Along the Silk Road II

II.
Arrival; The Project; Randy; Bishkek; The People; Osh; Jalalabad; My Permanent Apartment; Picnic in the Mountains; Jamiyla’s sister dies

Vladimir, our driver, met me at the airport. I recognized my name on the sign he was holding. He knew where we were going and speaks no English, I, no Russian. I knew a small apartment had been arranged as temporary quarters for me but that is all. Vladimir stopped at a grocery store so I could get a few things. It was Sunday evening the third of August. The flight had been delayed in Moscow and the trip long. I left Paris at half past midnight on Sunday morning, and, travelling east, gained time as the real time hours ticked by. Sleep was scarce among the Aeroflot economy class passengers, me included. And the plane for the second leg, from Moscow to Bishkek was a more domestic example of the Areoflot fleet allowing for even less comfort.
I borrowed 500 som (about fifteen dollars) from Vladimir to pay for my things and in a few more minutes I was in my temporary apartment. It is a one bedroom small but neat apartment suitable for temporary lodging and better than a hotel room for extended stay. The bedroom window and balcony open onto the mall that surrounds the Symphony building. Bishkek is filled with parks, monuments and statues. The sprawling mall surrounding the Symphony leads from Chui Street in front of the Mayor’s office past the Symphony to Frunze Street, about three blocks from the office. The search for a permanent apartment would begin nearly immediately the following week. Vladimir indicated to me that he would pick me up at 8:45 the next morning. I settled in and very soon was asleep.

Next morning, true to his word, Vladimir was waiting for me at 8:45. In five minutes we were at the office. Inside I met several of the local staff and two international consultants with whom I had worked previously. Kate had presented for our Kosovo project at a seminar we conducted at Lake Ohrid. A second consultant had come to fill a gap from the departure of the Interim Chief of Party on July 9 and my arrival on August 4. Mitch had worked for me in Kosovo and is not only a quality consultant, but a friend with whom I keep contact. I knew he would be there and we had e-mail and telephone contact before my arrival. Nonetheless, it was good to see him again. I couldn’t help but reflect that I had just departed a rule of law effort with over a hundred lawyers, none of whom I had ever heard of before, largely because none had ever done rule of law development work either at home or abroad, and, likewise, none had ever heard of me. Now I came to a little project tucked away along an ancient trade route somewhere north of India and the only other internationals there were people I not only knew of but had worked with. Another indication of the failure of the Iraq effort.

The local professional staff are all former government officials or judges or both. Young enough to be vital, but old and seasoned enough to not only hold the attention of our counterparts, but to receive respect from them. This is perhaps – no – it is the best local staff I have had the opportunity to work with in any project. It will be challenging to keep up with them.

As is normal for all of my international engagements, this project started before I arrived and due to lack of a permanent Chief of Party, is behind schedule. The demands are great, but the staff good and Mitch’s efforts when he arrived invaluable. The office itself is suitable. Two apartments have been converted to office space in an otherwise residential apartment building. I was shown my office, my desk and my computer and the work began. As difficult as it is to get up to speed when things are already moving, it is so much easier when the project has a design and direction from the start. The immediate task, other than Kate working on things we were required to do, was to complete the work plan. Work plans are a bane for USAID project, but having just come from a place where there was no such thing because there was no plan at all it was, in a weird sort of way, a relief to be working on it.

I had been in e-mail contact with Randy since before I arrived. Randy was the Operations and Maintenance person at our Blackhawk camp in Baghdad. Randy, like Big Gary, had been in Bishkek before. Big Gary was with the State Department and Randy with another contractor, both at different times. Randy had left a girlfriend in Bishkek who he maintained regular contact with. He left Iraq in May to return to Kyrgyzstan with a friend of his who had a contract with the U.S. Air Force base in Bishkek. The base manages tanker planes that refuel planes heading for Afghanistan. Randy’s company provides local maintenance staff for the base.

After giving Randy my new cell phone number I received a call. He and his wife picked me up from the office and we went for a drink. Randy’s wife owns apartments, although none of her’s were available, she agreed to show me several owned by other people. It was good to see Randy again and to know that when Kate and Mitch left, there would be someone in town who I knew.

