Postcard from Bishkek

The kids went off to the cinema on Monday to watch the latest Harry Potter film.

I seem to have missed out almost entirely on the Harry Potter Craze, but it has taken off here just as much as in the West.  The books are on sale, (in Russian, so I give them a miss), the films are popular and are shown on TV, (but I’ve never seen one all the way through, they are also in Russian and I tend to fall asleep), in the street you sometimes see a kid stand with their feet apart, rolling their torso and waving a stick at someone screaming something and you know it’s supposed to be a spell from Harry Potter, (although I do know someone who can quote most of the 140 spells, and tell you what they do, most of the incantations you hear  seem to be simple gibberish).

Whatever happened to “Abracadabra” or “Izzy Whizzy, Let’s get busy …”?

(Yes, for the record and all the Harry Potter fans out there, I am aware that the expression “Avada Kedavra” is used as lethal spell known as the “Killing Curse” in the Harry Potter books and films.)

In a way they are quite lucky.  One of my neighbours, he’s in his early thirties, so this would been in the days of the Soviet Union, tells me that the first time he saw a Western film was when someone brought a “pirated” copy of a video cassette, (VHS – I presume you remember those), and all his friends gathered to watch it – just as people gathered in each others sitting rooms in 1953 to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.  They were all enthralled and thought it was special, quite unlike the Soviet films they were used to.  It was as if the cassette had cast a magic spell over them.  Then he told me what the cassette was: a compilation of Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Nowadays, it is possible to see all sorts of films here in Bishkek.  There’s both, Tom and Jerry and Harry Potter, and a lot more besides.

The cinemas show a wide variety of films from all over the world – including most of the films made in the West, almost as soon as they are released.  It isn’t long before they are shown on TV and you can always get a DVD. Most of discs, of course are pirated copies – especially those sold on the street – and of variable quality. One disc can have as many as ten or twelve films.  Sometimes they have been recorded in a cinema somewhere, and you can see shadows fall across the screen as someone walks in or out in front of the camera, but sometimes the quality is really quite good.  Of course, there are proper licensed copies available in the shops, excellent quality, but at four, five or six times the cost – for just one film.

And if you have access to the internet then there are quite a few sites where it is possible to download films as well.  On one, I saw that two different people had uploaded the latest Harry Potter.

As a result, I am afraid that it will probably take some time before piracy will be eliminated here.

Still, most things here take time.  Like trying to form a government.  We still don’t have one despite the optimism expressed by Roza Otunbaeva that she hoped we would have one this week and the urgings of representatives of the EU, UN and OSCE.   Some weeks ago, Feliks Kulov, (the leader of the Ar Namys party), amongst others warned that it would take a long time to form a coalition and I see that several commentators around the world are warning that we could be for a “long hard winter” as the system of Parliamentary Democracy struggles to establish itself in the face of fairly strong opposition.  He latest estimate is that one should be formed by next Friday – the 3rd of December.

Perhaps this is a time when we could use a waive of a magic wand and a quick spell from Harry Potter.

One thing we do know, however, that Ar Namys have refused to join the coalition which the Social Democrats are trying to put together.  This is despite various offers of jobs which have been reputedly offered to Feliks Kulov, the leader of Ar Namys.  Including the General Procurator, (which is apparently in the gift of the President, not the Prime Minister), and the Toraga – Speaker of the Parliament who, technically, gets to be President if she has to step down for any reason.

We could do with a little “magic” to resolve the deadlock.

The OSCE has been in the news quite a bit this week.  They seem, for example, to have given up on the plan to send the Police Advisory Group down to the South. Representatives of the organization have been meeting with parliamentary leaders, and they have launched a Gender Sensitivity project in the South West.  (Please don’t misunderstand me, here.  That’s not meant to be a swipe at them.  I am sure that the project is a very important and valuable one and is addressing a real issue … I am only passing on what has been reported here.)

Returning to the parliament for a moment, one of the members has had his oath of office declared null and void because he strayed from the prescribed words and apparently substituted a Koran for the Constitution.  Well, the Americans out there will understand the importance of this when they remember that Barrack Obama had the Oath of re-administered a few days later because of a fumble in the wording …  and he was the first American President to be put in this position.

