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Spring/Early Summer 2012

Summer in Bishkek

(Click on the photo above for more pics.)


In June 2010 we landed in Bishkek for the first time amid a recent revolution and unrest in the south.  Coming from rural Afghanistan, Bishkek in June seemed like Paris—parks, trees, and cafes.  Two years later, Bishkek seems a little less like Paris-- a little grubbier around the edges and with a lot more shashlik and vodka.  Still, the parks are green, ping pong tables are up everywhere, fountains are spraying, and the Bishkekans love of fireworks light up the sky regularly.  Back in March we celebrated Nau Roz (spring equinox/new year) with our last ski trip of the season and since then the temps have been rising up to the 90s last week.  Zoe’s been keeping us on our toes with her first solids (endlessly entertaining), first family vacation (Cyprus), and first backpacking trip (she thought the mountains and rivers were okay but preferred the pot grips and whiskey).  She’s not crawling yet but loves help standing up and is constantly pulling herself up and going into plank position to avoid being sat down.  Chad is always reminding her that it’s a high chair and car seat not a high stand or car stand.  Chad has delved into the Bishkek sport scene and came out refereeing an American football game and taking 2^nd place in a local mountain bike race.  We’ve relocated the ultimate frisbee scene, still run by the Turkmans, and have been making frequent trips to our local foothill (Turtle Mountain) for bikes and runs.  MSRC, the Mountain Societies Research Center, which Chad has devoted himself to since we arrived, continues to grow and develop, http://msrc.ucentralasia.org/.  (I contributed by taking the photo for the homepage.)  I’m continuing to work on climate change adaptation and natural resource programming in rural communities with the Aga Khan Foundation.  The Ski Afghanistan book is now available for download, www.akdn.org/Content/1122, although the hard copies are still mainly only available in Kabul.  We’d like to think it’s an interesting book even if you never plan to ski Afghanistan so check it out if you have a chance.  On the home front, we’re still on the 7^th floor of our old Soviet era apartment building where views of the 15,000 ft peaks of the Ala Too range from our balcony are regularly awesome (and the floor regularly covered with baby paraphernalia).  

We’re very much looking forward to a trip to Montana and the east coast in August and hope to see you then.

MSO to KG

It’s been six weeks since we left Montana and we’ve managed to (mainly) keep the train on the rails.  We packed up and flew out of Missoula during the January snowstorm that dumped a couple feet of snow in town, complicating our last minute errands but lending an extra air of adventure to our departure.  We landed in Colorado to celebrate Ethel Ashley’s 90^th birthday (happy birthday Grammie!).  In Denver, we managed to get us and all our luggage on the shuttle bus and made it half way to the car rental before realizing that we’d left the car seat base back at baggage claim.  Rookie move.  Following wonderful family festivities in Colorado we loaded the rental car back up (and I mean loaded) and returned to the airport where a really nice woman decided not to charge us for our extra baggage.  This was awesome given that we had 96 (more or less) bags.  Zoe turned three months somewhere between Chicago and Istanbul.  (And now she’s already four months.  How does this happen?)  In Istanbul we had to keep a tight rein on her after we realized that the adoring and rambunctious Turks were apt to take off with Zoe if we didn’t stop them (ok, well one did but only briefly).  After many hours of travel we landed in Bishkek just in time for a two hour wait in line for our visas on arrival.  The line had nine people.  Back at our apartment baby jet lag set in; brutal.  We were worried that Zoe had become a grumpy baby but luckily once she figured out that night was now day and day was now night she cheered right up. 

We’ve settled into Bishkek.  Zoe and I take a lot of walks in the park on icy treacherous sidewalks, the roof leaks whenever the temp gets above freezing (a bucket is catching the drips), and we get out to the mountains every weekend.  Friends here have been really good to us, throwingwelcome Zoe parties and providing us great support.  And we have a car.  It’s kind of like magic, which probably sounds crazy unless you’ve lived in Bishkek for over a year without a car.  In which case the simple ability to turn the key and drive out of town seems pretty miraculous.  That said, we haven’t been pulled over yet which is likely to be a somewhat less magical experience.  Chad is getting it done at UCA, we hired a sweet nanny for Zoe who speaks Kyrgyz to her, and I begin work back at AKF in another week.  Some other Bishkek highlights are that we can now find spinach, locally roasted coffee, and decent hamburger (all at different shops) on a regular basis.  Check out the slideshow for some pics.  If you don’t enjoy pics of other people’s kids, realize we’ve completely become those people.  We miss you all a ton and are eagerly awaiting your next visit to Kyrgyzstan.