Bishkek is a large city of approximately one million people. It is the largest city in this country of five million people. By all measurements, it is a fairly new city, having been built in the late nineteenth century. The Kyrgz people historically are nomadic herdsmen. It was the arrival of the Russians that spurred the creation of cities such as Bishkek. During that time one Russian botanist decided that a park stretching from north to south across the city and lined with oak trees would be a positive addition. The park still exists in its original form and likely with many of the original trees. It is about two blocks from my house. Across from my apartment building is an amusement park among a near forest of trees and diagonal across the street is another park. There are many many other parks in the city. More parks than I think I have seen in any city; and certainly more statues. Every park has numerous statues. Statues and monuments are everywhere. Lenin himself has not been deposed here. Although his statue was moved from the front of the National Museum to the rear, it still has a place of prominence across a square from the Parliament building. The locals joked that Lenin points with his hand showing the right way. He still points the right way, even though after having been moved from the front of the building to the back, he now points in the opposite direction.

As with many second world countries, such as we saw in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro, infrastructure is not well maintained. The parks, beautiful as they are with flowers planted and with numerous trees and shrubs, are largely overgrown. Maintenance crews work through them but there are so many parks and so few workers devoted to maintaining them that the parks become overgrown and their potential beauty is unrealized. The sidewalks, sewers and drains also show the effects of neglect. Broken or no concrete, missing manhole covers, broken tubes creating large dangerous holes in the walks everywhere. I quickly remembered habits learned in Kosovo; keep one eye on the sidewalk and one on where I am going.

One oddity in this city is the drains that run along every street and sidewalk. The drains are open and periodically carry water that runs from mountain streams through the city. The water is diverted to particular drains on some sort of schedule and then it is further diverted from the drains to water trees and shrubs. It reminded me a bit of the system the Romans used in places like Pompeii where water from the aqueduct systems was channeled through the city for a variety of purposes from sewage disposal to the provision of water.

All in all, Bishkek is quite a livable city. Stores seem to have everything one could need. Restaurants and bars serve a variety of cuisine for a variety of prices. The biggest problem confronting me is the language. In Bishkek, everyone speaks Russian. In the country Kyrgyz is sometimes the main language, but clearly Russian is the primary language and, unlike nearly all other places I have been, very few people speak any English. I have two translators on staff to assist primarily with communications between the staff, and me and other consultants who come and go through the project. In stores, I resort to pointing and getting prices from the calculator that every shopkeeper has handy.

The people are friendly. Most are willing to help and most, like everywhere, still like Americans as people. I was walking down a street when a man, an older man my age, well, perhaps actually younger, on a bicycle with basket full of newspapers hawked in my direction. He was in front of the Silk Road Lodge Hotel across from our office. He hawked in Russian of course. I spoke to him as I walked, not caring if he understood or not, “do you have any in English.” He responded immediately in what can only be described as the best English I have heard in Kyrgyzstan.

“Only the ‘Times of Central Asia,’” he responded. That is a weekly English language newspaper given away free at the major hotels. A bit startled in a pleasant sort of way, I said, “I already have that, sorry.” He proceeded to complain that all others were in Russian and that, “the Kyrgyz language is in a tomb. It is dead.” I nodded affirmation. “Pardon my mind, “he said apologetically.

“You’re entitled my friend,” I said as I continued along my way.

“Good luck with the traffic,” he yelled as he peddled off down the adjacent street. He was referring to the impatience of the Bishkek drivers with anyone, especially pedestrians. Drivers have a habit of watching the traffic lights of the crossing street as opposed to the one on which they are traveling. By so doing, they can get advance notice of when their light will change; the green lights here flash before turning red. By watching for the flashing green on the cross street they can start edging into the intersection and get that fraction of a second lead on everyone else, just as drivers all over the world try so hard to gain.

