Not at my best in Bishkek, Part 1

June 17, 2013

I had to go to Bishkek this past weekend to collect my passport with its extended visa from The London School. On the previous weekend I had told Rakhat and Altynbek my plans to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Bishkek and I had asked them how I could get from Toguz Bulak to Bishkek. I was told that there would be plenty of marshrutki and that as such it wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t know about “plenty” as I’ve only ever seen one or two marshrutki in Toguz Bulak, but I was reassured that they didn’t seem to think that it would be difficult for me to find transport.

I really began to look forward to my trip to Bishkek. I began fantasizing about Fatboy’s and Cyclone and Georgian food and rabbit, and basically anything that I might be able to eat which didn’t contain sheep. I had other plans too, including getting the long lens on my camera fixed, buying a new Coolpix to replace the one I’d ruined (the purpose of the Coolpix was to take video for my grad school independent study project since my DSLR doesn’t take video; I’d ruined it a week prior by accidentally dumping a bottle of Coke onto it and needed to get a new one), meeting up with various people, buying maxipads and tampons (yes, I was still bleeding at this point) as well as some new underwear, and taking a minimum of three long, hot showers.

But this is Kyrgyzstan, and I should know by now that there’s not much point in making concrete plans. Kyrgyzstan sees your plans, and raises you a laugh in the face.

On Wednesday, Rakhat told me that the entire family had decided that they, too, would go to Bishkek as most of Altynbek’s relatives (and a couple of Rakhat’s) live there… and they’d bring a sheep with them to slaughter. And of course I must attend the sheep slaughtering festivities because all of Altynbek’s family members were so looking forward to meeting me. My dreams of a sheep-free weekend went down in a boiling pot of mutton. They didn’t understand why I wanted to stay in a hostel, when I could just stay with them at the home of one of Altynbek’s relatives… my dream of a sheep-free weekend had already died, but I was not letting go of my dream of hot showers and sit-down toilets. I told them that I had already reserved my bed at the hostel and that I therefore had to stay there. Not really a logical argument, but I stuck to it. (I’m glad I did, as the relatives’ homes that I visited were on the outskirts of the city and did not have running water or sit down toilets.)

I asked them what time we’d be leaving on Friday morning. This was important as I needed to be at The London School no later than 6pm to pick up my passport, and the drive from Toguz-Bulak to Bishkek takes a minimum of three and a half hours. I was told that we’d be leaving around 10am, as Rakhat had some things she needed to do at the school in the morning. I’d have preferred to be on the road earlier, but leaving at 10am would still give me plenty of time to pick up my passport and knock some items off of my to-do list.

Friday morning I was up, dressed, packed, and ready to go by 8:30am. Over breakfast, Rakhat asked me if I was going to the school. Why would I be going to the school? It was Friday, and I don’t teach classes on Fridays. It turned out that this Friday was a ten year school reunion at the Myrzamambetov School, and all of the teachers (including me and Rakhat) were expected to attend. “But we’re going to Bishkek!” I was suddenly feeling a bit panicked, envisioning a combination of drunken American high school reunions and six hour long Kyrgyz feasts. “Oh, don’t worry,” I was told, “It will only take a couple of hours, then we can leave.” A couple of hours? Seriously? Arrrrgh. We didn’t leave Toguz Bulak until nearly 1pm, at which point I was feeling thoroughly stressed about whether or not I’d get to The London School before 6pm.

(As an aside, the ten year reunion involved the former students reuniting not only with each other, but with their former teachers as well. They also got to meet the new teachers, hired since their graduation, and quite a few of the current students who had turned out for the event. They took a tour of the school, watched a short video about the school, and listened to a speech by the director. This was apparently followed by dining and dancing, but luckily we left at that point, as we very much needed to get on the road.)

The road into Toguz Bulak from the main road along the southern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul into the village is being paved, and as such it is closed. Or perhaps I should write “closed.” It’s the only way in and out of this part of the valley other than a very lengthy detour. As such, no one heading in or out is bothering with the detour; they’re just off-roading alongside the roadwork instead.