Introducing Zoe

Wow, we have a daughter and she’s a gem.  We’re totally enamoured of course.  Today she turns six weeks (!) and already it’s hard to imagine life without her.  She smiles and talks like a pirate (aaarrh).  She loves going for walks and playing with anyone who will have her.  She’s already been exploring some of Missoula’s fine establishments including Charlie’s where the clientele were quite taken with her.  Just after her one month birthday (see cupcake celebration with her great cousins) we went sledding for the first time.  She slept through the event, like she does through many, but I like to imagine she enjoyed it.  With new snow today, we hope to do some cross-country skiing soon. 

Laurie and Zoe are in Montana and Chad returns from Kyrgyzstan on Christmas Eve.  We’ll be here together until mid-January when we travel back to Bishkek where we’ll arrive on her three month birthday.  Although it’s tough to be apart for these few weeks we make good use of skype and look forward to being all together again.

She, and we, have been blessed with lots of friends and family and well wishes, love, and support from all directions.  Thank you!  

Kyrgyzstan

Since I wrote last we moved from a collection of villages where a car passing was an event to a city of a million people and seemingly that many cars (and horns).  For the first while we were perpetual deer-in-the-headlights but now we’re practically local, at least when it comes to dodging the cars on our walk to work.  Rural Afghanistan is different from urban Kyrgyzstan in almost every way.  Kyrgyzstan, it turns out, has pretty much more of everything than Afghanistan, except people and donkeys (where Afg has a significant lead).  And there’s not a war in Kyrgyzstan, although a coup and ethnic clashes in 2010 brought very tough conflict and a new (hopefully improved) government to the country.

We’ve gone from living in a mud house surrounded by wheat and potato fields to living in a 7^th story apartment.  Luckily we have a great view of the 15,000 foot mountains south of town.  We can also see the parliament building, national museum, and national stadium.  From our apartment we hear the call to prayers, church bells, and, amazingly, a lone donkey, which, like any donkey, hee-haws at any time day or night.  Here in Bishkek public life is abundant (a plus) but it’s more than a short walk to the mountains (a minus).  There are incredible mountains here, the Tien Shan, Pamir Alai, and dozens of smaller ranges.  92-96% of the country (depending who is counting) is mountainous and Kyrgyzstan has been called the ‘Switzerland of Central Asia.’  All these mountains just aren’t quite on our doorstep like they were in Bamyan.  We do, however, have a mini amusement park right across the street and the Kyrgyz are incredibly undeterred from riding roller coasters even in the cold and dark of winter.  Walking home from work tonight through the park it was 15 degrees F and snowing and although the rides were shut down, the music played, girls talked and laughed, and couples sat on frozen benches.

Bishkek has an impressive amount of infrastructure including a 17-story building.  There’s not quite the maintenance and public safety ethic to keep up with it however so there’s lots of treacherous icy steps and sidewalks, uncovered drainage holes that appear mid-stride, and elevators that make you want to assume some sort of safety position when they jerk into motion.  Outside Bishkek, there’s even more derelict infrastructure, crumbling concrete, bent rusty rebar, rigged and re-rigged electrical wires and poles, cracking bridges.  Anything metal (including irrigation pumps and pipes) got sold to the Chinese for recycling in the destitute years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  But the concrete is all still here.  Concrete walls, houses, roads, canals, and more walls.  I wish we could trade in all the gray concrete in this country for a few more irrigation pumps.  And do away with some of the sagging electrical grid in favor of local renewable power generation.