The man at the market around the corner from my apartment who sells fruits and vegetables always tries to give me the best fruit he has. He calls one of the boys, sons perhaps, who speak just a tad more English than I speak Russian. The man will take a melon, small honeydew type melons, and hold it to his nose sniffing for the aroma of a sweet melon. Then he will compare to another and go back and forth between them until he decides which is the ripest. He then holds it for me to try, sometimes he holds both for me to compare. On one occasion he asked the opinion of a woman customer. Once we mutually decide – always the one he picks – he hands it to one of the boys who weighs it and tells me in unintelligible English how much. After a few questioning looks, it is punched into the calculator, shown to me and I pay. A nice neighborly ritual I think and so I keep going to his little stand on the sidewalk rather than any of the others. Although he has them for sale, he never sells me bananas but sends me to the woman in the stand next to his.

Most people are Kyrgyz. They have a distinctly Oriental look about them, although Daniyar in our office could blend as well in Mexico. The second largest ethnic group is Uzbeks. I am sure I could not tell the difference from Kyrgyz. Jamilya is Kazak and I cannot distinguish her from the Kyrgyz. The third largest group is Russian. Julia is Russian. There are also many Ukrainians, the result of a migration of some sort at some point in history. Olga is Ukrainian and last week married another Ukrainian-Kyrgyz.

Uzbeks are mostly in the south near the border with Uzbekistan in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad. We are working in courts in both of those cities and when Erkinbek and the Interns were going to sort through files as part of a case survey we were conducting it was decided that it would be an opportunity for me to meet some of the judges and see some of the courts. The trip by road through the mountains is about eight hours; the flight over them about an hour. We purchased tickets for the flight. Since Ermek had lost his internal passport and could not fly without it, Olga went along to translate for me.

We left early and got to the airport, checked in and were bussed to a local Kyrgyz airline’s plane that sat at the far end of the runway near the U.S Airbase. Olga commented on the U.S. military jets sitting waiting for their next mission to re-fuel war planes heading for the war over Afghanistan to the far south. “The U.S. is everywhere,” she said. I did not know if it was an observation, a critical comment, or both.

The plane was a twin engine older prop driven plane. We climbed the stairs, boarded and settled in for the flight. This was Spartan travel by most standards, but not unexpected after my experiences in Bangladesh and other places. The engines whined as the plane finally lifted off the runway and started its climb. It had to reach an altitude sufficient to clear the peaks of the Tian Shan mountain range which themselves tower to over ten thousand feet. As the plane finally cruised and we were given something to drink and a candy, I looked out at the barren peaks below us. Rugged and a mixture of gray and brown, the peaks were stacked in rows one after another then another still. It wasn’t until we had crossed nearly all of the range that we began to see green valleys, then what appeared as small rivers, then roads, then towns. Finally we began the float to ground level over a flat plain and within minutes we were in Osh.

Erkinbek, with the help of Jyldz at the office, had arranged transportation and hotel accommodations for all of us. We were bused to a small hotel on the edge of the city of Osh. I found it quaint in a way, with two levels of rooms overlooking a courtyard with a fountain among fruit trees and outdoor seating for meals. Erkinbek did not like the lack of air conditioning, the lack of a generator and the lack of Internet access. He would find a new hotel for future visits. This was tourist season and the foreign trekkers and cyclists, and other visitors had most rooms in most of the hotels occupied.

Erkinbek is a former Deputy Minister of Justice and for a short time, acting Minister. All of the judges know him. Fortunately, they also respect him. Erkin called the judges with whom we would meet and learned that the meeting would occur at three in the afternoon. In the meantime, he got the interns working at the court and Olga and I went off exploring. We started with the most noted landmark in Osh. There is a rocky peak called Solomon’s Throne which has a museum overlooking the city and a mosque built for an early Muslim emperor and now is a Muslim holy place. We took a cab to the museum then walked up the peak to the small mosque. It was a steady uphill climb. We stopped to buy water from the old woman vending drinks outside the mosque, and then continued. Olga was still in her dress and high heels, but at twenty-three this did not seem to bother her. For me, it was, well, more difficult. The path took us up further then around and down the far side. There was a small tree or bush on which people had tied small pieces of cloth. The tradition is that if you tie a piece of cloth to the bush your wishes will come true. How trees or bushes are selected remains a mystery to me, but we saw one at the national park in the mountains later as well. The views of the city from the peak were magnificent but the site of a cab at the bottom was a relief. Within a few minutes we were sitting at an outdoor restaurant for lunch of local cuisine. Lagman and kabobs.

