Poking Around in Central Asia: October 2014

Trip 2 - Part 5

Bishkek to Zhigergen to Almaty to Morgantown

by Craig Mains

Poking Around in Central Asia: October 2014
Trip 2 - Part 5
Bishkek to Zhigergen to Almaty to Morgantown

by Craig Mains


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Lenger City, Kazakhstan
Today was a dedicated travel day. CAREC had hired their favorite Bishkek driver, Akeem, to drive us into Kazakhstan, where we would catch a train to Shymkent. We would then spend the night nearby in Lenger with out local hosts Kalympyr and Ali Khan, as Jerry and I had on the previous trip.

Akeem had also been one of the drivers during this leg of the July trip. However, Jerry and I were in the second car so he was not our driver. Since there were only four of us now--Sasha was still being punished and was not traveling with us--we only needed one car at this point. It seemed like a sensitive topic so I didn't ask about Sasha's whereabouts.


Photo by Craig Mains

Photo: Sandra

The M-39 is a major east-west highway in Central Asia, connecting Almaty and Bishkek in the east with Shymkent and Tashkent, Uzbekistan in the west. We would not be driving the entire way to Shymkent though. Akeem would take us as far as a town called Lugovoy where we would catch a train the rest of the way. Lugovoy is about 100 miles west of Bishkek and 187 miles east of Shymkent.


Photo by Craig Mains

Although Tais had told us that snow here in October didn't last long, this snow was persisting. It was a rather dreary day that was a sharp contrast to the autumn weather we had until yesterday. It wasn't especially cold but the air was damp and it didn't take long to feel cold once you were outside very long.


Photo by Craig Mains

This is a photo of the border crossing between Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan near the village of Chaldovar. It was less crowded this time than it was during the first trip. As usual, we had to remove all luggage and drag it with us to the Border Control facility. One of the Border Control agents looked at me and said, "Ebola?" I told him, "Ebola, nyet" and he was satisfied with that.

After we made it through to the Kazakhstan side we had a long wait until Akeem made it through with the car. I'd guess we waited outside for about an hour and a half. There was a string of convenience and liquor stores at the border and Sandra and Sergei picked up a bottle of cognac and a deck of cards for the train.


Photo by Craig Mains

Some scenery along M-39. Once across the border we continued on to Lugovoy.


Photo by Craig Mains

A one-pump gas station somewhere along M-39.


Photo by Craig Mains

One of the things I had noticed along the M-39 (and elsewhere) was that no two bus stop shelters were ever exactly the same. Many incorporated glass, tile, or pebbles embedded in concrete.

I later read that because of their small size, architecture students in the Soviet Union were often assigned to design bus shelters as student projects. The students were given freedom to let their imaginations run wild resulting in some unconventional designs, including one shelter somewhere in Kyrgyzstan that is shaped like a kalpak. Many of the bus stop shelters were in deteriorating condition, although this one was not too bad.


Photo by Craig Mains

Nobody in the car seemed to know what the significance was of this set of portraits along the highway.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Arrival at the Lugovoy train station.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

CAREC's favorite driver-for-hire, Akeem. Akeem is an ethnic Uighur or Uyghur. Uighurs are a Turkic people who are Muslim. That generally applies to Kazakhs and Kyrgyz as well so what differentiates a Uighur from a Kazakh didn't seem too well defined to me. There are pockets of Uighurs across Eurasia and the origins of Uighurs and what makes a Uighur a Uighur is a subject of much debate. Western news media usually pronounce Uighur as "wee ger" but I noticed Akeem pronounced it something closer to "oy ger."

The CAREC people like Akeem because he has, they said, a quick and wicked sense of humor. Unfortunately, Sergei wasn't translating everything so Sandra and I didn't get the full benefit of hearing his smart-ass comments.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Tais at the Lugovoy train station. The carts in the back belong to the free-lance vendors who bring snacks around to sell to people on the train. Some of them appear to be old-fashioned baby buggies that were modified.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Inside the Lugovoy station waiting for our train. The Lugovoy station was considerably smaller than the Chu station where Jerry and I boarded in July. Lugovoy is about midway between Chu, where Jerry and I boarded in July, and Taraz, which was one of our stops before Shymkent.


