Archive sections: ‘Life In Kyrgyzstan’
At the moment I am trying to read ‘News from Tatary‘ by Peter Fleming, originally published in 1936 and telling the story of his 3500 mile journey from Peking through the, then, mysterious province of Sinkiang to India with the Swiss journalist Ella Maillart. Apparently she also wrote an account of the journey, ‘Forbidden Journey’ [...]
There is one task that I really dislike and tend to put off if I possibly can … going to the bank. Today I didn’t really have much choice.
Kuman Ait is also known as Eid al-Adha (or the “Feast of Sacrifice”) and is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. (Eid is an Arabic word derived from the Arabic word, “aada” that means a recurring event – one that returns. In Islam it it is used to denote a festival.)
As a nomadic people, travelling from place and erecting yurts wherever there was pasture for their livestock … the Kyrgyz don’t have a wide heritage in terms of architecture. Indeed, some people say that the closest they came to architecture was in erecting mausoleums for people after they had died. Of course, the Kyrgyz were not [...]
Let me start this week with an apology and a correction. Last week I said that there were going to be two public holidays this week, which meant a “three day working week”. Well, I got it wrong … the Muslim holiday, Kurman Ait, falls next week, not on Friday the 12th. Those of you [...]
There is a lot of truth in the old saying: “There are two sides to every story”. It’s something I learned very early on as a young, novice, schoolteacher. A fight in the playground, and “Sir” descends to break it up … “So, what’s all this about?”, “He started it!”, “No, he did!”, and so [...]
One aspect of Kyrgyz Culture which has come to the attention of the West is the practice of Ala Kachuu – or “Bride Stealing”. It appears that this tradition stems from the times of nomadic culture and lifestyle of the past where people were constantly on the move from one pasture (jailoo) to another. (It [...]
There’s a story about Oscar Wilde, that he was at a dinner party when somebody made a clever, witty, remark and he is supposed to have commented, “I wish I had said that!”, to which Whistler, one of the dinner guests replied: “You will, Oscar. You will.” Well, I felt like Oscar Wilde one day [...]
The working day in the office, technically, runs from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., but it rarely works out like that. In fact, my working day usually starts at six a.m. when I come downstairs to the office from my apartment which is literally “just over the office”. I rarely finish work early, however, and [...]
Although in Soviet times, November 7th was a major holiday accompanied by parades and much merrymaking, in modern Kyrgyzstan it is a fairly subdued affair. Indeed, for several years following independence, the holiday was dropped from the list of official public holidays – being reinstated in 2004. Although official parades are no more, the Communist [...]
