pans). The key was put into the lock, but the door refused to open. After attempting to jiggle the lock free with a credit card (as if it is really ever that easy), and even toying with the idea of scaling the walls to enter from the balcony, they called upon Nazgul to get the spare key. A fairly straightforward, albeit rather annoying, solution. Predestination had other plans. A little background: the previous week Cat and Cara had returned home one evening and locked the top lock, as usual. However, try as they might, they were unable to later remove this key from the top lock. In fact every visitor treated the key “as the sword in the stone.” There it remained until this fateful day, when it had somehow gotten twisted when the housekeeper came to clean, jamming the lock shut. Nazgul, (who’s beginning to gain ta reputation as our savior), loaded down with a VCR and our keys, arrived an hour and a half later. But, the stubborn lock still would not budge. We left, beaten, destined to spend the night on the floor of the boys’ living room. This wasn’t much of a hardship though, as we lightened our spirits with a “Sex in the City” video marathon.

The next morning was a frenzy of activity. At long last, a locksmith came and Cara and Cat were able to take showers after a three day hiatus from cleanliness. The afternoon flew by. We packed for the conference in Osh, wandered around Bishkek looking for a bank, ate ice cream in the park and finally ended up at the tailor. Cara’s getting some clothes made from her African fabric: bright yellows, oranges, blues, maroons, with squiggles, zig zags and masks. They’re her to a T. Cara and Cat finally dragged home around 7 pm, just in time, or so they thought to be the Good Samaritans by starting the boys’ laundry and cooking dinner for the girls from the office (a pre-Halloween warm up). Second load done and third to go. Cat’s changing for the evening’s festivities were interrupted by loud shrieks from the kitchen by Cara. “Holy shit! Help! Help! Cat get help, get in here now!” Torrents of black water spewed from the washing machine pipe, flooding the kitchen and snaking across the hallway floor. Cat, naked, raced to help. In transit, the doorbell rang. Nazgul, the first of the guests to arrive for dinner, waited patiently on the other side of the door, unprepared for the chaos that would meet her. She heard screams from the apartment and was greeted by Cat streaking by and a river of soapy black water rushing toward her. “Ah, turn it off, turn it off!” she yelled. Cara hit the “off” button (should have thought of that before) and the waterfall subsided. We scrambled for towels and buckets to mop up the mess, meanwhile bewilderedly staring at the washing machine hose that had spontaneously decided that it had had its day, and busted in about ten places. Unfortunately, the cycle wasn’t finished though, and we couldn’t leave the laundry to mildew. So, we rigged a double bucket system and held the hose just right. Every now and then runaway squirts of water re-soaked the repeatedly mopped floor. The rinsing cycles seemed never ending. At least an hour passed of “quick, change the bucket, change the bucket,” “stop squirting water everywhere,” and never-ending mopping. The other guest witnessed a rather subdued version of the funny predicament. As is Kyrgyz custom, they all arrived suitably late (thank God), merely finding Cara with her pants rolled up to her knees, running back and forth with buckets. Finally, all was clean and the ten of us sat down to enjoy good ‘ole home-cooked spaghetti with cabbage salad. The party laughed about the night’s adventures and headed to the “Metro Bar” for the Halloween celebrations “a la Americaine.” The costumes conjured up pictures of “Animal House” and the walls reverberated with Russian disco music. We weren’t quite into the spirit of the party, not having dressed up (who has time when there are exploding washing machines to worry about?). However, about halfway through the party some face paint came our way and we spiced up our boring outfits with some facial art. Cara painted a huge butterfly on Cat’s face, and soon random people were coming out of the woodwork asking her is she was “the face painter.” Right… anyway, she did her civic duty and painted a few extra faces, free of charge of course. By the way, Cat has gotten the bright idea that we need to take our face painting skills to the streets and start earning some valuable money. It’s an idea….

We departed for Osh at 8:30 on Saturday morning (after about 2 hours of sleep), sigh, believing all was well on the home front, and that our week of disasters was to be replaced by new adventures (of the more welcome sort) in Osh.

Osh is in the south of Kyrgyzstan, a more traditional area of the country. The city represents the Kyrgyzstan that we expected before arriving. The town is full of cafes and a huge bazaar, mosques, and cars driving every which way, ignoring the possibility that there might be any traffic rules. A large hill, or mountain, dominates the center of the city, and is the major landmark by which to orient oneself. Luckily, we arrived on Saturday afternoon but didn’t have any duties until Sunday. So, Cat, Cara, Nazgul, Sveta, and Kahramon (guy from Tajikstan), took a taxi into the city to spend a few hours wandering around- the conference is a bit outside of town at a Sanatorium, so this was one of our few chances to explore the city. Nazgul took us to a “milk café” (where many foods are made from milk products) and we feasted on raspberry pancakes, fried donut-like things with smetana (like sour cream), shashlik (meat on a stick), and palmeni (or however you say it- it’s kind of like ravioli dumplings in a yogurt/smetana sauce). We all agreed that milk cafes are awesome and that we need to learn to cook some of these delights (to add to our small Kyrgyz cooking repertoire, which now consists of: funchoza, umari, manti, and pilaf- not sure how well we can make any of those, but theoretically, we should be able to manage these cooking feats). Nazgul also took us to the bazaar, where we loaded ourselves down with nuts and chocolates to take back to Bishkek, and if we can manage to fit them into our bags, maybe we’ll even bring some back to the States with us- the nuts here are amazingly tasty and cheap.

Since we’re talking about food again (yes, food is an inevitable conversation topic while traveling because a large percentage of a traveler’s time is spent exploring foreign cultures, including the varying cuisines). Right now we have become self-declared vegetarians. At least temporarily. Because two nights ago (Sunday) we all had the lovely opportunity of experiencing food-related illness of the highest order. Actually, Nazgul was the sickest of the sick. Catherine and I listened in horror as she proceeded to vomit out what sounded like all of her internal organs throughout the night. Everything only proceeded to get worse. At about 3am Nazgul was in such pain that we feared she had appendicitis, or an ovarian cyst, or hepatitis, or about anything else we could imagine. Cara ran to get Nadira, who drowsily stumbled down to our room, freaked out by Cara’s frantic mutters in French that Nazgul was very very sick and should go to the hospital. Problem. The sanatorium where we are staying is in an isolated area outside of town and there are no cars. So it took two hours for a doctor from the hospital to make it out here. All the while Nazgul was writhing in pain and we kept imagining worse and worse scenarios. Luckily, it just turned out to be a serious reaction to some rather nasty food. In fact, just a few hours later, Cara had her own bout with the food devil (although not nearly as bad as Nazgul) and Catherine, too, experienced some lingering discomfort from what we have decided must have been some rancid meat. Hence the newly-adopted vegetarianism.

To return to the disaster saga, our laundry adventures did not end with our departure to Osh. Of course not. Being the good and trusting friend that we are, we loaned our keys to our friend so that he could finish his laundry while we were gone. We told him all about the exploding washing machine and the debacle of Friday night. He promised to fix it- i.e. replace the hose- and then complete his laundry. Well, Sunday afternoon Nadira arrived here with a rather grave look on her face….. shit. Turns out that the laundry disaster erupted into a laundry horror story, when, on Saturday night Masha (our boss) received a phone call that our apartment was completely flooded and that water was washing into the apartment below. Ok, we’re still not quite sure what happened, but we most emphatically state that we are not to blame (we were, after all, in Osh) and that we are simply cursed by the laundry gods. Maybe we will forego doing laundry for the rest of this trip….

The good news is that the rest of the week has passed without incident.

Written by Cara and Catherine