Fifteen down and counting
Tuesday, this week, was a big day for me. Well, not exactly a big day, but a “red letter day”, an anniversary. My fifteenth anniversary.
Normally, I would have been to simply let it pass, but birthdays and anniversaries are quite important here and so I decided that I had to mark the occasion, albeit quietly. Five years ago, when it was my tenth anniversary we threw a big party at the hotel, but I thought that it might be in “bad taste” this year, bearing in mind the suffering that some people have been through.
The day actually started badly. I came down to the office at six o’clock and usual and the cats must have sensed that something was in the air. They jumped up onto my desk and sent several piles of flying onto the floor where they got all jumbled up. I tidied them up, but still have to sort them out into some sort of order again. Anyway, I then turned my attention to the email and other routine tasks whilst I waited for the rest of the staff to arrive and the office to “fill up around me”.
I’ve always preferred to do that. Even as a schoolteacher, I would arrive early in the morning and complete a whole load of routine tasks and let the staffroom fill up around as the rest of the staff arrived. It was, sort of, comforting. I already felt at home and settled when the regular morning meeting began before we all rushed off to lessons.
This time, when most people had arrived, I took my lead from Captain Oates, got up and went to the door and said: “I am just going out, I may be a little while”. Unlike Captain Oates, however, I was coming back.
I went next door to the cake shop and bought a huge cake, and the shop assistant’s eyes almost popped out of her head when she heard what I wanted. “The whole cake?!”, she queried. It was about 20 inches by 12 and weighed over four kilograms and cost about thirty US dollars – a good sale for that early in the morning!. I also bought some fruit juice and three bottles of Sovietskoy Champagne. We normally have a cake, although not such a large one, and juice whenever someone has a celebration of some kind. It’s a sort of office tradition. The Champagne was an addition, but I thought the occasion probably deserved it.
Returning to the office, I laid everything out on the table and was greeted by the intrigued staff with the question “What’s the occasion?”. So I told them: “Fifteen years!”
It took a few moments, but I could see the gleam in their eyes as the light dawned. Fifteen years in Kyrgyzstan.
It was early in the morning of 25th June, 1995, when I stepped out the Lufthansa after it has landed in Almaty airport, I was surprised that the sun was shining so early in the morning and that it was so warm.
I probably shouldn’t have that surprised as it wasn’t the first time I had been to Almaty. I had come to Kyrgyzstan for a holiday the previous year, although on that occasion the route had been different, via Moscow where I had spent a few days being a typical tourist.
Thinking back on it now, the fact that I had been here before helped to settle my nerves somewhat. It wasn’t that I was feeling anxious, or having “cold feet” but I confess that I had felt a little strange sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow.
It was, after all, a new experience for me – looking back on it, I realize now that I hadn’t really traveled so far on my own before. Moreover, I wasn’t just taking a holiday, which would normally have lasted just a couple of weeks. Only once before had I taken a longer holiday when, back in 1984, I had taken the whole six weeks of the summer holiday to travel on a whistle stop tour around the world: Bangkok, Hong Kong, Noumea in French Polynesia, New Zealand, Tahiti and the Los Angeles, (and, incidentally, with a few unexpected, unscheduled stopovers in Karachi, Singapore and Sydney – not to mention Dubai and Jakarta). This time, I was taking a whole year as a “sabbatical” in order to help a friend open an office in some small country that none of my friends and acquaintances had heard of.
Most years, I would have spent the first few days of the summer holidays cleaning up my classroom, removing old display materials and preparing new ones; checking the stock; backing up the computers and then cleaning the hard drives, finally uploading new programs and data for use in the new year; printing timetables and class lists; preparing schemes of work and teaching materials, and so on. This year, there was none of that.
I had said goodbye to my colleagues and pupils, to my family and friends; I had cleaned up my house ready for “tenants” to move in; packed into two small bags what I thought I might need for a year away walked away from home to set out on what turned out to be quite different from what I planned.