The afternoon meeting was like most I have been to over the years with a tour of the facility included. The courthouses in the Kyrgyz Republic are overcrowded and otherwise inadequate. Most are buildings converted from other uses. The two we toured had two courtrooms each and as many as twenty judges. Most hearings are conducted in the judges’ chambers. Large cases or serious criminal cases are done in the courtrooms. In one courthouse, two judges shared an office and while we looked in, one had a hearing in progress while the other tried to pay attention to his own work.

The meeting with the second judge was later and in another building in another part of town. We met him at five and after the usual discussion and tour of the facility, we were invited to dinner. It was already six in the evening. I was treated to a situation I had not seen in Bangladesh, Kosovo or Iraq, judges working to the end of the day instead of two in the afternoon. The results are apparent. They are very close to meeting their too short two month time frames for completing civil and criminal cases.

The restaurant was not far from our hotel. They had a separate room for us. The table was covered with food; fruits, meat appetizers, salads, breads and the like. We visited, ate the food in front of us and drank toasts of vodka. The tradition, Russian, is that each person makes a toast then everyone drinks. As subsequent courses arrived we kept going around the table making toasts and drinking shots of vodka. I did not count the number of chilled half liter bottles that the waitress brought, but at the end of the night, I was able to retain my composure while matching my hosts … toast for toast. It was a fun evening and the expression of hospitality impressive.

The next day we were off to Jalalabad, a city to the north of Osh but which is accessed by driving around a horn of Uzbekistan that juts into Kyrgyzstan at that particular area. A twenty minute drive becomes an hour or more. There we followed a similar procedure, meeting with the Oblast judge then out to the Rayon court to meet the judges of that court; all followed by a lunch the same nature as the prior evening’s dinner with the exception of the vodka, which was not served.

Olga and I returned immediately to Bishkek on the evening flight. On the way back to Osh and the airport, we stopped at a small city midway where a particular variety of rice is grown and sold. This was a must-stop for my Kyrgyz friends who wanted to take the rice back to Bishkek. The market was typical although clearly in a poorer more rural setting. Burlap sacks of rice stood one after another along the stalls of the market. The vendors would take a few grains and roll them between their hands and show the quality after do doing. Unfamiliar with the process and being neither an agronomist nor a student of gastronomy, I was unable to discern whether the bags Olga bought were in fact of a high quality. The experience was worth the time spent.
In this town there is a tower similar to the one in the Bishkek area which is an ancient minaret used for call to prayer. The tower and the mausoleum nearby are open to visitors and we climbed the steep circular stairs to the top for the panoramic view of the area. It is the Turks who brought Islam to this region and they are still prominent in Kyrgyzstan with many schools in the Bishkek and surrounding area. Olga and Ermek are both products of Turkish schools. Ermek found the excessive indoctrination in Turkish culture objectionable. Suffice to say, the Turkish influence, at least in Central Asia, is more than historic.

The trip back was uneventful with the exception of a non functioning ventilation system in the plane, making the hour or so trip warm and uncomfortable.

It is always difficult arriving at a new posting. Getting acquainted with the project and staff are the first priority, but second is finding a place to live. I was put in an apartment on a temporary basis but needed to find permanent housing. The procedure for reimbursing temporary housing is structured so that you must find housing within a month or be penalized financially. And so the search was on-going. The project had a realtor who showed me several apartments which were either too far away, five floors up with no elevator, or beyond my allowance for an apartment. Johna, Randy’s wife, showed me several as well, but none struck me with the right mix of all variables. Finally I was shown an apartment about three blocks from the office on the same street, not too far from the Beta store (groceries), well within my allowance, on the third floor plus an elevator, and which appealed to me. Jyldz did not care for it as being too old. It did in fact date to the seventies with no intervening remodeling, but it felt warm to me and was large enough without being too large. The apartment is located in one of three buildings near the Parliament which were built and occupied by Communist Party officials in the Soviet era. They are well known buildings called oosh kaduk, or something like that, meaning “three wells” in Kyrgyz.

I am now settled in and life has become more normal. I can sit in the enclosed balcony and open a window or two, watch the leaves slowly float to the cool autumn ground below as I blow my cigar smoke out, sip an aperitif and read a book. My refrigerator is adequately stocked and my meals cooked from the menu I decide upon and to my personal specifications. Life is good.