Photo by Craig Mains

Our train looked identical to the one Jerry and I took in July. It is possible that it is the same train since we were traveling the same route.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Drinking cognac and eating lemons. These were a special type of lemon that Makmoud gave us that only grow around Isfara. They did taste slightly different than regular lemons.

Sergei had rounded up four mismatched mugs from somewhere. Sandra commented on their dubious cleanliness. She volunteered to wipe them off with her disinfectant wipes but Sergei convinced her that the cognac would serve the same purpose.


Photo by Tais

Photo: Tais

Surprisingly, this was the first time on the entire trip that I felt like I was starting to get drunk. All the other times when we drank vodka I was also eating. I later read somewhere that if you want to delay or limit getting drunk you should eat meat while you are drinking because the protein interferes with the absorption of alcohol. I think almost every other time we were toasting we were also eating meat.

Shortly after this picture was taken the train security guard busted us for drinking on the train. He came into our compartment and showed us a grimy, dog-eared, coverless book of all the train regulations, of which there were many. The no-alcohol rule though was obviously the most violated regulation because the book flopped open automatically to that page. He checked our passports and took Sergei away to talk with him privately. Sergei told us later that he didn't mind paying the guard a small bribe because those types of jobs didn't pay well and it was probably helping to keep his family fed. I noticed the guard did not confiscate the cognac and Sergei said the bribe meant we had paid for the privilege to continue. He would not tell us how much he had to pay.


Photo by Craig Mains

We spent part of the time playing cards. Sergei taught us a complicated Russian card game. Later I taught them to play 500, which was, after some cognacs, a whole lot easier to explain. Tais and Sergei weren't familiar with it.

There were two restrooms on our train car, one at each end of the car. In one of them the floor was covered with water. It had an actual toilet instead of a squat slot. But because it was a tiny room, the sink was within an easy arm's reach of anyone sitting on the toilet. I think that those people who preferred anal rinsing to toilet paper were using sink water and sloshing much of it on the floor in the process. Someone had also set the toilet paper roll on the floor where it had absorbed water to because a soggy wad. Fortunately, I didn't need it. Later, from the hallway I observed a woman open the door to the restroom, assess the situation, let out an exasperated sigh, and then bend down and roll up her pants cuffs before venturing in.

The other restroom was not being used much because the light bulb was burned out. So, when you closed the door it was totally pitch black inside. On my second trip though I opted for the darkness rather than the wetness.


Photo by Craig Mains

Above is view of the steppes to the north at dusk. Not long after it got dark we decided to try to get some sleep. This took some choreography with four people in a four-bunk compartment. The top bunks folded down from the wall. The bottom bunks lifted to provide a storage space underneath that accommodated most of our luggage. I didn't get much, if any sleep, as usual.

Some time after midnight, we arrived at the Shymkent train station and were met by Kalympyr, who drove us on to her and Ali Khan's house in Lenger. She drives much slower than Ali Khan and even though it was only about 20 miles from the train station to Lenger, it seemed a lot longer. When we got to Kalympyr's and Ali Khan's house--there was Sasha. He looked good and appeared to be sober.

Once there, we got cleaned up, had something to eat, and then Kalympyr showed us our beds. Tomorrow we would be going to Zhigergen to deal with the recalcitrant Ugam Small Basin Council.


Photo by Craig Mains

Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Lenger to Zhigergen to Shymkent to Almaty
After the visit in July, CAREC had asked us for recommendations regarding the training that would be taking place in October. I had recommended dropping the Ugam Small Basin Council and just focusing on the Isfara and Aspara groups. It seemed clear that the local akeem was using his influence with the local people to block the project.[2] CAREC's response had been that they would go around the local akeem to someone higher up who would force him to participate. I wasn't optimistic that that would work.

The meeting was again scheduled for the local government building in the village of Zhigergen, which was about 30 miles from Lenger on rural roads. It was the same building where Jerry and I met with the group in July. We took two cars. I was riding with Ali Khan and some of the others were riding with Kalympyr.