Rakhat, Altynbek, the three kids and I loaded into the car – a twenty or so year old four-door Audi, the trunk of which was packed to the brim with everything we might possibly need in Bishkek, including satchels full of the boorsook we made the other day and a live sheep. The poor thing bleated from the trunk all the way to Bishkek. It was cold and rainy when we squished ourselves into the car, so they cranked up the heat before we began our off-roading adventure to reach the main road. Now those of you who suffer from motion sickness should already be cringing: cramped quarters, no ventilation, heat, and a bouncy, winding road? That’s a sure recipe for motion sickness right there. Now, I’d taken my homeopathic motion sickness meds (I can’t take even the “non-drowsy” Dramamine as it knocks me out cold for a good 8 hours if not longer) so I didn’t vomit, although I did develop that nasty dizzy feeling that accompanies motion sickness. As such, I did not feel too great by the time we reached the main road. Combine that with three more hours squished into the hot, unventilated back seat with a screaming toddler while stressing about whether or not I’d make it to The London School in time to pick up my passport and you have the prefect recipe for a migraine. Yay.

We arrived in Bishkek around 3:30pm, but instead of going to the hostel to drop me off, our first destination was the home of one of Altynbek’s brothers who lives in the north-eastern part of Bishkek, over by Dordoi (in fact, his wife works at Dordoi). For those of you who don’t know the geography of Bishkek, let’s just say that this is a long way from The London School. I mentioned that I really needed to get to The London School soon and was told, “It’s ok; you’ll have plenty of time. We’re just stopping for tea; this’ll only take about an hour.” My headache cranked up a couple more notches. It wasn’t yet a migraine, but I was pretty certain that it was heading in that direction. After “tea” (which was, of course, a full meal) I was finally delivered to my hostel, where I arrived at 5:30pm.

I popped two Excedrin and called The London School to explain that I’d only just gotten into Bishkek and that I was on my way to get my passport. The person whom I was meeting agreed to wait for me. I ran down to Sovietskaya and caught a taxi.

“What? You haven’t left for the village yet?” asked the taxi driver. Yes, I had been driven to The London School by this very taxi driver before, and had talked to him about what I was doing in Kyrgyzstan. I explained to him that I had been out in the village for a month and was just in town for the weekend. The previous time I’d ridden with this fellow, he’d seemed the friendly, avuncular type (although as I’m sure my mother would point out, he is now in my ‘datable age bracket’), but this time I got the standard ‘Are you married?’ question. I answered with “No, but I have a boyfriend back in the US” – and the response? “Well he’s there and you’re here… we should get to know each other a little better.” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Really? I haven’t showered in a week, I’ve been in a hot car all afternoon, and I’m all squinty from my headache and you’re hitting on me? After I tell you I have a boyfriend? I was so not in the mood for this at all.

By the time I got to The London School, the migraine and the Excedrin were doing full battle, and the Excedrin was losing. I reclaimed my passport and tried to have a sensible chat with the folks there (although I’m sure I failed). Then I went to the grocery store in the VEFA Center in order to purchase some juice, a coke, maxipads, and soft toilet paper. I sat in the courtyard at VEFA drinking my coke and swallowing two more Excedrin in the hopes that my headache might go away. It didn’t, but for a while the Excedrin had the upper hand in the battle.

I took a taxi back into the center. When this fellow asked me if I was married, I answered yes. “Oh, how many children do you have?” “None.” “Why not?” “I don’t want any children.” “What? A woman who doesn’t have children isn’t a real woman, and a wife who doesn’t give birth isn’t a real wife. If a wife doesn’t immediately become pregnant, a Kyrgyz man will divorce her.” I was not in the mood for this either.

My next stop was TSUM in order to buy a replacement Coolpix. I told the guys at one of the camera-kiosks that I needed the cheapest camera they had that could take video – and they sold me the exact same model of Coolpix that I had ruined the week before, only in pink.

I then wandered along Kievskaya, looking for a place known as Dom Byta that I’d been told would probably be able to repair my DSLR's long lens. At that point it was after 8pm on a Friday, and I didn’t expect Dom Byta to be open, I just wanted to locate it and discern what time it might open the following morning. I knew roughly where it was, but I couldn’t locate it – and my attempts at doing so were hampered by the fact that I was in full migraine-aura mode. The Excedrin was still keeping most of the pain at bay, but I was having a fairly difficult time seeing straight.

