General housekeeping

Though a lot has happened over the past fortnight, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a bit of housework and describe some of Bishkek’s wonderful little eccentricities. Starting with…

But they’re only here for your protection

I’ve been warned incessantly that the police will stop at nothing to extract money from luckless foreigners caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Local law dictates that we are to carry our passports on us at all times, but I usually just carry a copy along with the amateurish homemade photo ID that the school has provided. I couldn’t imagine it being of much use, and thankfully so far I’ve survived without great incident. I have twice now been accosted by the police on a corner not far from the school. Their audacity astounds me – they blatantly want my money, they don’t even have the decency to beat around the bush. It’s flagrant and offensive, but what can I do about it, other than pretend not to understand them? Thus far, I’ve got away with paying nothing, but not sure how long my luck will last.

What is this, global warming?

Maybe it’s just me, but when I think landlocked, poor, small, mountainous, in the neighbourhood of Siberia Central Asian country, I think brutally and unforgivingly cold. Yet the weather has been unseasonably mild since I arrived and there have been very few icy cold days. I even have a couple of sweaters that I have yet to don and I can’t imagine at this point ever wearing them. On top of this, as tends to happen in the former Soviet bloc, all heating is centrally-controlled. It gets turned on sometime in November and pumps out at full blast until whenever the government decides we’ve had enough heat. Thus, many places are unbearably hot and there’s nothing you can do about it, other than suck it up and sweat it out. I’ve had little desire to go to a sauna, normally a regular occurrence for me in the winter, as it is already too steamy everywhere you go. Considering that half the country is without power most of the day, this seems to be an excessively profligate policy, but then I’m not a resource specialist so for all I know it’s logical in its own way. I’m told that power outages were quite common - electricity was going out on a daily basis at 6pm until mid-autumn and classes at the school were conducted by candlelight – but they have been sparingly sparse since.

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt

Though at times it has been awfully icy, especially in the underpasses. Naturally, I have slipped quite a few times and made an arse of myself – if you’re a faithful reader of this blog you are by now starting to detect a pattern here. For further details, contact my sister, who I’m sure will be more than happy to provide you with a meticulous account of my slippages on ice. There have been many and even when I have been seriously hurt, she has laughed. That isn’t nice.

Reminiscing on the good old student days

A whopping disappointment: it’s like being a student all over again, which isn’t a good thing for a curmudgeonly old fool like me who likes his space and a nice kitchen. The flats are conveniently located, being attached to the school, but I live in what is essentially a dorm room with a flatmate and shared bathroom. And it’s blisteringly hot – it seems utterly absurd to open my window and use a fan to keep cool in the middle of winter but I have no other choice. Though I hate to complain too much about this, I haven’t had such lousy accommodation for a good many years. It’s times like this that I wax nostalgic about the museum of a flat I occupied in Lviv, where I had no heating, [only cold] water for only 6 hours a day and a cupboard full of pickled vegetables dating back to 1978.

My classes and the London School.

What are my classes like? In a word, fine. I have very lovely students who are extremely well-behaved, on the whole motivated, and a great pleasure to teach. The school does certain things in a rather idiosyncratic and frustrating way that creates a lot of unnecessary hassle, and they’re terribly guilty of massive copyright infringements, but otherwise it’s a decently-run outfit. At risk of boring people to tears, I will share merely one story. Every language school I’d previously worked at separated students into age groups, which makes logical sense. Not so here. So in one class, for example, I have all 14-16 year olds plus one 12 year old and a 27 year old. It’s a bit odd but you get used to it. The funniest situation occurred in my evening class, where 8 of the 9 students are over 18 and most are in their mid-20s. On the first day, a small boy of 11 dressed in a sharp suit and carrying a small briefcase knocked on the door and asked if he could come in. I’m not entirely sure why, but inexplicably all of the students and I burst into a raucous laughter. I asked him a few times whether he had the right classroom, and he indeed did. To date, he’s been one of the best students in the class, but it really was a comical sight to behold. Sometimes teachers are amused by the silliest things, but this was a new one for me.