Photo by Craig Mains

Livestock on the road to Zhigergen was common.


Photo by Craig Mains

A peach-colored house and privy, under construction.


Photo by Craig Mains

This picture shows some of the people from the Ugam basin who showed up in Zhigergen for the training. Because the Ugam basin had been designated during the Soviet era as a source for drinking water for the downstream city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, there were severe restrictions on how water could be used. Those restrictions are still in place. The residents of the basin are not allowed to divert water for irrigation. As a result, the three talks I had presented to the Isfara and Aspara groups weren't applicable here. So, I really had nothing to do today. Sandra had two presentations on basic rural drinking water and wastewater management to present. I had briefed Sandra on my perspective of the group but, in retrospect, I'm not sure if I adequately prepared her.

Tais informed Sandra and me that an auditor from USAID would be attending the meeting to evaluate how well the training went. It was just our luck that she would choose the basin that was the least supportive of the project. It would have been so much better for her to have chosen either of the other two basin meetings to attend. Also, Tais informed us that this particular auditor was notoriously critical. In person she was very soft spoken and usually had few criticisms. A week or two later though, CAREC would receive an official written evaluation that was always brutally critical. They had a nickname for her that Sergei said did not translate into English very well.

Fortunately (I suppose), the USAID auditor was running late so Sandra started without her. Once Sandra started giving her presentation, a woman in the back started giving her a hard time. It was, I thought, borderline heckling. Sandra's slides had a lot of text--Sandra told me she felt that was better because then the attendees had more of a written record of what was presented that they could take with them. [1] But it also meant that practically everthing Sandra said was also written somewhere on the slides. The woman in the back at least twice said, "You don't have to read for us. We do know how to read." (Which, I think, was not even true for everyone because the slides were in Russian and many of the people in the Ugam group understood only Kazakh. So, at least some of them could not read the slides. Sergei was translating from English to Russian and Ali Khan was translating from Russian to Kazakh.) At one point the woman also said, "You don't have to tell us this--we already know all of this." She did not, it seemed to me, say any of this in a pleasant way.

Sandra, I thought, did a very good job of not getting outwardly rattled. I'm not sure I would have been able to pull that off. The whole thing struck me as being orchestrated. There was just something about the way the woman spoke that made it seem like it had been set up ahead of time. Perhaps I was reading too much into it but I found it odd that when Jerry and I were here in July no women spoke during the entire meeting. I suspect a woman was chosen to speak out for this meeting because it might have been viewed more unfavorably if a man was heckling a woman.

The woman, who apparently felt she spoke for the entire group, also would occasionally tell Sandra, "We've already read this slide. Go to the next one." So, both presentations ended up being considerably abbreviated, especially the second one. Sandra was done with both before the USAID auditor even showed up. All this time, because the room was warm and I was sleep-deprived, I was making a not entirely successful effort to stay awake. It was the same room where Jerry and I met with the Ugam group in July and I had a hard time staying awake during that meeting as well. In both cases it felt like a week of poor sleep caught up with me whenever I came into this room.


Photo by Craig Mains

After Sandra was done, Ali Khan and the local akeem had a lengthy conversation in Kazakh from opposite ends of the room. Sandra and I didn't know what they were saying since Sergei couldn't translate for us. I assume that Ali Khan was making his case for why the project, and his ideas in particular, would benefit the people in the basin.

The local akeem was, I think, then telling Ali Khan why it would not work. All I had to go on was the tone of voice and body language. Ali Khan was getting visibly frustrated and agitated. The local akeem was maintaing a very calm demeanor, which I think was pissing off Ali Khan that much more. It seemed like nothing had changed since the last meeting--or if it had, it had gotten worse. Ali Khan continued to make a logical case for the merits of the projects he had in mind. Neither he nor CAREC seemed to be willing to acknowledge that the akeem's resistance had nothing to do with the potential benefits of the project. In my opinion, he just did not want to have any outside competition for influence with the local people.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

The man standing is the akeem or the local big shot. The woman directly behind him with the red headscarf is the woman who was badgering Sandra. The woman on the far left with the orange neck scarf is the USAID auditor who had finally arrived. Her driver had trouble finding Zhigergen, which is not surprising since I don't remember seeing any posted road signs or route numbers in the rural areas and no one seemed to use GPS.