I gave up on my quest for Dom Byta and stumbled over to Fatboy’s for some non-sheep dinner (which I admit I did not enjoy given how I felt). I then made my way back to the hostel where I took a long, hot shower (which alas, I also did not enjoy) before collapsing onto my bed, taking one of my three remaining Imitrex, and promptly passing out.

Boiled Sheep’s Head and Boorsook

June 13, 2013

It’s unfortunate that I felt ill yesterday evening instead of today. It would have been nice to have an excuse to stay in bed all day, but I awoke feeling fine. The weather, however, was anything but, as it continued to deposit tons of frigid rain on the village. The ability to stay in bed all day wouldn’t have been the only perk of being ill today. In mid-afternoon, I had the following conversation with Rakhat:

“Do you remember the sheep we killed the other day?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Right now we’re boiling its head. We’ll eat it for dinner tonight.”

Why was it yesterday that I was ill and unable to eat?

In addition to spending the afternoon boiling a sheep’s head, the family spent a good chunk of time making an insane amount of boorsook. The entire family worked together in an efficient assembly-line fashion: 

Rakhat rolled and sliced the dough, Nursultan and Nuraika shuttled the sliced dough into the next room, and Altynbek fried it. The thin pieces of dough take only about 10-15 seconds to cook.

At one point, while rolling the dough, Rakhat said, “Annie, go pose there and act like you’re rolling the dough. You can tell your friends you made boorsook!” My response was that no one who knows me would believe that, to which she agreed that I was probably right.

Look guys, I'm making boorsook! Haha, nothing is ever staged.
The finished product
Nurel snacks on fresh boorsook
In the evening, when it was time for dinner, the plate came out with the whole boiled head as well as the boiled feet and spine and various other boiled bones. I was given a chunk of spine, which did have some tasty meat attached to it. Altynbek – as the oldest and the head of the household – got the job of dismantling the head, as well as his pick of its meat, although he did offer various pieces around. I ate some tongue, which wasn’t bad, although I found eating taste-buds to be horribly disconcerting. Nuraika got the soft-palate, as apparently daughters are supposed to eat the soft palate (although I was not clear on the reason for this). I was offered (but declined) and ear and half an eye. Apparently a boiled eye is quite similar in nature to a hard-boiled egg. Imagine scooping out the “yolk” (the iris and pupil) and eating just the “whites” and that’s essentially how you eat a boiled sheep’s eye. The feet weren’t touched; they went back into the pot at the end of the meal, and I suspect we’ll be seeing them again.

In which a sheep is slaughtered “in my honor”

June 10, 2013

WARNING: This post contains graphic images of a sheep being slaughtered.

Altynbek was gone most of the day yesterday at some sort of political meeting two villages west of here. He returned around 6pm, at which point I was told that they would be slaughtering a sheep “in my honor.” Now I don’t know how often they slaughter sheep in this family, but given that we consume sheep two to three meals a day, this surely is a frequent occurrence. I suspect that the “in my honor” thing is just their way of being polite. Of course, other than when we slaughtered a sheep in honor of the birth of Jumabek’s granddaughter, I haven’t witnessed the slaughtering of any sheep, so who knows. Of course, I definitely had mixed feelings about being told that this particular sheep was being slaughtered specifically for me (whether that was the entire truth or not). I mean, I’m not a vegetarian, and I have been eating sheep essentially every day for the past month. And just a few days ago I watched the slaughter of one of Jumabek’s sheep without flinching… but being told that an animal is being killed specifically for you is rather disconcerting.

Altynbek led the sheep out of its enclosure and over to the area in the courtyard next to the yurt. He tied its feet together and then we stood in a row facing west to pray ‘omin.’ I silently prayed to the sheep: “Dear sheep, I’m sorry. I thank you for your sacrifice. I will try to enjoy eating you.” It’s somewhat disconcerting to watch how rapidly something goes from being alive to being… not. It’s something that – unless you’re a hunter or a farmer – most people back home rarely think about.