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A week later.  We just celebrated the Women’s Day holiday (a big occasion here) with three days of skiing in the Ala Too range above the Suusamyr Valley, an incredibly beautiful place.  We got up high, had lunch and tea breaks in the sun, and got back to the lodge one night in a snowstorm in the dark after a long tour.  On these days it’s easy to forget about all that concrete.  Now back in Bishkek spring has suddenly arrived—birds chirping, green grass sprouting along the sidewalks, and snow gone from all but the darkest shadows.  I’m continuing my work on climate change adaptation in rural mountain communities and Chad is laying the foundation for the University of Central Asia’s new Mountain Societies Research Center.  We have good colleagues and are slowly making some new friends (although none that can remotely compare to you!).  We’re studying Russian, a language with more grammar than any American should have to learn.  Even a person’s name can change in certain tenses.  For example, Chad becomes “Chada” when something is for him (dlya Chada).  At least I get some humor out of lessons like that.  We’ve got a spare room in our apartment so if you find yourself looking for an adventure, book your ticket and come visit yurt-filled summer pastures, glaciers and peaks galore, the second largest alpine lake in the world, and a people whose national drink is fermented mare’s milk.

Fall in Afghanistan

I wrote the other day that I've never lived in a place that I both loved so deeply and wanted to escape. And that luckily, it's more love, for the beauty of the place and the character of the people. 

I live in a place where it is inappropriate for a woman to walk alone outside her village.  Where doing so puts her at risk of harassment and accusations.  But where inside the village, three girls pack themselves onto a donkey, girls and boys shepherd together, women drag cows around by ropes, harvest wheat, potato, and alfalfa, skin trees, learn to read and write.

I live in a place where families are affectionate and loving with children.  Kids cuddle up to weathered men in beards and turbans during meetings.  Toddlers are often the center of attention.  Women nurse in front of me.  Babies are wrapped in layer after layer to keep them warm and comforted, their eyes painted with kol, and special necklaces put around their necks for good fortune.

When I visit a village for the first time, men may ignore me entirely during the initial greeting but will then welcome me to the house, give us tea and bread and yogurt, look me in the eye, ask and answer questions, and when it’s time to go, insist that we stay the night.  One man has twice dug carrots and Jerusalem artichokes from his garden as a send off gift.  Even during Ramadan, as a traveler I was offered sheep milk with sugar in every village.

In one village where over half the population have left for cities or other countries, an elder told me that money is like a miracle, like it has magical powers.  He explains how with money you can fly through the sky.  Pretty miraculous when you think about it.  In another village, sharecroppers explain how they live there at the whim of the landowners and that at any time they could end up like a kite cut from its string.

When I returned after being away for two months, the news coming out of the country had been particularly bad and I flew into the dusty smog of Kabul with some sense of dread and pessimism.  And the news hasn’t really improved, fraudulent elections, kidnappings, corruption, Karzai crying on tv about the state of the country, the terrible impacts of war.  But I also arrived to good friends, a sweet new healthy baby in my adopted family, Eid celebrations, the news that my friend Freshta is very likely to have the chance to go to university in the US, and the life of this place that just keeps going in the face of everything.  My pessimism was replaced with awe for all that this place is and bits of hope that come from everyday interactions, smiles, perseverance, and integrity. 

It’s fall time, harvest is everywhere.  Piles of wheat and alfalfa being processed for storage.  Donkeys and cows walking circle after circle after circle to compress the fodder or begin the process of wheat threshing.  Kids wander around with fat-tailed sheep trying to get them as fat as possible to survive long winter months which people say are still long and cold even though they get less than half the snow that they used to.  I am as impressed as ever at the way people get by in this beautiful but tough landscape with extraordinarily limited external resources. Wheat for bread, sheep for milk, wool, and selling, mud for houses, and prayer for Allah. These are the staples.

I live along the Helmand river (a canoe would be amazing here).  The Koh-e-Baba mountains in the north hold the occasional clouds and already have their first snow.  There was a hint of a rainbow today after an unseasonal thunderstorm.  I work with wonderful people, colleagues and people in rural villages alike.  People depend on pastures and are excited about the possibility of support to work towards restoration and sustainable management.  I drink from the well, bathe from a bucket, share a two latrines with a couple other women and twenty men.  We live together, eat bread and rice, beans and potatoes, sheep, and drink tea.