Sign Language
Stephanie and I had taken two Russian classes to prepare for our stay, but for the first three months we struggled to communicate. We could exchange simple greetings, ask for directions, shop at the bazaar, and read street and bus signs, but not much more. One problem with being able to speak a little in any language is that people think you know more, and try to start a conversation. Stephanie was often targeted; with her friendly, outgoing manner, she looked like a willing conversation partner. Besides, with her shoulder-length red hair, she looked Russian. “Ya Sibiryachka [I’m a Siberian woman],” she joked, a reference to the fact that her grandparents had once lived in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia before fleeing to Manchuria ahead of the advancing Red Army.
A dubious Russian heritage and a few basic Russian phrases were of less use to Stephanie than her experience in amateur dramatics and improvisational comedy classes. When she didn’t know how to say something, she acted it out. For the first week, we didn’t have any dishwashing detergent and had no idea which cleaning product to use. Stephanie put on an elaborate performance (without props but with sound effects) for a vendor; she finished off a meal, licked her fingers, put down her knife and fork, carried the dishes and utensils to the sink, and turned on the faucet. Then she reached for an imaginary bottle of detergent and looked puzzled. The vendor applauded, showed her the product, and knocked a few som off the price for the free show.
Buying meat was another challenge. Parts of carcasses hung from hooks at market stalls, and customers ordered in quantities of 100 grams. Unless you knew animal anatomy, you were never sure which part of the animal you were buying. This was not good enough for Stephanie, who had recipes for different cuts. How could she buy a rump roast? She started by holding her hands to her ears, pointing her index fingers forward, and making a “Moooo!” sound. It would have been easier to learn the Russian word for beef, govyadina, but that would have ruined the first act. “OK, so what part do you want?” asked the butcher. He led her into the freezer room where the carcasses were hanging. She repeated her impression of the head and then traced her hand along the back of the imaginary steer, pretending to wiggle the tail. The butcher seized one carcass and wiggled a real tail. “Tochno! [exactly!],” said Stephanie.
A Turkish friend, Mustafa, recommended a Turkish butcher’s shop on Sovietskaya. It was more expensive than the bazaar, but it was clean and the quality reliable. The first time, Stephanie went through her usual routine; when she came in again, one of the butchers would lean over the counter, put his index fingers to his ears, and go “Mooo,” to the amusement of his colleagues. Stephanie added props to her routine and showed up with a cookbook. “Look here,” she said, pointing to one of the diagrams that showed the cuts from cattle and sheep. “I’m doing a rib roast. This is what I need.” The language barrier disappeared; she and the butchers were talking meat. After a couple more visits, the butchers borrowed the book, made copies of the diagrams, laminated them and put them on the counter so other customers could order cuts. One small step toward a market economy where the customer comes first.
The $2.50 Phone Bill
Even for those with good language skills, getting things done in Kyrgyzstan in the mid-1990s was a challenge. A seemingly straightforward task, such as banking or paying a utility bill, often turned out to be a complex, time-consuming activity that required visiting several offices, filling out forms and slips of paper, and obtaining signatures and stamps. Sometimes, it involved waiting around for the only person authorized to conduct the transaction to return from lunch. A case in point was our phone bill.
Living in the central district, our phone number began with the number 26. We were told we were fortunate to have that number. Bishkek’s Soviet-era telephone system was more reliable than most, but some exchanges in the city were notorious for dropped calls and crackly lines; by contrast, the 26 exchange usually worked. It’s all relative, because there was always noise on the line, occasionally interrupted by mysterious clicking sounds; it could have been the secret police checking on our dinner plans, but more likely it was simply the creaking and groaning of the arthritic switching system.
Although claiming we had a working phone seemed a stretch, we still had to pay for it. The phone had already been cut off once because the bill hadn’t been paid, but the landlord took care of it. We had just received a recorded phone message and figured it was a reminder to pay the phone bill, so we brushed up on bill-paying phrases and headed off to the main post office. To pay the bill, you first need to know how much you owe, and that’s recorded on a printout on a table. We scanned through it but could not find our number; apparently, another customer had removed that page rather than make a note of the bill. The post office staff said they did not have another printout; they just took money and gave receipts, but had no records. We were directed to the building next door where the records were kept, but the office was closed for lunch. We came back later, went up to the window for our station (number 26), and had the clerk enter the amount. Then we went back to the post office to pay and get a receipt and the obligatory official stamps. We had spent almost two hours to pay a 41 som ($2.50) bill.
Where Does All the Money Go?
Perhaps we could have shortened the wait time at the post office by offering a clerk a few som to look up our bill. In Central Asia in the mid-1990s, the line between tipping and low-level bribery to have people do what they were paid to do was a fine one. Of course, most of those who took small bribes—police, officials in government offices, university and school teachers, judges, lawyers, doctors, journalists—did so not because they were innately corrupt but out of sheer economic necessity. Many people working in the public sector earned less than $100 a month; even with a couple of part-time jobs, it was a struggle to put food on the table, and the occasional bribe to avoid a traffic ticket or to buy a grade made a difference.