The slaughtering and butchering process followed the exact same pattern as it had the previous time at Jumabek’s. This time I observed the whole slaughtering and butchering process from a much closer vantage point. It occurred to me that kids out here have a much better grasp of anatomy than kids back home. I remember in 10th grade when we dissected fetal pigs and struggled to locate the various internal organs. In contrast, kids here learn from a very young age how to locate and identify all of the various internal organs. And unlike me and my 10th grade companions, they do it without flinching.

After the sheep was slaughtered and butchered we went into the big external kitchen located behind the house. It’s been there since the original house (not the new, two-story house they currently live in, but the older one next to it) was built. It is the place where all of the cooking is done. The “kitchen” inside the new house is a fairly sterile place with a hotplate and an electric tea kettle – no stove or running water. The real cooking is done out in the external kitchen, which contains several wood-burning stoves, and a large wooden table. (Underneath the wooden table is a ladder descending into a large, underground root-cellar.) It also had what appeared to be an inflated and dried large intestine hanging from the ceiling.

First Altynbek lit the fire – filling the place with smoke – then he placed the portions of the sheep that we were going to consume in a vat above the fire where they began to boil. The remaining cuts of meat and various internal organs were brought inside and spread out on the large wooden table.

Rakhat began chopping the liver and several other unidentifiable (at least to me) internal organs, which she then mixed with rice, salt, pepper, and a smidgeon of flour. She then took the dried large intestine (yes, that’s what it was) down from the ceiling. Apparently the large intestine is soaked in brine for a week or two, then blown up and hung up to dry. This one was from the last sheep that they had slaughtered. The large intestine from “my” sheep was then placed in brine to soak. The dried intestine was rehydrated in water, and then filled with the rice-liver-innards mixture and tied shut. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is how you make sausage (or as Altynbek put it, “Kyrgyz Kielbasa”). The sausages, as well as the braided small intestines, were then thrown into the vat with the meat that was already cooking.

Now that the weather has warmed up, all of the eating and tea drinking takes place in the yurt in the courtyard. I was told that the meat needed two hours to cook, so I brought my kindle into the yurt and curled up on a chair. (They’ve rigged a light from the tunduk – the opening at the top-center of the yurt – so it isn’t dark inside.) While I was inside reading, a man arrived. This is nothing new; guests pop in unexpectedly all the time. This guy, however, was actually expected.

He and Altynbek sat and chatted in Kyrgyz for some time before Altynbek went off to deal with sheep-cooking issues, at which point this fellow started talking to me. It turned out that he was the district prosecutor, as well as a distant cousin of Altynbek. They’d seen each other at whatever the regional meeting was where Altynbek had spent the bulk of his day, and Altynbek had invited him over to partake in the freshly killed sheep.

The prosecutor, whose name I promptly forgot, was an interesting fellow. He had spent some time in Cuba back in the day, and spoke basic Spanish, roughly on par with mine. We traded a few phrases back and forth in Spanish, then switched back to Russian. He had spent time in both St. Petersburg and Vladimir in Russia (both places where I have lived), so we discussed both cities, and what life was like there, and how that contrasted to life in both Kyrgyzstan and the US. We also talked about some of the more current problems throughout European Russia, such as the racism against Central Asian minorities. He was a tad nostalgic for the former Soviet Union. He wasn’t one of those who glorified the FSU with memories beginning with ‘когда был Советский Союз…” but he did say that before the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone seemed to get along: Muscovites and Central Asians, Kyrgyz and Uzbek, etc., and he could travel throughout the Soviet Union without fear of racism, unlike today. He also said that while the transfer from communism to capitalism was extremely difficult for Kyrgyzstan, things were finally starting to get better.

At this point, the food – and the booze – was brought out. Booze. Goddamn. Rakhat and Altynbek don’t drink, meaning that this bottle was destined for me and the prosecutor. Luckily he was a bit of a lightweight; he had trouble keeping his eyes open after three shots, and by the fourth he looked as though he might pass out right there at the table. At that point, Rakhat put the bottle away. For people who don’t drink, Rakhat and Altynbek seem to take a lot of joy in getting other people intoxicated! Luckily four shots amounted to less than half of what I’d consumed with Jumabek so I, unlike my prosecutorial drinking partner, was not too terribly inebriated. But let’s get back to the sheep.

