(I’ve been incommunicado for the past few
days on account of the combination of sickness and power outages... But here’s
my story of what happened this past Wednesday. I’ll try to update on the rest
of the week when I feel better.)
We don’t teach classes on Wednesdays, and while I’ve spent the previous two
Wednesdays busily engaged in lesson planning, I decided to actually *do*
something with my mid-week break this time around.
I awoke promptly at 9am, not thanks to my alarm or my brilliant internal clock,
but to the annoying chiming of my doorbell which whines a synthetic Beethoven
at an obnoxious volume. After persistent ringing, I stumbled out of bed and
peered through the peephole to find S., the school’s cleaning lady, with my
freshly laundered clothes. (This is a service we have to pay for, but in my
opinion, it’s well worth the money.) After she left, I managed to convince
myself to go ahead and get dressed. The lure of the internet will do that.
After spending some quality time (not to mention soms) at the internet café, I
decided it was time to bite the bullet and go buy a cell phone. The whole
process was remarkably easy. (Additionally, I got to select my own number from
a list of options. I ended up with 43-64-51 as my last six digits. Some people
might note the significance of these numerical combinations, especially what
with 6+4=10 and all. Yeah, old habits die hard.) It’s good to be vaguely wired
again, even if it’s not via constant internet access.
A new teacher (he’s actually a student here on an internship, and will only be
teaching for one month) arrived on Monday, so we decided to take him out for
lunch to get to know him. We went to Fatboy’s (yes, I go there a lot, ok?) and
hung out there for about an hour or so.
Before we left Fatboy’s, I.T. showed up. She and I decided to make our way to
the Osh Bazaar to see what we could find. The journey there, in and of itself,
is quite an adventure. Transport in the city of Bishkek consists mainly of
marshrutki, or mini-buses. They are somewhere in between a mini-van and a
regular van in size, so they are not very big. Additionally, they don’t seem to
have any capacity limit outside of how many bodies can be crammed inside. When
going to a popular destination – such as the Osh Bazaar – one should be
prepared for conditions that make a tinned sardine’s life seem spacious.
The weather was absolutely frigid, and after wandering about the food section
of the market for a while, we decided to take refuge in the one large,
fancy(ish) indoor part of the bazaar. (For people who’ve been to Vladimir,
Russia that section is like Dobryak was before they remodeled it and made it
all fancy.) While inside, I managed to buy the most awesome woolen felt
slippers ever for myself, as well as a pair of tiny slippers for M&A’s
soon-to-be-baby. The proprietor of the stall where I purchased the slippers
threw in a felt-covered papier-mache yurt for free – probably feeling guilty
that I’d simply accepted his price offers without bargaining. I.T. and I also
spent a long time chatting with a seller in one of the indoor stalls who used
to be a Russian teacher. She invited us to come by on Sunday to meet her
daughter, whom she claims speaks excellent English. I told her I would come,
although as I am currently rather ill, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it.
We left the cozy indoor part of the market
and headed out to the clothing stalls. The people who run these places must be
utterly miserable, spending all day outside in subzero temps with no heat
whatsoever. While I.T. didn’t find what she’d come to the bazaar in search of –
a dull yet warm sweater – I managed to come away with a fabulous green and
yellow prayer rug. I’d love to hang it on my wall, but as my walls are
concrete, I’ve currently got it draped over the side of my wardrobe.
After spending way too much time wandering
about the Osh market in the miserable chill, we decided that what we really
needed was a nice cup of tea to warm us up. We found a café on the bazaar
grounds – indoors and only *slightly* warmer than the great outdoors – and
ordered our tea. The interior of the café was thick with cigarette smoke, and
cold enough that we could see our breath.
I.T. drinks tea.
Only two other tables in the joint were
occupied: one, a man and three women, all exceedingly drunk; the other, a group
of seven Kyrgyz men celebrating the birthday of one of their group.
Inevitably, the men began approaching us,
one at a time to chat. One told us that he owned a nearby restaurant, gave us
its name, and said he hoped we’d stop by. Another, the only young one in the
group, shyly sat down and asked for my phone number (which I gave him – not
sure if I’ll regret that or not). He told us that he lives in Almaty, in
Kazakhstan, but that he often travels to Bishkek to work in the market. Then he
returned to his friends.
When I’d taken my camera out to snap the photo of I.T. drinking her tea, the
group asked me to take their picture as well. One of the members of the group said
he was a photographer (as in for a living), but didn’t have a digital camera.
After I took their picture, he asked if he could take the memory card to print
out the picture, promising to return in ten minutes or less. You know how I
covet my electronic goods, and I was not too thrilled by the prospect of
lending some strange man my memory card, but he was persuasive... not to
mention that his friends seemed very much to want him to return with photos. He
returned with copies of the photo for all of the men, into which for some
reason he had photoshopped the Taj Mahal into the background! And, of course,
he returned the card to me.
I.T. and I were just beginning to contemplate getting on our merry way, when
the waitress arrived at our table with three cups of coffee. At first we were
quite confused, but then one of the men came over, said they were from him, and
asked to join us. This was another creepy-old-dude of the mouth-of-gold-teeth
variety. However, the warmth from our tea had worn off and the café was cold,
so the coffee was welcome, even if the companionship was rather suspect. The
photographer soon joined us. While Gold Teeth pumped I.T. for information on
how she managed to get from Norway to Kyrgyzstan, the photographer quizzed me
about my camera, then offered to buy it. When I turned him down, he asked if he
could just borrow it, because it was so much nicer than his. Again, I turned
him down, although I doubt he had expected me to agree. Besides, I totally
understand camera envy.
Then Gold Teeth suggested cognac. Now, I
am fully aware that cognac is pretty much an open door to drunken catastrophe,
but for some reason (mainly because he went to great length to express to us
the purity and quality of Bishkek Cognac) we agreed to one shot, stressing that
by one shot we meant just that: ONE. And of course, instead of bringing us each
one shot, the waitress brought out an entire bottle. We insisted again that we
would only have one shot, and they didn’t press us. However, after our first
shot, Gold Teeth made a nearly successful attempt to kiss I.T., although she
quite forcefully pushed him away just in time. He didn’t seem too offended,
although he did try to defend himself by claiming a kiss after a first shot is
Kyrgyz tradition. Um, bullshit. At that point, we decided it was probably time
to leave, and despite their attempts to bribe us into sticking around with more
shots of cognac, we refused and ventured back out into the cold.
By this time, the sun had set and it was definitely well below 0F (and I mean
0F, which is -17C) outside. Just walking from the café to the nearest place to
find a marshrutka van left us cold to the point of pain in our extremities. The
marshrutka we took back to the city center was not crowded in the least.
Unfortunately, the ones I needed to cart me from the center back to my
apartment were all packed to the gills. I squished into one, but only made it
about halfway home before desperately needing to get back my personal space and
tumbling back out into the freezing night air.
When I finally approached my block, I noticed something eerily familiar:
darkness. Yep, the power in my block was out again. Luckily, after Monday’s
adventure, I managed to locate my superfabulous LED headlamp, so the next three
and a half hours I spent at home were not spent in darkness. Additionally, the
state-provided heat and hot water was not out, so my apartment was dark, but
not cold – which was excellent, as I was in desperate need of a thaw. The power
surged back into life at around 10:15, only to blink off a mere 45 minutes
later. Sigh. But I’ll write more about out frequent power outages when I’m
feeling a little better.
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