By the time I had got to Frankfurt, any butterflies I might have felt in my stomach at Heathrow had flown away. They hadn’t exactly returned when I got to Almaty, but it did strike me that I was now, well and truly, on my own. At least in Frankfurt and on the flight people had spoken English, but my experiences the previous year had led me to believe that I wouldn’t be so lucky here. We hadn’t encountered many English speakers last year, (after all, this had once been a closed part of the former Soviet Union, inaccessible to foreigners). I was right – all the signs were in Russian, all the officials spoke in Russian.
I took the opportunity whilst waiting in the queue for Passport and Immigration and Customs to whip out my phrase book and practice a few phrases that I thought I might need, such as: “Moi koleegi budet vstreechet menya” – My colleagues are meeting me, and “ya ploko govaroo po russki” – I speak Russian badly. I skipped the bits that I would normally have been looking up at this stage of a holiday – essentials like “dva peevo” – two beers!
As it happened, I needn’t have worried.
As I emerged from the arrivals lounge, I ran into a melee of waiting taxi drivers eagerly offering to whisk me off to wherever I wanted to go: Hotel Kazakhstan, the Hotel Otrar, The Hyatt Regency, somewhere else in Almaty, Bishkek … anywhere really. I got the impression that if I had said “Timbuktu” then they would opened the car door and said “Jump in” … and then, as leaving the airport, turn and ask me “Where?”. One taxi driver was quite persistent … “Your colleagues are meeting you? OK, no problem. What if they are not here? It happens! Where are you going? … Ooooohhh, Bishkek!” – at this point the dollar signs flashing on his eyelids as in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Unfortunately for the taxi driver, my friend was waiting for me, with his own driver and car. The taxi driver took it well. Shrugged his shoulders, turned and went to see if he could find another punter, after all there would be more flights.
Almaty is about two hundred and fifty kilometers from Bishkek – and for most of that journey it is a long straight road running at the foot of the Kungey Ala Too mountains that separate the two countries on the left hand side, and a seemingly endless plain of farmland on the right . I had made the journey the previous year, so I knew roughly what to expect. However, I do have a few enduring memories of that journey that stick out in my mind:
The first is that as we drove off the roundabout on the ring road onto the main Bishkek road, we pass a small kiosk, basically a tin hut the size of a small garden shed. On the outside was painted in large white letters: “SEX SHOP”. Yes, the free market economy did seem to have arrived from the West.
The second is that fell asleep as the car was rocking back and forth as we speeded along the long straight stretches. I remember waking up with a start to see two youths on horseback chasing a cow through a row of trees that lined the road, with what appeared to be lassoes in their hands. “It’s like the Wild West,” I thought to myself.
I must have dropped again because I also remember waking up with a start once again, looking up and seeing a road sign that had an arrow pointing right with the tempting caption: Samarkand. “This year, whilst I am here,”. I thought to myself, “I must go there.” I still haven’t made it.
The last one is driving up to the border, about three hours after having left the airport in Almaty, slowing down but basically being waived through. No-one checked the passports, my visa, my luggage, the vehicle – or anything. It was a formality! Oh, if only it was still that simple today!
So we all gathered in the office, ate the cake, well about half of it, the rest was consumed the course as unsuspecting visitors dropped into the office on other business, unaware of the “importance” of the occasion and drank the juice. The Champagne was untouched, until I took it home in the evening, that is. I had a couple of glasses, but two bottles remain unopened, ready fort the next celebration.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”, bleated one member of staff, “we’d have bought you a present.” In that she provided her own answer – I was more than happy with the kind words and good wishes that they expressed.
It surprised me how quickly the news spread, as people phoned and Skyped with their congratulations.
One asked me out for a celebratory drink … and smiled when I declined with: “I can’t, I’m only fifteen. I’m underage.”
So, fifteen years, who would have thought it? I know that back in 1995, I didn’t have the slightest inkling of how things were going to turn out.
What I do know, now, is that it is now fifteen down … and still counting!
Bishkek