The beshbarmak came out as a giant plat filled with meat-covered bones. The meat was perfectly cooked so that the flesh simply melted off the bone. As tired of sheep as I have become, I actually found this to be quite tasty. The meat was also accompanied by bowls of hot, greasy sheep-bullion for each of us, and I was actually able to drink half of mine. (And I didn’t even drop mine in my lap this time! Haha.)  The plate did not merely contain meat-covered bones, however; it also contained the two sausages and a variety of freshly cooked innards. I was able to avoid the straight-up innards, although I did eat a couple of pieces of sausage. The sections that consisted of liver and rice were pretty tasty. However, the sections that consisted of miscellaneous other sheep guts… well, let’s just say that my gag reflexes reacted strongly to the texture (although thankfully in a way that I was able to disguise).

After we gnawed on the bones for a while, Rakhat cut the meat off the remaining bones and sliced it up into tiny pieces. She also did the same with some of the guts. This meat/guts mixture was then placed on a large plate, then topped with homemade pasta and a liberal dose of sheep-bullion. This was the meat-n-pasta portion of the beshbarmak, and my companions actually ate it with their hands as well. (Remember, beshbarmak translates as “five fingers” as this is a meal that is traditionally eaten with one’s hands.) The pasta was actually quite good, except for the few moments when my tongue realized it was touching guts. Sigh.

In which we slaughter a sheep and I drink half a bottle of vodka

June 8, 2013

WARNING: Some of the photos in this post clearly depict sheep-slaughtering.

Yesterday after breakfast, Rakhat informed me that we’d been invited to our neighbor’s in order to slaughter a sheep in celebration of the birth of his first grandchild (a granddaughter). The fellow across the street – a 77 year old man named Jumabek, or “George” as he told me to call him “but not Bush!” – is a distant cousin of Altynbek, and quite a jovial fellow. He seemed just as excited about the birth of his granddaughter as he was to be able to ask me questions about the US. (“Is it true that there are mostly black people living in Washington DC?” “Did you know that there are a lot of Kyrgyz living in Chicago?” “What is the weather like in Orlando?” etc.) He even pulled out an old encyclopedia so that he could locate Orlando on the map and so he could look up the entry on the city (which essentially said that we have citrus trees and Disney World – still fairly accurate, even if the encyclopedia was from the early 1980s).

The sheep slaughtering was a fairly quick process (although undoubtedly for the sheep not a painless one). First the sheep’s feet were tied. Then we stood in a line facing west and prayed ‘omin.’ Then the sheep’s head was held over a bowl and its throat was slit. Its head was held over the bowl until its heart stopped pumping and the blood flow ceased. Then I rinsed the open neck with water from a tea kettle.

At that point the sheep was strung up and dressed in much the same fashion as I’ve seen hunters dress deer in the US. The one exception to this was that EVERY part of the sheep was kept to be used. This included the guts. While it was the men’s job to skin and butcher the sheep, it was Rakhat’s job to clean the stomach and intestines of the, well, shit. It was fascinating to watch the care with which everything was cleaned and preserved (including the heart and lungs, the head, the feet, etc.).

Rakhat cleans intestines.
Nursultan and the fresh cuts of meat

The complete set of photos from this and several other sheep slaughtering events can be seen HERE.

Once the entire sheep had been butchered and cleaned, Rakhat began cooking kurdak, a fried meat and potatoes dish – using the meat from the sheep, of course. The rest of us retired inside to watch TV. Oddly enough, we watched Francis Ford Coppola’s late-90s take on The Odyssey. (While it was apparently a mini-series, many – but obviously not all – of the episodes had been edited together into a movie for Kyrgyz television. Several key parts of the story had been left out, and the whole thing had been dubbed into Russian.)