The bizarre bazaar. Or, the joys of bartering with rosy-cheeked Kyrgyz women

I’ve rediscovered the fun behind shopping for food and personal effects at the local bazaar, Ortasay, an experience I relished in Ukraine but I didn’t take enough advantage of in Latvia. The haggling is terrific language practice, even if I hardly understand what I’m saying. The local, Turkish-owned supermarket is a bit overpriced, so it makes sense anyway to visit the market. I admit, at first they can be a daunting experience: the frenetic hustle and bustle and general anxieties that come with trying to barter in a language you can barely speak, and the pressure to perform on the big stage where umm-ing and ahh-ing are severely discouraged. If you so much as stop to peruse some fruit or veg, the elderly, plump Kyrgyz costermongers are on top of you to buy their half-rotten apples, ridiculously expensive tomatoes and shriveled, dried-up aubergines. It’s no place for the indecisive, i.e., me. (‘Once I make up my mind I’m filled with indecision’ Oscar Levant)

False promises and dashed hopes with the Russky

This has to constitute another disappointment. Let me be slightly pretentious and say that my primary raison d’etre for coming here was to learn/improve my Russian. I had seriously considered studying it intensively full-time, though I found that option to be financially irresponsible and thus opted to teach with the promise of 6-8 hours of study a week. But due to a shortage of local teachers and overwhelming demand from the foreigners and full-time students, I’m only getting 2 hours a week. As it is, I struggle in a 1 on 1 setting with my wandering attention and lackadaisical attitude to learning the grammar, so I can’t imagine having the necessary motivation and concentration for full-time study. I study individually when I can, and there has been some progress. I think.

Runway commentary and sartorial elegance

I offer you this profound statement: former Soviet bloc fashion awakens all the senses and confounds all expectations of normality. I usually find it to be an exotic blend of intriguing and bewildering, which is probably a euphemism for something else, but no matter, I’m not going to delve into the specifics. Two years of living in Eastern Europe hardly makes me an expert on post-Soviet haute couture but I long ago tired of describing and analysing various styles, colours and shapes of overly exuberant outfits. Suffice to say that here one also encounters thigh-high leather boots of black, red, white and purple, along with the ubiquitous and absurdly ‘luxurious’ fur. Despite Kyrgyzstan being a rather poor country, to walk in the centre of town on a weekend and observe the lissome young Kyrgyz and Russian venuses clad in their furs, you’d think you were in the fashion capital of Central Asia. It’s hard to refrain from passing judgment, but, well, it disgusts me. The fur that is. The other stuff is really…something else. I’ll leave it at that.

And now for the epicurean highs and lows

Even at the worst of times I’m an adventurous eater and will try anything once. After all, I had no qualms about eating bush meat in Nigeria, though I never did find out what it was. I also tried slugs on a stick, a popular roadside snack, which were predictably chewy, even more so than calamari, but also quite flavourful. For my first month here, I put my ethics on temporary hold and forsook my vegetarianish diet in order to try all the local specialties, all of which are meat-laden. Amongst the local delights are lagman, a spicy noodle dish common throughout the region; beshbarmak (‘five fingers’, so-called because that’s how it’s designed to be eaten) the Kyrgyz pride and joy, flat noodles topped with horse or mutton drenched in a tepid vegetable broth; manti, mince meat and onion filled dumplings; and gamburgers, which is self-explanatory (consider other words in Russian: Gollywood, Gomosexual and Garry Potter). There are many more offerings, but those appear to be the most common. Thank goodness various other cuisines proliferate, for the local dishes wear on you fast. Turkish and Chinese restaurants are common, and one can find Korean, Georgian, Syrian, Lebanese and Mexican if you look hard enough. But beware the aspirational menu: get your hopes up at your own peril, for chances are that anything that sounds too good to be true usually is. One recent minor fright: apparently dog is available in some places and some of the teachers have even tried it, one commenting that it was ‘very tasty’. I wouldn’t in a million years consider eating dog, though I was terrified that I recently had. On the menu was ‘Kitaisky’-style meat, which I mixed up with Kutaisi, a city in Georgia. I was excited for Georgian-style meat but then after ordering it was pointed out to me that Kitaisky is Russian for Chinese. So, Chinese-style ‘meat’ it was. And it was awfully delicious, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell what type of meat it was. Then I panicked. I could easily leave you in suspense here and say the mystery was never resolved, but that would be dishonest of me. Fret not, for it wasn’t dog but beef.
Phew.

Once a month had passed, I re-discovered my morals and have now given up the meat, for the most part. We’ll see how long that lasts, but a recent [vegetarian] arrival has been an extremely good influence on me, and I trust she will keep me in my place.

As for the new arrival, Elizabeth is tremendous fun. She arrived near the end of February and is my temporary flatmate until she moves into a local homestay in a few days. We spent her first weekend in town taking in all of Bishkek’s sights (which took less than an hour) and introducing her to the wonderful local cuisine, which I think she’s already fed up with. I’m very grateful for her presence as I now feel like I have a good friend here. Anyway, she’d read about there being a widespread phenomenon in Bishkek where kiosks sell shots of vodka and she was eager to try it. So yesterday, on our way to Ortasay Bazaar on a particularly chilly and windy day, we decided to stop en route and partake in the experience. At this point, I leave you in suspense and promise an upcoming treat: a photo diary of the whole experience. We even have me on video downing the vile pish, which I will attempt to post on Facebook. Stay tuned.