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Teatime and teaching in Kyrgyzstan

November 4, 2006 12:53 am

THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC (Kyrgyzstan) is a gorgeous country that you've probably never heard of. The travel guides say that it's about the size of South Dakota, though it's so incredibly mountainous that it's hard to imagine how much land is actually packed into its ridges and folds.

It is a place where four-wheel drive doesn't always cut the mustard, and horses are still a necessary form of transport for herders and tourists alike in the massive Tien Shian range.

Kyrgyzstan is arguably the most progressive and inviting of the Soviet Union's Central Asian successor states. It shares borders with China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The population is mostly a blend of ethnic Russian and Kyrgyz in the northern oblasts (states), with the addition of a sizable Uzbek contingent in the south.

The official languages are Kyrgyz (a distant cousin of Turkish and Mongolian) and Russian. Islam and the Russian Orthodox Church are the main religions, Islam being by far the more prevalent.

I came to Kyrgyzstan with 64 other Peace Corps trainees in September 2004. That December, after pre-service training near the capital city of Bishkek, I was sent to teach English at a secondary school in Kyzyl-Suu (Kyrgyz for "Red Water"), a sprawling town of 15,000 on the south shore of Lake Issyk-Kul in the north of the country.

My town has a small bazaar, four schools, a stadium, a cheese factory and a galaxy of cafes and stores. Sandwiched between the immense, jagged mountains and the lake, Kyzyl-Suu is lively and pretty. Giant poplars line the main road where horse-drawn carts clank along day and night. A rainbow of Soviet jalopies and German imports scuttle about at the main taxi stand, always reversing and making U-turns in various stages of loading or unloading people, sheep and sacks of potatoes.

Women in headscarves hawk folded paper cones of sunflower seeds scooped from bulging Chinese rice bags. Herds of sheep and cows routinely commandeer the streets on the way to and from the fields, and the ubiquitous tri-band radios belt out an endless stream of American, Russian and Kyrgyz disco hits.

The main event of life in Kyzyl-Suu is teatime, which occurs up to five times a day, depending on how many people you visit. Chai ichpeisinbi? ("Will you have some tea?") has become the ultimate mantra of comfort and repose in my life. Teatime offers an excellent opportunity to improve my spoken Kyrgyz and solve the day-to-day mysteries of life in a new culture while stuffing my face with tea, bread and homemade apricot or raspberry jam.

I did the math the other day and found that I've drunk at least 3,950 little bowls of tea in Kyrgyzstan thus far. Over these steamy, fragrant cups I've learned, among other things, that whistling in the house summons evil spirits; that fallen-out teeth are fed to dogs; that brooms should be stored with the bristles pointed upward to preserve the wealth of the home; and that a room should never have both a door and window open at the same time.

One of the best teatime conversations I've had was on the topic of bad luck. Addressing the fact that nothing in my life was going as planned at the time, my host mother, Gulya Eje, told me to ball up 7 som (the Kyrgyz unit of currency; 1 som equals 2.5 cents), go to a crossroads, spit on it, throw it over my left shoulder and walk away without looking back.

"What if someone picks it up? Do they inherit my bad luck?" I asked.

"Yes. So don't pick up money off the ground. You can also give 7 som to a Gypsy after you curse it," she replied. "That'll do the same thing."

Tea talk isn't all superstitions, though, and I've found that these breaks in the day are when people open up about the struggle of transition from a Soviet state to a player on the global stage.

"In America, there isn't really the distinction between the city, the town and the village," says my friend Kair Eje, an English teacher in the village of Orgochor. Kair's English is perfect, and she has visited the U.S. twice on teacher-exchange programs.

"In America, most towns and cities have the same basic things. Here, the cities have modern conveniences, the towns have less and the villages are still very poor and remote. Village people do not know how to use computers. The schools are not as well-funded. Sometimes when older people visit the city, they are intimidated by flush toilets."

I present a list of discrepancies among cities, inner cities, towns and mountain hamlets in America, but Kair Eje is right. Most of the population of Kyrgyzstan lives in villages where indoor plumbing is a rare luxury, wood stoves heat houses during the long, cold winters and families still rely on their livestock and fields for the majority of their food.

Wages are generally low in villages and towns, and everything from washing clothes to reaping hay is done by hand. By comparison, Bishkek and other cities offer higher-paying jobs, alternatives to subsistence farming and the modern inventions that make life easier and more efficient.

"How long will it take for Kyrgyzstan to be like the United States? Fifty years? A hundred years?" Kair Eje wonders over her tea. I have to admit that I don't know, but I point out that the technology and ideas are already out there. Kyrgyzstan doesn't have to undergo the centuries of trial and error that improved the Western standard of living. Life here could get better relatively soon.

Kair Eje agrees and, cup after cup, we talk about other things.