The start of something. Or, what have I got myself into?

A brief disclaimer

As a self-professed Luddite who has never really got round to embracing the blogosphere in any great depth, I feel as though what I’m about to embark upon is anathema to everything I stand for. But alas, there appears to have been some demand – a handful of friends out there anyway – and so I’ve thus given in and started my own ‘blog’. I’m almost ashamed of myself. Not having read too many blogs myself, I’ve always found the idea of them to be self-indulgent little flights of fantasy. Or, as my friend Grant said, if ‘you have an idea without the ballast to constitute a proper essay and a shaky command of grammar, then what you have is a blog’. Very well-put. Or as Dennis has stated, ‘it is vain to sit down to write before you’ve stood up to live’. I figured that I’d done my share of living and it was time to sit down and put a few words to paper, so to speak.

My intentions here are noble: I want to provide an outlet for my friends and family (well, my sister at least) to follow my travels/travails (depending on your perspective). I’ve kept a few of you in the loop over the past few years, but now I reckon I’m ready to share my tales with a slightly bigger audience. It seems a bit of a shame, really, to only now be starting this after the past few years of fun and games on the road. Perhaps I’ll revisit a few stories every now and then, and finally reveal the full lowdown on prison visits in Nigeria and broken ribs in Latvia. But those are stories for another time.

I also warn you in advance that, if past habits are anything to go by, I may go off on seemingly random little tangents about all sorts of things: politics, sport, business, corruption, fashion, philosophy…we’ll see. But my intention is to maintain some semblance of a focus.

Now that I’ve explained my somewhat solipsistic rationale for this little endeavour, let’s move on to the here and now: Bishkek. This is the adventure that almost never was.

I thought my last year in Latvia was it. I wanted to ‘take a break’ from teaching English, and I figured I’d give things a go in the US for a bit. After all, it had been over 6 years since I’d last lived and worked over there. I did sort of haphazardly look for jobs, mainly in NYC but also in Boston and a few other decent-sized cities, but it really was never meant to be. And besides, despite wanting to take a break, I absolutely knew I would miss the lifestyle. My flatmate Mark in Latvia said as much, and I knew even at the time that he was right.

So after a bit of agonizing over Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, I opted for the latter. A good choice? Seeing as I’d been wanting to come to Central Asia for so long, absolutely. It’s barely been a week thus far, so for the time being it’s a bit too early to tell. I’m impatient, yet I’m not entirely sure what I’m impatient for. I want things to happen fast, and I get a bit down and flustered if things don’t work out as quickly as I’d like. But then I’m impossible to please and I never know what I want, so thus…

[at this point in my little missive, I’m starting to ask myself where the hell I’m going…and where to go from here…and, how do these things work?]

I had a few ideas in my head about what to expect from Kyrgyzstan. I’ve long been enraptured by Central Asian yarns of high adventure, about the ‘Great Game’, the geopolitics of the region, etc, etc. But what one gleans from a book is never the same as the story on the ground. I wanted to come and see this place for myself, find out the reality of the situation.

And something else just hit me today as I was explaining to my students why I’ve come to Kyrgyzstan. I’d never thought of this way before, but a bit of a joke turned into a bit of great thinking: three years ago, I started this teaching English adventure in Ukraine. After a stint in Spain, it was off to Latvia. I spent most of June last year in the Caucasus, taking in Georgia and Armenia. Suddenly, it seems like I’m circumnavigating Russia via the former Soviet Union. It oddly never seemed like it at the time, and those of you who really know me know that I never plan too far in advance, but it now appears rather logical and obvious. In fact, I’m quite proud of myself. It’s all falling into place. Logic would dictate that at the end of all this, Russia would be the final destination, or piece in the puzzle.

As for me falling into place, it was an eerie arrival. I was fully aware that the US Air Force has established a base here in Bishkek, which they share with Manas, the local airport some 30km outside of town. Various others had written of the strange feeling of arriving at the airport to see civilian airliners lined up alongside C130s. Sadly I missed out on these early impressions, as my plane landed in a thick pea-soup fog. In fact, I couldn’t see a thing as I looked out the windows and we suddenly touched down when I thought we were still thousands of feet in the air. The journey to my new home at 5am was enshrouded in that same dense fog, and I hardly knew whether I was coming or going I was in such a bleary-eyed state.

My first week here was somewhat rough. I had a nasty bout of jetlag which I’m only now slowly beginning to shake. I had the week off (thankfully the school likes to have its teachers ease into things with a 1-2 week settling in period), but I got a bit antsy and didn’t know what to do with myself. I met the other 7 teachers, most of whom have been here for at least 4-5 months, as well as the local staff and some of my new students. This has been one major difference between previous teaching assignments: at every other location I’ve started with a group of other teachers at the start of the school year in September (except in Ukraine, where it was only me), whereas here I’m the new guy suddenly crashing the party.

But no matter: the other teachers are friendly and have been welcoming. On our first night out together they regaled me with stories of crime and police harassment, things I eagerly look forward to. There would appear to be a significant risk of petty crime against foreigners here, but that’s to be expected in such an economically depressed former Soviet [insert your word of choice here]. At one point I thought they were about to take bets on establishing an over/under on when I might be expected to face trouble (3 weeks? 4?). The biggest threat to foreigners comes from the police, who rarely pass up an attempt to extort money from you. They lurk on every corner, glaring intently at me every time I pass by. Luckily so far, I’ve not been stopped, though it’s surely only a matter of time.