As during the previous meeting here in July, we were invited to stay for lunch. Unlike in July, the lunch was served onsite. Only a handful of the attendees stayed behind to have lunch with us. The local akeem expressed his regrets that he was too busy to eat with us. It seemed to me like he was sending us the message that he was done wasting his time with this foolishness.

The lunch was not as elaborate as the one in July but was still tasty. They again served us genuine kumiss. The same woman ladled it out of a wooden container into our cups. Sandra told me later that she noticed her pour the leftover kumiss people hadn't drank back into the container.

Naturally, there was some vodka. Some of the local people at the table were commenting about how nice it was of the US to send people to other countries to help with environmental problems. Ali Khan added something about how that number was dwarfed by the number of troops the US military had stationed around the world. It was my turn so I proposed a toast to the day when those numbers would be reversed. Sandra told me later the USAID auditor was taken aback by my comment. She told Sandra she agreed with me but would never say something like that publicly. It had slipped my mind that she was still present.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

The fellow above is the same one who monitored my vodka consumption during the lunch in July--he was again making sure I was fully draining my glass. He insisted that after each toast we turn our glasses over on the table to show that they were completely empty. He said that if you didn't fully drain your glass during a toast it showed that you didn't agree with the spirit of the toast. At one point, the local akeem, who, although he was not eating with us, was occasionally hovering in the background, told him to cut it out. There was only one bottle of vodka on the table this time so the toasting did not go on as long as it did in July.

In the background of this photo, Tais is completing some paperwork with one of the attendees. I don't know what percentage of them received a stipend for attending the training but it was enough to keep Tais pretty busy with paperwork. I wasn't sure how much of the stipend was reimbursement for travel expenses and how much was just a payment to get them to sit through the presentation.


Photo by Craig Mains

After lunch, the USAID auditor, because she had missed Sandra's presentations, wanted to meet with the akeem and some of the other attendees who were still present to get their opinions of how the training went. I'm sure that must have been interesting. She was then going to give Tais a brief verbal preliminary report. We all went outside to wait for the auditor to finish and for her to meet with Tais before heading back to Lenger.

Above is a view of part of downtown Zhigergen that we could see from where we were standing around waiting. The one building looked like a convenience store but it didn't seem to be open.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

We spent well over an hour just waiting around outside for the auditor to finish talking with the akeem and some of the others. I assume the woman with the red head scarf was there to provide her opinion. Some of the attendees stayed behind and chatted with us. It wasn't particularly cold outside--probably around 35 degrees--but it started to feel cold standing around. Eventually the auditor finished and then she had to meet with Tais. I don't know why we couldn't have waited in another room inside somewhere. I'm pretty sure the building had more than one meeting room.


Photo by Craig Mains

This guy decided that Sandra looked cold so he plopped his hat on her head. Through Sergei, this fellow told us that he was a former weight lifter and in his youth he had just missed making the Soviet Olympic weightlifting team. He was the last person cut. He is also the manager and coach of the local kokpar team. Kokpar is the Kazakh version of the Central Asian sport that has been described as rugby on horseback--only instead of using a ball, a goat or calf carcass is used. He no longer participates himself as he is in his 60s but played when he was younger. He was quite proud of the local team. He said it took great strength and coordination to lift a calf carcass off the ground while hanging off of a moving horse. No doubt. He told us they sometimes stuff the carcass with sand to make it even heavier. Just by shaking his hand I could tell that he was still very strong.

The turquoise building in the background is the local elementary school. By now, school was over for the day and the kids were on their way home.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

The kids heading home from school were curious about the foreign-looking people. You see a lot of variation in facial features but you don't see many people with reddish-colored hair in Central Asia. I'm sure Sandra and I both stood out. Some of the kids were eager to have their pictures taken.


Photo by Craig Mains

Some of them were having fun pretending that they didn't want to have their pictures taken.