The trials relating to the April events that I wrote about last week are continuing, although three of the defendants have jumped bail and disappeared.  In another trial into some of the events down south have resulted in long prison sentences – and it hasn’t escaped notice that the defendants in that case were Uzbeks.  Also, the papers relating to the case against the former President’s brother have gone to court, so that’s another trial we can look forward to.

As if all that excitement wasn’t enough, the breaking news is that 9 people have been arrested who were preparing terrorist actions at various places around the country.  Apparently something like 12 kilograms of TNT have been discovered and the government, security services and vital institutions have been put on “heightened alert” and Roza Otunbaeva cancelled a planned trip to Osh.  As I said, it’s “breaking news” and I only have these bare details at the moment.

I suppose that all this means that, like in the US over the busy holiday period, we will be in a state of “lockdown” for a while.  I hope and trust that it won’t lead to intrusive “pat downs”.

Sometimes, it seems as if we could do with a little “magic” to resolve the uncertainty.

Despite all the excitement of these events, life continues for most people, and I got taken to task last week for not “telling it as it is” … the weather, for example, has been wonderful and the mountains spectacular.  That’s true – on occasions it has been a little chilly, but the views of the mountains have been outstanding and I am looking forward to my regular monthly trip up to Nary this weekend.

And, as I have said several times before, life goes on.  For example, this week we’ve had the regular visits by the local Pest Control officer to check for signs of rats, (she didn’t find any, of course … that’s one of the advantages of having three cats), and the local Gas Board to check for leaks, (she didn’t find anything either – thank goodness).

There was, however, one particular press report that caught my eye.  It contained a couple of interesting moments which took me aback – and seem to say an awful lot about “everyday life” here in Kyrgyzstan.

The first point related to the use of Mobile phones here in Kyrgyzstan.  Now, I remember laughing at Agent Smart, (of the 1960’s TV series “Get Smart” which parodied the James Bond type of spy film), especially as removed his shoe to use the phone that had secreted away in it.  Who thought, at that time, that mobile phones would be as commonplace as they are now?   (I see, however, that a film researcher thinks he has discovered someone using a mobile phone in a short clip taken from a 1930’s Charlie Chaplin film.  It looks quite convincing, although most people aren’t convinced and some, of course, claim it’s a fake.)

Well, it has been reported that there are some four million mobile phone users in the country … and that is in a country with a population of just over five million.  I am not surprised that a government spokesman claimed that “We hold a rather high position on penetration of cellular communication.”  It strikes me that this represents an “incredibly high”, not “rather high”, level of penetration – especially when you think about how many of those five million in the population are still very young, (if not exactly “babes in arms”), how many are living well below the poverty line and how many live in rural, mountainous, regions where coverage is still not complete.   Apparently, however, (as I understand it), the four million refers to the number of SIM cards that have been sold – and it’s not clear how many of them are actually in use – some of them obviously represent dormant accounts, probably of consultants whose contract has come to an end and they have moved on to pastures new.

Also, (and I am not sure where they get this particular figure from), there are two million internet users in the country.  The same report said that half of those accessed the internet through mobile phones.   Apparently 74000 of them are corporate users.  These figures seem to me to represent “a rather high level of penetration”, and I can believe that for the number of corporate users – but that leaves an awful lot of individual users and even with all of the internet exposure of Kyrgyzstan that I see on Twitter, Facebook, and so on I find it surprising.  I suppose that if the whole of the country was as wired as Bishkek seems to be, then it might well be true, but I must say that I am surprised.

I wonder if they are all downloading Harry Potter? … onto their mobiles?

When I look back and think of the world in which I grew up and compare it to the world in which I live now, there is much that we would have considered impossible and incomprehensible back then.  A bit like magic, really.  They say that Neil Armstrong when he walked on the moon wouldn’t have understood the technology that most of us carry around with us every day on our wrists, in the shape of our watches – yet alone our mobile phones and the internet.  It would have seemed to him a bit like magic, really.

Well, as I often say to people, in a different context, “I live in the real world … here and now”, and I am afraid that we don’t have a magic wand to waive and an incantation or spell which will resolve each and every situation we come across.

Harry Potter may offer a form of escapism, but I can’t help feeling that, with all its sadism, Tom and Jerry was preferable.  But, then again, maybe I am just showing my age.

Tags: Baseball_Kids, Expat, Interesting_Times, Kyrgyzstan, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Weekly_Postcards