The problem was that corruption occurred at all levels of society. The most corrupt were among the wealthiest and most powerful people in politics and business who didn’t need the money to feed their families. The government launched periodic anticorruption campaigns, partly to impress foreign donors. In a sweep in late 1996, President Akayev’s new anticorruption task force took action against officials accused of shady deals, plundering tax revenues and foreign grants, and soliciting bribes; one minister, two provincial governors, several members of the parliament, and several low-level officials lost their jobs, although only a couple ended up in prison. The more interesting question was whether the clampdown was partly political, with the government going after crooked political opponents and ignoring corruption in its own party and the president’s staff.
What concerned me was the hypocrisy of international organizations and foreign governments that publicly denounced corruption but privately connived in perpetuating it. In the early 1990s, Kyrgyzstan, more than any other republic in Central Asia, had embraced the economic and political reforms favored by the West. The donors responded by pouring in aid. Some was well spent on development projects, and some was simply wasted or stolen. Unfortunately, some donors, including UN agencies, regarded corruption as the cost of doing business, and found ways to conceal payoffs in the “Administrative Services” or “Logistical Support” line items in their budgets. I was told that the markup for graft ranged from 10 to 25 percent, depending on the project and which ministry or agency was the implementing partner. Fortunately, some donors—including, as far as I could tell, US government agencies and USAID—worked hard to monitor where the money went, even if they drove their grantees crazy with excessive reporting requirements.
Despite official denials, everyone knew that corruption went on. However, diplomatic niceties had to be observed. The United States had dubbed Kyrgyzstan an “island of democracy” in Central Asia, and no one in the US embassy was going to undermine the image by asking President Akayev where he got the money to buy his villa in Switzerland. Instead, Ambassador Eileen Malloy, a competent diplo
mat who understood Kyrgyz society and politics better than most of her successors, talked about “slippage.” In a speech to a conference held to mark five years of Kyrgyz-US cooperation, she said: “I cannot sit here and tell you that every cent of every dollar or every grain of wheat contributed by the United States has gone where it should. Inevitably, there is slippage.” She was brave to say as much, but the word glossed over the extent of corruption. So the university rector spent part of his US travel grant on a new wardrobe? Not to worry—it’s only slippage. So the agriculture minister who supervised the USAID-funded privatization campaign is driving a new BMW? It’s only slippage. Too many slippages turn into a slippery slope.
FIGURE 3.6 Chess game in park, Bishkek
Life in the Dvor
Most Soviet-era apartment blocks were built around a dvor (courtyard). This patch of land—dusty in summer, snow-covered in winter, muddy in spring—is a public space, a commons for apartment dwellers. In most complexes, apartment entrances are on the dvor, not the street side; you enter the dvor through a tunnel or driveway from the street. When you give directions, especially to a large block, it’s not enough to provide the dom (house) and kvartira (apartment) number, because there may be half a dozen separate entrances (podyezd), each with a staircase and, if you’re lucky, a working elevator. Unless you know the block, you’ll try a couple of entrances before figuring out which one leads to the apartment.
The layout of apartment complexes means that all traffic—people, vehicles, stray animals—passes through the dvor. There are swings and slides for the children, and benches under the trees where, on warm days, neighbors sit and chat. Car owners park on the roadway outside their podyezd, unless they’re fortunate enough to have a small garage at the back of the dvor. Residents cross the dvor to take garbage to the communal dumpsters. Although there’s sometimes litter, many residents take pride in keeping the dvor clean, sweeping the area outside their podyezd. Often, there’s a small grocery or convenience store, and sometimes a hairdresser or shoe repair shop. In our dvor, we knew it was time to get out of bed when we heard the call of the dairyman who sold milk, cream, and eggs from the trunk of his Lada; we went down with our banki (large glass jars), joining the short line of neighbors and children. In the depths of winter, it was a relief to put your coat on over your pajamas and spend a few minutes in the cold, rather than hiking through the snow to the market or store.
Like everyone else, Stephanie and I used the balcony on the dvor side to hang out our washing. The climate of the region is continental, with no rain most days in summer, fall, and early winter; clothes hung out in the evening are dry by the next morning. One morning in late December 1996, as we took down the laundry, we noticed a group of men assembling two yurts in the dvor. The traditional Kyrgyz nomadic dwelling is a round, tent-like structure, about fifteen feet across; sheepskins or canvas are stretched over a wooden frame, and the floors and walls are covered with shirdaks, brightly colored felt rugs. Then the group began chopping wood and building a fire. On our way out to the university, we passed a horse tethered to the fence; when we returned, the carcass was roasting on the spit. We thought it was too early for a New Year celebration so Stephanie asked Ainura, a young neighbor girl who was watching, what they were celebrating. Her face fell, and she started crying. “My grandfather died,” she sobbed. The extended family had come to Bishkek to mourn and to bury the patriarch. By tradition the women of the family sit with the body inside the yurt and wail, while the men sit outside and talk about the life of the deceased. The whole affair lasts a couple of days, and then they bury the body. It is easy to see how this tradition evolved when the Kyrgyz were nomads, moving from winter to summer pastures with their flocks of sheep and horses, and living in yurts year-round. But it was now transposed to an urban setting; the ceremony took place just off a busy main street near shops, markets, and government ministries. It was another sign that although about one-third of the population lived in cities and towns, in some ways they hadn’t moved too far from their rural roots. The mourners likely informed the police of their plans in advance, but in 1996 a wake with open fires and slaughtered horses in the middle of the capital city seemed a normal occurrence. No one was going to tell a Kyrgyz where he could pitch his yurt.
