Postcard from Bishkek

So, Christmas has arrived.  Many people agree with the song, (written by Eddie Pola and George Wyle and made famous by Andy Williams), “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”.

Although a popular song in its own right, it pales into insignificance when compared to “White Christmas”, (“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”), by Irving Berlin from the film “Holiday Inn”, released in 1942, which is probably the song which is most often associated with Christmas in the West.  It’s been recorded over 500 times in many different languages but the original version sung by Bing Crosby is the one that most people recognize and, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the best selling single of all time with “estimated” sales of over 50 million copies.

Here in Kyrgyzstan, of course, Christmas is not as big a festival as it is in the West and, anyway, it is celebrated by the Russian Orthodox Church, which still keeps to the Julian calendar, on January 7th.  New Year is the big holiday with parties and decorations, Grandfather Frost, (Ded Moroz – a Slavic version of Santa Claus), and fireworks.  Just as Irving Berlin’s song reminiscences about snow covered landscapes, “just like the ones we used to know”, at Christmas time, most people here long for snow at New Year.  Sometimes it comes – but not always.  At the moment it doesn’t look as if it will snow here over New Year.

In fact there is snow on the ground at the moment.  They promised us snow on Wednesday – and, sure enough it arrived, right on cue.  The temperature has risen, however, and so it has started to melt As a result, instead of being a white Christmas, it is grey and slushy.  As the overnight temperatures fall well below zero, the slush freezes into treacherous sheet of ice and one has to watch their steps very carefully, especially on any incline or slope.  So far this winter I have managed to avoid having my feet slide away from under me and falling over onto my back – and I hope that I am not tempting fate by telling you that.

Back in Britain and the rest of Europe, of course, they certainly have had their fair share of snow this year and it will be a white Christmas.

Most foreign consultants on projects here try to go home for the holidays and some that I know have been caught up in the transport chaos of the last week caused by the heavy snowfalls which have closed airports across Europe.  Apparently, according to some of the latest scientific research we are likely to experience a lot more of these extreme weather conditions as a result of the effects of climate change and global warming.  That might seem contradictory, global warming leading to extreme winter weather conditions, but there has been a lot of speculation of this over the years.  The reports this week, however, are the first that I have seen that seem to have some evidence/justification to back up the speculations.   If it is true, then we are in for some interesting times in the coming years and the directors of Heathrow might well look back on 2010 as the start of something big.

The lack of consultants and other travelers over the Christmas and New Year period means that the hotels are quiet, but it doesn’t mean that we are taking it easy and have nothing to do.  As well as all the usual routine tasks, we are all busy running around trying to complete the end-of-year routines and prepare for the new one.  Also, we are able to take advantage of the seasonal lull to do some repairs and redecoration.

One interesting highlight this week is that the Ministry of Labour have “approved” the list of official holidays for 2011.  The list includes Popular Revolution Day, March 24th – the anniversary of the 2005 Tulip Revolution that ousted Akaev and brought Bakiev to power – and there is no mention of April 7th – the anniversary of the 2010 revolution.  I wonder if the parliament might consider moving the holiday?

As I pointed out last week, although they are not public holidays, this is a time of year that seems to be full of special days.  For example: Tuesday, the 21st, saw the shortest day, (and hence the longest night), of the year – at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere.  For us, from now until June, the days will get longer, and hence the nights get shorter.  For those of you in the Southern hemisphere, of course, it’s the other way around.  It’s amazing how many festivals there are around the world that celebrate the occasion, (which in the Julian calendar fell on December 25th – not the 21^st – Christmas Day, and as no-one really knows when Jesus was actually born, it is likely that the early Church Fathers simply hijacked the date of a popular heathen festival when fixing the date to celebrate his birth).

This year it was not only the Winter Solstice but there also a spectacular lunar eclipse.  Although we didn’t see any of it here in Kyrgyzstan, the moon has been pretty high and bright in the sky and caught my eye as I walked from my office to a lunchtime meeting and I was reminded of the Kyrgyz legend about “the girl in the moon” – yes, that’s right, “the girl in the moon”, not “the man in the moon”.  According to the legend, the two big craters that we think of as being the eyes of the man in the moon are really two pails of water that she is carrying home from the well.  I am sorry that I wasn’t able to witness the event but I was able to see the photos and video of it, thanks to the wonder of the internet.

However, the internet hasn’t been that reliable this week.  We seem to have lost the connection to our provider every morning, sometime between nine and ten o’clock.  Then, on Thursday, Skype went down all over the world and that caused a certain amount of chaos.  It really brought home, once again, how much we have come to rely on modern communications technology.  Fortunately, Facebook and Twitter and the other News and the Tourism and Hospitality websites were all up and running and working fine, so I didn’t feel totally cut off.