Photo by Craig Mains

After what seemed like hours, the auditor met with Tais. On the way back to Lenger we asked Tais what the auditor had told her. Tais said she mentioned a handful of things but was not overly critical. However, she said that what the auditor told her verbally meant nothing anyway because she fully expected CAREC to get a written evaluation that would be scathingly critical--but for us not to be concerned; it was standard practice with this auditor.


Photo by Craig Mains

Sergei having a cigarette back in Lenger on the veranda of Ali Khan's and Kalympyr's house. We were not going to be staying over for the night. We had an evening flight scheduled from Shymkent back to Almaty.


Photo by Craig Mains

A wintry view of Lenger from the path to the outhouse. It felt a lot different than when I was there in July.


Photo by Craig Mains

A view of the back of Kalympyr's and Ali Khan's house. We stayed for dinner but not long after headed to the Shymkent airport to catch our flight to Almaty.


Photo by Craig Mains

A view of the street that Kalympyr's and Ali Khan's house is on. Their house is at the end of a dead end street where this photo was taken from. Ali Khan told us that Kazakhs are more concerned about how the interiors of their houses look than they are about the exteriors.

Ali Khan drove us to the Shymkent airport where Sergei, Tais, Sandra, and I caught a plane back to Almaty. Sasha rode to Shymkent with us but then found his way back separately so he would not have to fly. Once back in Almaty the four of us got a taxi. We dropped Sergei off at the home of some of his friends. He had another translating job lined up in northern Kazakhstan in a few days but was going to spend some time with his friends until then. I gave him what I thought was a pretty generous tip. He had done a lot more work for this trip than for the first one. Plus, I felt I should give him something for any bribes he covered for us.

Tais had the cabdriver drop Sandra and me off back at the hotel Kazzhol. We would spend the night in Almaty. Our flight back to the US was not until early in the a.m. on Friday, so we would have the entire day tomorrow to relax. We were also planning to visit the CAREC offices in the afternoon.


Photo by Craig Mains

Thursday, October 30, 2014
Almaty, Kazakhstan
The view from my room back again at the Hotel Kazzhol. Somehow it felt like we had been gone 10 weeks rather than 10 days. That was at least partly because of the change in weather, although Tais said this was unseasonably wintry. It also looked to me like the apartment building building roofs had further deteriorated in the last 10 days, but it was just a view of a similar but different building since I was in a different part of the hotel.


Photo by Craig Mains

Sandra and I were going to stop by the CAREC offices in the afternoon but that left a big part of the day to walk around. I suggested that we walk to Panfilov Park but we didn't make it quite that far. We made it to this park, which I think is called Old Square or Astana Square.


Photo by Craig Mains

This is the Alia Mondagulova and Manshuk Mametova Memorial in Old Square Park. They were female Kazakh World War II heroes who both died in frontline combat. They were two of very few women to receive the Hero of the Soviet Union badge for bravery. Mondagulova was a sniper and Mametova was a machine gunner. See the person in the lower left of the photo to get an idea of the scale of the monument.

There is now some controversy about whether they actually performed all of the heroic deeds that are attributed to them. There have been some suggestions that Russians played up the WWII contributions of Central Asians to encourage a greater level of sacrifice because some Central Asians were not that enthusiastic about supporting the war effort of the Russians, who some still resented as invaders.


Photo by Craig Mains

Somewhere along Tole bi Street.


Photo by Craig Mains

Around 3:00 pm CAREC had arranged for a taxi to come by the Kazzhol to pick Sandra and me up to bring us for a tour of the CAREC offices. Part of the purpose of the visit was to discuss how the training went and to plan a little for the next visit.

Our cabbie had a hard time finding the CAREC headquarters, which is on one of the many narrow alleyways that branch off of the main avenues. Most of these alleyways are one-lane, but not one-way. At one point another cab came toward us on the same one-lane alley. Both of the drivers then just sat there in a face-off and intermittently honked their horns at each other. After a while our driver backed up but only after two other cars arrived behind the other cabbie and also started blowing their horns. In all, we were probably deadlocked for 10 or 15 minutes. I wondered what the protocol for a passenger in this situation usually is. Would our driver have been more willing to give in if we had said something?