Eventually the food was ready to eat. Now, I wholeheartedly believe in eating what you kill. (There’s a bit of a problem with hunters in my neck of the woods in the US who hunt for sport and just leave the carcasses behind to rot, and I thoroughly despise people who do this.) However, despite my desire to actually eat the sheep which we had just slaughtered, I was unable to eat much of the kurdak. There’s a certain method of cooking that is sometimes used here. I don’t know what that method is, but it makes the meat utterly unpalatable to me. Unfortunately, this was the method used to cook our sheep. Out of politeness – and to honor the sheep’s sacrifice – I forced myself to swallow several chunks of meat, after which I concentrated on the potatoes.

I really didn’t eat very much. This was rather unfortunate, as after we had finished eating lunch, Rakhat produced a bottle of vodka as a present for Jumabek. Now Rakhat and Altynbek don’t drink, which left only me and Jumabek to consume the entire bottle – sadly split fairly evenly between the two of us – as we drank toast after toast to his granddaughter, to me, to him to Rakhat and Altynbek, to my mother, to his children… (To those of you who have never been in a situation like this, let’s just say that being unconscious or claiming that you don’t drink at all due to religious beliefs are really the only ways to avoid shot after shot…)

When we returned home, my goal was to stagger up the stairs without falling and then to pass out. 

Unfortunately, in front of our gate were two local elderly women (one of whom I’d met before, although I can’t for the life of me remember where – At the school? One of the stores? At Rakhat and Altynbek’s?) and five students from the school! They weren’t any of my students – thank goodness – but they all see me around regularly, and had obviously come over for the express purpose of visiting me. I, meanwhile, was in absolutely no shape to socialize with anyone. It took all of my willpower to keep myself upright and my eyes open during the course of their 30 minute visit. I’m sure it was pretty obvious that I was a good twelve or so sheets to the wind. Sigh.

After they left, I stumbled upstairs and promptly passed out.

(I later learned that one of my good friends had given birth to her daughter at approximately the same time that Jumabek’s granddaughter was born. I count this as my celebration of the birth of my friend’s baby!)

Sheep Shearing Day

May 31, 2013

Around 10am, my host family and I drove up into the foothills of the mountains to the southeast of Toguz-Bulak to the place where they keep their goats, sheep, and one horse. There are two families who live and work out there, but I wasn’t clear on if they were relatives or just employees. My host family owns roughly 150 sheep, and apparently it was supposed to be sheep shearing day. I watched Rakhat and Nursultan round up sheep to be sheared, and then decided to hike further up into the foothills.

I was quite impressed with how high up I was able to get, especially as I didn’t have B or K or a trusty pack of M&Ms to lure me up the hill. (Of course as Nurel, the 2.5 year old, made it 3/4 of the way as well, I can’t feel all that proud of my efforts!) I hiked to the very top of one hill, from where I could see the entire valley in which Toguz-Bulak, Kul-tor, and one other village are located. I could also see Lake Issyk-Kul from over the tops of the mountain range to the north of the valley, and I could just make out the tops of the mountains to the north of Issyk-Kul.

Nuraika and Nurel
It's difficult to see, but Lake Issyk Kul is on the other side of those brown mountains... The buildings at the bottom left make up the farm from which I hiked.
The village of Toguz Bulak as seen from above
I could see the village of Kol-Tor and the other village in the valley, too

I hiked back down and watched a little bit of sheep shearing… but apparently the electricity connection running up there wasn’t working too well, and as they were using electric shears, this was a bit of a problem. As such, we returned home around 1:30 instead of spending the entire day out there. The sheep were then driven down into the village to be sheared using Toguz-Bulak’s more reliable electricity. (It’s amazing how much the electrical infrastructure has improved in the past five years that a village the size of teeny-tiny Toguz-Bulak can have reasonably reliable electricity!)

Sheep shearing!
The sheep after having been herded down into the village

On an unpleasant note, while we were up in the foothills, I realized that I had neglected to exchange the short (18-55mm) lens on my camera with my long (18-200mm) lens. When we returned, I tried to do that, only to discover that the cap that protects the back end of the lens (not the lens cap, the other end) has gotten wedged in so tightly that I cannot remove it. I hope that it is not completely broken :-( I keep trying to unscrew it, but so far I’ve merely managed to hurt my hand.