Stephanie got to know the children who played in the dvor, including Dima who lived in the apartment above us and was about nine years old. He would often appear to be talking to himself; when we inquired, he said that in school he had to recite verses by the Russian literary greats, and he was practicing his Pushkin. One day in early October, Stephanie heard a child talking in English (with a Texas accent) in the dvor. “Can I hold your kitten?” asked six-year-old Laura Marie. Dima was holding up a scrawny tabby male kitten he had found. A group of children had gathered, and were passing the kitten around. Stephanie assumed it was Dima’s kitten, and said that he should take it back to his apartment to its mother. Dima said he had found it in the dvor. When he indicated he might wring its neck, Laura Marie burst out crying: “I’m going to ask my mother if we can keep the little kitty.” The answer was no: the family already had two cats and two puppies. “We’ll take the kitten for the night until we can find its owner,” Stephanie volunteered. Of course, no one was going to claim the poor creature, so he stayed in our apartment, happy to have warm food and milk and to curl up under the covers with Stephanie. We made half-hearted attempts to give him away. We placed a small ad in the embassy newsletter which got exactly the same number of responses as most of those “lovely kittens free to good home” ads: none. After a couple of weeks, we realized that the cat was here to stay, and we had better give him a name. We wanted it be culturally appropriate but short and memorable. Partly in honor of his nemesis Dima, we decided to call him Pushkin. When we told Dima, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He would ask “Kak Pushkin? [How’s Pushkin?]” and howl with laughter. Fortunately, we did not adopt any other cats or we would have felt obliged to use the names of other Russian literary greats. “Dostoyevsky, stop scratching the sofa.” “Chekov, it’s time for your flea medicine.”
Over the next few months, Pushkin grew healthy, strong, and good-natured. Some cats are lap pets, but Pushkin preferred shoulders. He climbed up Stephanie’s back and hung over her neck and shoulders, even when she was cooking. He would sit on my shoulders as I worked on the computer. Our Russian teacher, Galina, got the same treatment; our friend Nicholas who took care of Pushkin for a few weeks said that he hung around his neck while he played his drum set.
Nine months later, as Stephanie was preparing to leave Kyrgyzstan (I was to stay on for four more months) we faced a difficult decision: what would happen to Pushkin? We decided to bring him home, hoping he’d get along with our other cats. We contacted the embassy and asked what we needed to do to export a cat. This caused a minor bureaucratic crisis: apparently, we were the first Americans to take a cat out of Kyrgyzstan, so no one knew what regulations applied. The embassy made a few calls to government officials who were equally perplexed but decided that giving Pushkin a feline exit visa would not jeopardize national security. We signed a document attesting that the cat was not an endangered species or a valuable commercial commodity. A vet came to the apartment to give him shots and a medical examination. His clean bill of health was translated into English.
At the airport Stephanie faced down a Turkish Airlines agent who was insisting she pay $1,300 in excess baggage charges. Eventually, the agent relented. “But you must pay for the cat,” she said. Stephanie agreed, and Pushkin, who was unhappily constrained in his carrier and was crying, was duly weighed. “That will be $60,” said the agent. Stephanie handed her a $50 and a $10 bill. “I cannot accept this $10 bill, it’s too old,” said the agent, and handed it back. Stephanie didn’t offer any more bills, so the cat ended up traveling for $50. The agent asked whether the cat should travel in the cabin or in the baggage hold. “In the cabin, of course,” said Stephanie, as if taking cats on international flights
was the sort of thing she did every day. The steward asked a passenger to move to another seat so that Pushkin and Stephanie could sit together. After a two-night stay in Frankfurt, both made it safely home, and Pushkin settled into life with our other cats at our home in rural southeastern Ohio.
Pushkin died from kidney failure on August 8, 2013, in Charleston, West Virginia. He was seventeen years old and had outlived all but one of our other cats. As far as we know, he never missed the dvor.
four
Kasha, Honor, Dignity, and Revolution
Back in the USSR
My first meeting with the dean of the journalism faculty at Kyrgyz State National University (KSNU) in Bishkek did not go well. I had met Anisa Borubayeva in November 1995 while she was on a six-week trip to the United States to visit journalism and communications schools. She said that if I was awarded a Fulbright, KSNU would be happy to host me.
Postcards from Stanland Page 8