After driving down a lot of wrong dead ends and some phone calls we finally found the office, shown above, which is located inside a former elementary school. Half of the building is now used as a day care center and the other half is used by CAREC. They have a nice wooded area in the front that was the former playground of the elementary school. There is still some playground equipment for the day care center but they also have a nice volleyball court that the CAREC staff uses in the summer.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Anna told us that they used to have this arch over the entance to the building but so many people had trouble finding the building that they moved it to the entry of the property to make it easier to find. It didn't help our driver.


Photo by Anna

Photo: Anna

The sign in the entrance lobby of the CAREC headquarters. It shows a map of the region they aspire to serve, which includes the five countries of Central Asia.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

These are the three women who we worked with most directly on the project. From left to right: Anna, Ekaterina (Katya), and Tais. Anna and Tais report to Katya but it wasn't clear to me how involved she actually was with the project.

While all three of the women were ethnic Russians that wasn't true for CAREC in general. They took us for a tour of the offices and introduced us around and there were plenty of people from various other ethnic groups.

None of the three seemed too concerned with what had happened in Zhigergen. All they said was that they were going to go to a higher level administrator in the Ugam area who would force the local akeem to cooperate whether he wanted to or not. We talked a little about the next trip but nothing substantial was decided. Aftewards they called us a cab (not the same driver) and Sandra and I returned to the Kazzhol.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Sandra and I met later for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Shown above is the section of the menu featuring the dishes made with horsemeat. 3500 tenges at the time was less than $10.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Almaty at dusk. This was the only time I was in Almaty that it was clear enough to see the nearby mountains.


Photo by Sandra

Photo: Sandra

Almaty apartments at night. Our flight out was not scheduled to leave until almost 3:00 am on Friday so we had some time to rest before our cab came to take us to the airport.


Friday, October 31, 2014
Almaty, Kazakhstan to Morgantown
CAREC had arranged for a cab to come by the hotel to take us to the airport. Around 1:00 am we checked out and met the cabbie outside the hotel. The cab was a van so we loaded our luggage in the back. We got both of our bigger pieces of luggage stowed away. I was in the process of also throwing in my carry-on daypack when I realized the driver thought we were done and had already started to slam the back hatch--with my head directly under it. He was on his cell phone with one hand and closing the hatch with the other and wasn't watching.

It was one of those odd things that seemed to happen in very rapid slow motion. I felt the impact and my glasses went flying. Luckily, I think I was able to move my body just enough that the door struck a glancing blow to the side of my head instead of the top. I felt very lucky because this cabbie was built along the lines of the weight lifter/kokpar team coach we met in Zhigergen and he didn't just close the hatch--he slammed it shut. I think if it had hit me on the top of my head instead of the side I would have been concussed. Nevertheless it opened a cut on the side of my head. I found my glasses, which, remarkably, were relatively undamaged. I was able to bend them back so that they fit. By the time we got to the airport my head had stopped bleeding. I cleaned myself up before we boarded.

After two long flights--Almaty to Frankfort and Frankfort to DC--and one short flight we were back in Morgantown around 10:00 pm. There were only six passengers deplaning in Morgantown--Sandra, me, and what looked to be four WVU students from Japan. Since it was Friday night in Morgantown--and Halloween as well--it took a long time to get a taxi. The Japanese students didn't have anyone to pick them up, so when our cab (a van) finally came we offered to share it with them. The cabbie dropped Sandra off first and then dropped off the students since their apartments were along the way. I made sure to be careful about getting my luggage out of the hatch.

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Footnotes

[1] I intentionally kept the text on the slides of my presentations short mainly because I knew Sergei had to translate everything and I wanted to make it easier for him.

[2] Tais and Anna usually referred to the local official in Zhigergen who was obstructing the project as "the akeem" or sometimes just "the big guy." I never knew exactly what they meant when they called him "the akeem." Although Akeem is a common first name for men in muslim countries, I'm pretty sure his name wasn't Akeem. I'm also pretty sure it wasn't his official title. It seemed to me they used it to indicate someone who was the local big shot. It didn't seem to be intended as a compliment.


Next: Morgantown to Bishkek

 

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