When I was 14, my family took a vacation to Kyrgyzstan. I’ve never heard of anyone else who has vacationed in the small Central Asian country bordered by China and Uzbekistan, but my dad was in a peculiar situation. His sister, who studied Russian history and culture for most of her adult life, was in her last of four years living in Kyrgyzstan. Originally working on a year-long Fullbright scholarship, my aunt fell in love with the country. Through her work, she met a great friend, whose family essentially adopted my aunt. Eventually, they invited my dad to come and stay with them. Not wanting to offend his sister’s adopted family, and realizing that an opportunity like that would not come along again, he accepted. So, in the summer of 2000, I found myself on a plane to Kyrgyzstan. I had no idea my life was about to change.
We spent 5 days in Bishkek, the capital, and 5 days in a village by Lake Issy-kul, the second largest natural salt lake in the world. It had been a decade since the Soviet Union fell, and Bishkek looked like it had not been touched since then. There was a statue of Lenin and the architecture was exactly what I expected--big, heavy, concrete buildings. As we walked through the city and the apartment buildings of my aunt’s friends, I couldn’t help but notice how every single building was falling apart. I will never forget when one woman told me that, of course, they were happy that the Soviets were no longer in charge, but now no one had any idea how to take care of the communal property. In the Soviet system, all buildings were taken care of by the government so it was still unclear who would do that now.
The other thing I remember about Bishkek was driving through the city (in a “cab” we hired by flagging a random driver down and negotiating a rate). As our guide was pointing our important places, she casually mentioned that you could tell any house that was owned by a government official. Anyone who had a three-story house must be rich and anyone who was rich must be a corrupt government official.
Up until then, my United States education had taught me that the we were good and the Soviets were bad. This was the first time I realized that there was no black or white. While the policies of the Soviets were not the greatest, at least there were policies. In some ways, the mess that remained was worse.
If my time in Bishkek taught me about the politics of Kyrgyzstan, my time in Issy-kul taught me about the people. We rented a van and a driver to take us the 8-hour trip to the lake. We paid extra so that the van driver would not pick anyone else up on the way, but when a distant family member of the driver flagged him down, we squeezed to accommodate one more. For the driver, it would have been more of a dishonor not to give this person a ride that is was to break his promise to the strangers who had paid him. We eventually arrived and stayed with some mutual friends who had no electricity or plumbing. Our bathroom was a hole in the ground surrounded by a hut. Our shower was the lake. I woke up every morning to their cow, who was tied to a tree outside the house, mooing.
Our visit was a great honor to this family and, to celebrate, they spent prepared an all day feast for us. In the morning, the men went out into the mountains to find and kill a sheep. Then they butchered it and cooked all the meat over the fire in the yard. In the afternoon, we started eating., moving into different rooms for each course. In the final course, the most important parts of the sheep were divvied up between those attending based honor. My dad, being the male guest, was the most honored person there. As such, he received the sheep head and was expected to eat everything, including the eyes. (Traditional says that he should share it with the person he loved the most. The looks of horror on my step-mom and my faces meant he shared it with my brother.) The brains are considered a delicacy and my dad did everyone a great favor by sharing the bowl of brains with the room. Being the youngest female guest, I was left me with the tail.
We had never met these people before and labored all day to give us the most delicious parts of the meal. Everywhere we went, we were treated as family. I realized that, despite the language and geographic barriers, these were people just like me. I just happened to be born in American and they just happened to be born in Kyrgyzstan.
Since then, I have kept a close eye on the politics of the country. When I heard of the most recent opposition overthrow I didn’t have to get a map to figure out where the country was, read a dictionary to figure out how to say it, or think of our country’s military interests. I thought of the people who, for ten days, treated me like family. Those aren’t faceless victims of third-world violence; they are my family members who just happened to be born in Kyrgyzstan.
