Bishkek Bulletin #4 - Osh

Dear Readers,

Think fast! You look up to see a wooden cart piled with severed cow heads barreling towards you at top speed. You move to clear the narrow bazaar aisle, but realize you're trapped with high stacks of watermelons on either side. "Oh, shit", you mutter to yourself. What do you do? In DuPont Circle or suburban St. Louis, one is rarely forced to negotiate a situation like this. For a moment your correspondent stood frozen, my precious final seconds ticking by. I was hypnotized by the gruesome image of this cart o' carnage hurtling towards me. A woman next to me screamed.

I snapped out of it, and realized I needed to do something fast. Luckily, the loan officers had taught me the fake-and-spin technique that is critical for survival inside a Kyrgyz bazaar. At the last moment, the cart now lurching forward just inches from my knees, I spun sideways to safety through a thin opening in the wall of melons. Close call! But rest I did not. Never willing to miss a chance to shoot an exotic photographic for your amusement, I regained my balance and grabbed my camera. The cart was already out of sight, but had left a thin trail of cow's blood on the packed dirt floor. I started tracking it.

I tailed the cart out of the fruit section, through the vegetable section, around the nut and spice section, and finally into, you guessed it, the butcher section. (The attentive reader will wonder why these cow heads were going in to, instead of out of the sale area). The Kyrgyz love their meat, so it's no surprise that this is one of the largest and most popular areas of the market. In America we have the nutrition pyramid, with different levels of the triangle prescribing the recommended daily servings of breads, dairy, fruits, and so on. The Kyrgyz nutrition pyramid has only one big level: MEAT, of which one can simply never eat too much. Hordes of people flock to these hanging sides of beef, gleaming magenta mounds of liver, and other assorted parts and pieces which I was unable to identify, in spite my own 30 years of carnivorous activity.

The cart finally slid to an abrupt halt in a dead-end corner, and I had my chance. I whipped out my camera and barked my stock phrase, "Mozhna vas sfotagrafyeravat?" [Can I take your picture?] After a few seconds deciphering my question, the cart driver nodded, reached down, and hoisted the head of an unfortunate heifer up for the camera. I snapped the photo. If you look closely, you can even see the hint of a smile on the cow's face.

This incident was part of a weekend spent exploring the ancient southern city of Osh, in the hot and turbulent Ferghana Valley. I flew to Osh from Bishkek on an aircraft that most readers are probably not familiar with, the Khrushchev-era Antonov AN-24 twin prop. Call me a child of the G.I Joe 80s, the Reagan years, the Us vs. Them years, but to me there is still something unsettling about boarding a plane and seeing that all the signage is in Russian. Maybe I watched Red Dawn and Rocky IV too many times.

But then, things got clearly worse. Our plane was delayed on the tarmac as a dozen uniformed soldiers boarded and took seats among the civilian passengers. I watched in shock as they carried their assault rifles on board with them, casually stowing them in the open overhead bins. Now, I don't want to sound like a nag, but aren't firearms supposed to go in the luggage hold or something? If I can't even bring my tweezers on board, I'm pretty sure that you shouldn't be flying with that loaded AK-47 in your lap.

I sat back, queued up my iPod, and tried to "enjoy the flight". This, unfortunately, was impossible. The temperature in the un-pressurized cabin was a toasty 95 degrees, causing sheets of sweat to run down beneath my polo shirt. When the A/C finally did kick on, the temperature plummeted to Arctic levels and everyone started coughing.

The seats had evidently been arranged so that only a midget could be perfectly comfortable. Anyone over four feet tall must find some way to contort their hips and wedge their knees into the cracks between the seats in front of them. Somehow I got situated and turned to gaze out the window to watch the peaks of the Kyrgyz Alatau range rolling by below us. Then, just as I started to relax, the A/C clicked off. The boiling heat returned along with the faint, wafting smell of old vomit.

In the entire 3000 year history of Osh, supposedly older than Rome, I think I am the only person ever to go jogging. At least that's what one could infer from the looks of total bemusement on the faces of every person I passed. Old women wrapped in shawls stopped on the sidewalk to watch me go by. Groups of kids dropped their toys and gawked. Even dogs, which in Bishkek or Tegucigalpa would have instantly charged after my ankles, sat dumbfounded.

I had set out that afternoon, slathered in sun block, to get some exercise and cool my nerves after the AN-24 experience. Despite the Ferghana heat, Osh is actually a great city for jogging. I went for miles down the wide sidewalk of Lenin Street, passing by green parks and open plazas. Then, I came upon the main feature of this avenue, the massive statue of the man himself. The Big Bolshevik. The Dude, for his time and place. Lenin. There he stood in a classic pose, his left arm holding down his windblown overcoat, his right arm confidently pointing the way towards the bright, socialist future. You've gotta give the guy props for trying. I flashed him a peace sign and kept jogging, perhaps symbolically, in the opposite direction.

Sincerely,
Your Correspondent, Moskva St, 8th Micro-region, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]