The mountains overwhelm the southern skyline, encroaching on the city itself. They come whenever the shroud of haze is lifted off of them. Then, there they are in their ever changing splendor; dominating all that man has built below them. The weather is still good, so we decided that a picnic to the mountains would be fun. All those who could make it came, Julia and her sister, Daniyar and his son, Jamiyla and her daughter, Vladimir, myself and Phyllis who was here consulting. The staff arranged for the salads, meat, charcoal and grill. We drove to the National Park about forty minutes from town.

The Russians instilled some good habits here. Many streets and roads are lined with trees, sometimes multiple rows of trees. They are half century or more tall and make the drive pleasant. This seems to be a corollary to the parks in the city. Whatever the reason for their existence it adds to the tranquility of this place.

The park itself is well maintained if mostly rustic. Trails are marked for the more adventurous, a hotel for those wanting to stay but in more conventional surroundings, and between the rushing river and the road there are innumerable spots for picnickers. We found one of them and laid out our blankets, assembled the grill and fixed the kabobs. Vladimir appointed himself the official cook for the afternoon. We had taken a short hike of an hour or so along a paved trail that ran along the river. The children tied pieces of cloth to the tree along the trail that held the thousands of pieces of cloth tied by many hikers who came before us and made their own special wishes

We ate as much as we could and then rested and watched the water as it charged down the mountain over, and around the rocks and stones in the river bed. It was white as it surged in its main course and clear and slowing to a mere trickle in the pools along the fringes of the raging watercourse; it was there that we laid our water melon to chill in its glacial coolness. The sound and sight of the fast moving water, the sun, and the towering mountains capped with white frozen ice taken together had a mesmerizing effect. It was a pleasant afternoon in a beautiful place with good people to share with. In such settings the barriers that languages erect have a tendency to melt away.

Jamiyla’s sister died. She had been in the hospital for several days or perhaps weeks. I learned of the illness about a week before her ultimate death. Jamiyla is the youngest of three children and has two children of her own. She also has responsibility for her parents and now her sister’s twenty-one year old daughter. In the midst of entertaining oversight visitors from Washington and having meetings at the office daily, Jamiyla came rushing to me in tears that the hospital called and she needed a ride there. We arranged a ride for her and within an hour she called at five in the afternoon that her sister had died.

The incident was reminiscent of the loss of one of my local attorneys in Bangladesh. Some of you may recall that Murtayish died of a heart attack in Dhaka after being diagnosed in Khulna with heartburn the night before. He was in his mid forties. He was a good guy and well respected among his colleagues in a refreshing variety of disciplines in which he was involved. I think it was the burial that triggered my reminiscing. Jamiyla’s sister was buried, in the Muslim tradition, the next morning.

The week following, on Monday, Jamiyla called and invited the entire staff to lunch at a local restaurant. Earlier we had taken a collection in the office for her. This is a local tradition I was told. Like that tradition, the lunch is also a tradition. The table was set as I have seen already when dining with judges, completely covered with fruits, salads, breads, dried fruits and nuts and other appetizers. We ate several courses when Jamiyla announced that she had a lamb butchered especially for the lunch and the waiters brought out platters of meat and disbursed it among all the staff. Plastic bags were provided to carry the meat, and every other piece of food left on the table, home. When the meat did not have enough fat on it, the person was given a two inch by two inch cube of fat. Fat is an important part of meat dishes here. In spite of this habit, the people remain thin. I dined on lamb and lots of bread Monday evening at my apartment. Jamiyla’s spirits appeared to be improved we will welcome her return.

I have been impressed by the generosity and compassion the people here have for each other. Our staff have not been together that long, but they have bonded well. They collect money for birthdays, deaths, weddings, gifts for consultants who visit and nearly every other occasion they can conjure up; all with great enthusiasm. When our component leaders are given compliments, they immediately acknowledge the help and support of their other team members. They work together amicably and produce results that are excellent. I am not sure there is a lesson to draw since these are characteristics we have always admired. I just don’t know where, when, and how we stopped employing them ourselves.

Until Next Connection,

Dan

Leaving Iraq July 27, 2008