People of Kyrgyzstan #1: Central-Asian volunteers and a young poet

If you come to Kyrgyzstan in early summer, it feels like a kitschy paradise: weather is way fresher than in the steppe, and there are green mountains everywhere. And again, thanks to coincidence, we meet interesting people on our very first day. And then again and again.

Stadium for the World Nomad Games

Staying in a school

We don't have to dig our way through the new country on our own because we have a Kyrgyz friend, Janela. Technically, she is my relative because she married my cousin. I think there isn't a word for our relation in English but I bet there is one in Kyrgyz. Janela is not in Kyrgyzstan for the moment since she studies in France but it doesn't make her any less helpful.

She connects us with her friend Urmat from Bishkek - and he is calling us three times a day to ask whether we already are in town. Bishkek is just maybe twenty kilometers from the border but getting through the customs is quite slow. There is a big queue, the officers ask a lot of questions and one of them wants Czech coins that we don't have after all these months on the road. (Or maybe he wants a bribe and we are too dumb to understand but we wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.)

Hitchhiking is quite easy if you walk a bit further from the border so that the swarm of waiting taxi drivers can't see you. Hitchhiking is a pretty much unknown concept, like in Kazakhstan, so it's important to say you are traveling without money. 

Bishkek looks like a totally normal city. It almost surprises me because I was told that it looked poor and not very urbanised. The center looks neither poor, nor unurbanised. We buy internet in a shopping mall and meet up with Urmat and his girlfriend. We were supposed to stay at his place but the plan changed and we are going to his friend's place. (Janela seems surprised but my cousin not at all - "it's a normal way of planning things in Kyrgyzstan that you never know what the plan is".) We are blocking a packed marshrutka with our backpacks for maybe half an hour, and we end up in the suburbs, on a river bank under the mountains, in a quiet place that looks like a school. In the garden, there is a young guy resting - when he sees us, he jumps on his feet. He seems to be waiting for us. Urmat introduces us to him. His name is Amanat, he speaks a bit English and seems to live here. Then Urmat has to go. Amanat shows us around and then he has to go too.

Our Bishkek home

We have no idea what this place is but it has a kitchen, a garden, a classroom, a shower and we get somebody's room and we are told we can stay three days. (We just hope the inhabitants of the room know that and won't be sad when they come home.)  

In the classroom, there are photos with some important looking people in smart clothes and some logos, so we think we are in some kind of association, but at the moment nobody is home to ask. 

In our room

The next day, we spend most of the time taking official photos for the Chinese visa. The Czech visa agency told us that the embassy in Czechia had accepted our documentation, but rejected the pictures because they hadn't liked them (even though the pictures we gave theme were way better quality than those for the Iranian visa). So we go to one of the fanciest looking photo studios in Bishkek so that they are at least able to meet all the strict Chinese requirements. The guy knows exactly what the requirements are. So hopefully it will work this time.

We also walk around Bishkek - it's full of old socialist monuments - and end up in the bazar. You can buy there pretty much anything you can think of. My favorite shops to stare at are those with traditional clothes. It's not a tourist trap - it's normal clothes, and locals buy and wear them. (My favorite items are kalpaks - tall felt hats with curly patterns, mostly worn by elderly men.) 

At night, we resolve the mystery of the school we are staying at. All the inhabitants are having a Ramadan dinner that they are cooking in a big cauldron in the garden. They invite us over. Besides Amanat, there is Maisalbek - he can speak English and he says he is from the mountains, there is a boy from Uzbekistan, a boy from Tajikistan and three or four others. There is also Azamat who is "the president". That means we were right: this must be some kind of organization.

The guys are all pretty young, and even Azamat the president is way younger than we are. They all study at the university in Bishkek. In their free time, they volunteer for the association this building belongs to - that's why they can live here. 

Spontaneous culture night in a classroom

We learn that the association focuses at education of children. When we ask what exactly they do, the guys show us photos from summer camps they organized, and take us to Azamat's fancy presidential office with flags and medals. We also watch videos of the World Nomad Games. It's Olympic games of nations with nomadic tradition, and the participants compete in traditional disciplines (it usually involves horses). Kyrgyzstan hosted the games last year and built a large stadium on the shore of the Issyk-kul lake for this occasion. The guys from the association assisted with organizing of the event. It was a big honor for them since some of them come from nomadic families themselves, and they are closely familiar with the disciplines. 

Our hosts from the association

The guys seem more than happy to present the stuff they do to random foreigners. Amanat is eager to speak English, and doesn't let us use Russian. He loves poetry and wants to become a politician - he is actually Kazakh and admires his president. The others make fun of him ("it's a dictator!", somebody shouts, and Amanat suddenly looks disconcerted).

The next night, we sit in the classroom with Maisalbek and talk. There are still many people in Kyrgyzstan who move to the mountains with their yurts and horses every summer, and in autumn go back to the village. Also his family does that. 

We then talk about music and literature and Maisalbek sings us a part of a traditional epic called Manas. It's not recited in an ordinary way - there is a special rythm to it. Vojta brings his overtone flute and we try playing it. A boy peeps in the classroom and joins us. And then another. One by one, all the students gather around. They play their music instruments and sing songs they know, and they even show us a dance. (Maisalbek wears a "modern" kalpak hat which is a bit less tall than the ones the elderly guys in the city wear.) I sing a Czech song and the guys try playing my flute. It seems that they are not familiar with it even though in Europe it's the most common and most unimpressive musical instrument you can think of. Amanat recites poetry, from Russian authors and also his own. He is good at it. And he loves it. (The others joke that he finally has an occasion to show off, and won't bother them with his poetry in the morning when they want to sleep.)

Our spontaneous art session ends at three or four AM and I am pretty sad we can't carry on. We can't complain about this introduction to Kyrgyzstan.