IR Theory 101

As for Bishkek itself, I’ve explored a bit here and there, meandered about the massive, wide boulevards and endless reams of concrete and statues, paeans to heroes from the glorious Soviet and Kyrygz past. My friend Magnus would no doubt make two astute observations about this place, as he is wont to do. First, this place is unbelievably ‘Sovietsky’. If you thought Yerevan was Sovietsky, you haven’t seen anything yet. And second, it’s a terrible city in which to wage guerrilla warfare. As it is, Kyrgyzstan is, geographically, a horribly convoluted country whose borders, like all the Central Asian states, cuts across and divides up different ethnicities and religions. The north is more Russified than the south, where a greater majority of ethnic Kyrgyz live. And towns like Osh near the Fergana Valley, a hotbed of militant Islam and a mere few kilometers from the border of Uzbekistan, feature a substantial population of Uzbeks and Tajiks, both of whom are severely underrepresented in Kyrgyz government. When the Soviet Union went belly-up in December 1991, the entire region hardly knew what to do with itself. In a sense, Stalin had carved out the countries of Central Asia into neat, convenient, easily manageable republics; independence had the effect of creating a set of 5 full-blown Russian inventions. The Soviet policies of strictly controlled borders, forced population relocation (Germans, Russians and Ukrainians to Kyrgyzstan, for example) and the redrawing of the map of the region, has left the 5 ‘-stans’ in a post-independence mess: economically depressed, ethnically and politically divided, and with Islam relegated to something of a secret religion, to be practiced only in private and away from the prying eyes of the state.

But what do I know? I’m only spouting off the ideas I’ve gathered from books and the news, it’s probably all horribly inaccurate. The point I’m trying to make goes back to Bishkek’s geography vis-à-vis the Magnus Briem school of international conflict: with its wide boulevards and overwhelming stretches of concrete plazas and wide open spaces, this place is not at all suited to guerrilla warfare, unlike say, Baghdad or Beirut. So despite its close proximity to the Kazakh border (not a threat) and the fomenting unrest in the south, Bishkek in theory is a much safer, secure place than, say, Tashkent. But I don’t want to get into Uzbekistan’s politics just yet.

[besides, with the American military just down the road, we should have nothing to worry about.]

Here's a handy wee map: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/asia/kyrgyzstan/

My intention there was merely to provide a brief, cursory overview of Bishkek’s architectural splendours and sights. And instead I digressed to offer a half-baked analysis of Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet dilemma. Forgive me. I wish I could say it won’t happen again, but it almost certainly will.

Other than the architectural monstrosities, I’ve visited a couple of bazaars - Osh and Ortasay- which are far, far cheaper than the overpriced local supermarket. You get an amazing array of goods on display, though many are of dubious quality (such as the $5 kettle that lasted me 4 days). At the very least, they offer a colourful and eclectic slice of native life, even if they can be quite chaotic and frenetic. It’s all part of the fun.

As many of you are aware, I’m a bit lost without a steady reading supply and decent coffeeshops where I can lounge about, whiling away the afternoon with books, newspapers and general people watching. So that was my mission last weekend, and although I haven’t yet found anywhere to meet my high, snobbish standards, I did have a couple of very mildly amusing situations. First was the bookstore that I was told featured a ‘small selection’ of secondhand English books. Small indeed: there were about 15. The only one of any interest was a collection of short GK Chesterton pieces, many of which I’ve already read. But otherwise, it was a pathetic, pitiful collection on hand: Happy English, A Guide to Memorize English in Plenty (sic) and an issue of National Geographic from September 1989 were the highlights.

Then I called into Metro, apparently one of Bishkek’s prime expat and sports-watching watering holes. It was only 1pm and not many people were around: a couple of Englishmen at the bar and a table of 8 Americans (from the base?) drinking cocktails. On the only two TVs were the Australian Open semifinal and a nature documentary – tranquil scenes from ocean life interspersed with footage of natural disasters, accompanied by electronic, ambient variations of music from ‘Phantom of the Opera’. I was thoroughly enjoying, from a distance, the Nadal-Verdasco semifinal, which was at 4-4 in the final set. Then one of the Englishmen asked the barmaid to turn it to some football, she duly obliged, and I ended up missing the thrilling finale in favour of West Ham v Liverpool…from the 2006/7 season. With the time difference (6 hours from the UK, 11 from EST), there’s was no way live football would be on at 1pm local time. And I’d rarely object to watching football, naturally, but in such circumstances I was livid. To coffeeshops and books, you can add a steady stream of sports to my requirements for contentment. As for the Super Bowl…not a chance I was watching that with a 5.30am local kickoff time, seeing as Metro opens at 10am. And yes, I am bitter that I missed such a thrilling game.

Oh, and shortly after that, the waitress asked me how to make a White Russian. And this is Bishkek’s premier expat spot? They’re asking me how to make a mixed drink?

I’ll no doubt be going back, as there aren’t really any other places to choose from, and beggars can’t be choosers of course. I mean, the cup of tea I had was decent, if overpriced, and it’s a comfortable enough spot to spend a few hours watching football.

Dated cultural reference anyone?

Oh, and just before I left, one of the Americans was complaining to the waitress that she had forgotten the tequila in his Long Island Ice Tea. For whatever reason, the image of Ian Brown shouting ‘Amateurs! Amateurs!’ in the BBC studios way back when popped into my head.

Enough is enough for now

I don’t plan on all my posts being this lengthy. Unless something truly wild and unexpectedly adventurous happens (like, I get my head smashed in at some seedy bar after trying to steal some Russian mafioso’s Kyrygz girlfriend), I aim to make these commentaries as succinct and to the point as possible. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and please do share any comments, whether positive or [constructively] critical. In my next dispatch, I’ll share details of my living conditions and teaching specifics. Try and contain your excitement.