I have been able to follow lots of momentous stories from around the world and have been to reflect on the fact that our “revolution” and all the “aftershocks” that followed it, simply reflect what a difficult and troubled world we live in.  The South Korean military exercises, for example; or the fact that there is now an official government installed in Iraq after nine months of deadlock following inconclusive elections; the elections in Byelorus; and then there was the post election chaos in the Ivory Coast.  The latter struck a particular chord as a couple of months ago we got a request from a tourist wanting to arrange a tour to Abidjan.  At first we thought he meant Andijan, in the Uzbek part of the Ferghana valley, but when we looked up some of the other places he mentioned it became clear that, somehow – please don’t ask me how, he had confused Central Asia with West Africa.

Well, like Iraq, we seem to have resolved our particular deadlocked election.  The new parliament has been meeting and approved the key appointments, such as: Speaker, Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Committee chairmen.  Although there have been some controversies, debates are under way and it looks as if we be getting back to some sense of normality.  It looks as if the “Season of Goodwill” may well have stretched to this part of Central Asia.

December 25th is also notable for a number of other anniversaries: William the Conqueror who led the last successful foreign conquest of England was crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1066 and it is the birthday of Isaac Newton.  I feel a Trivial Pursuits question coming on, something like: “What’s the connection between Christmas Day, an apple, the last pound note issued by the Bank of England and the House of Commons?”

Another, local, anniversary was brought to my attention as I returned home from the Hyatt where I had been on the panel for the interviews for the new Executive Director of the International Business Council, (IBC).  It was bitterly cold evening, (-6 degrees Celsius, but with a wind chill factor that made it feel like -10), and slippery underfoot and so I decided that, even though it wasn’t far, I would take a precaution and get a taxi.  As we drove along the main street, Prospect Chui, I noticed a huge billboard – it was in Kyrgyz, so I couldn’t understand everything that was written on it, but I did understand two phrases: 100 Jill, (100 Years), and Ishkak Razzakov.  Now the postal address of the guesthouse in Naryn is Razzakova 42, and there is a street in central Bishkek also called Razzakov, so I knew who Ishkak Razzkov was – a Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kyrgyz SSR and served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party from eleven years from 1950 to 1961.  As he came from a rather remote and poor village in the Batken region of Southern Kyrgyzstan, his story resembles the “Log cabin to White House” story of Abraham Lincoln.  What I hadn’t realized was that it was his 100th anniversary.  I haven’t seen any comment about it in the local media, so this anniversary came as a surprise to me.

Well, the other BIG story of the week, of course, was the release of the report of the committee of the US Congress into the supply of aviation fuel to the Manas transit base in Kyrgyzstan.  The report was actually welcomed by the two companies Red Star and Mina as clearing them of any wrongdoing, but they seem to have over looked the use of phrases like “a mysterious company with such questionable connections”.  The general impression in the report seems to be that even if there is no evidence of corruption in the agreement between the Pentagon and the companies, there is a question of competence – or rather incompetence.

Recently there has been of tweets on Twitter about Christmas movies.  I was surprised that there was little, if any, comment about what is, back in Britain, one of the now “traditional” Christmas highlights: the discovery of who has the Christmas Number 1 single in the Charts.  It strikes me as a remarkable marketing ploy of the recording industry to boost sales, and I wish I could think of something similar to encourage tourists to visit Kyrgyzstan.  It is a fact that many of the songs are remembered for years afterwards and become as much a part of Christmas as “White Christmas”, such as songs like “Mary’s Boy Child” by Harry Belafonte (1957) and Boney M (1978), or “Merry Christmas Everybody” by Slade (1973) and the various versions of “Do they Know it’s Christmas” by Band Aid (1984, 1989 and 2004).  Others, on the other hand, have been just good songs, like: “What do you want to make those eyes at me for?”, (1959); or “Moon River”, (1961); “Bohemian Rhapsody”, (1975 and 1991); “Mull of Kintyre”, (1977) or “Another Brick in the Wall”, (1979).  Others have been less memorable and some seem to have been a joke on the record buying public – no, I won’t name them, either because I have forgotten them already, or out of embarrassment.  I wonder what history will make of “When We Collide”, the debut single from Matt Cardle who won the seventh series of the TV show, “The X Factor”.  Whatever, I doubt that Bing Crosby has much to worry about in terms of being ousted from his position of having the best selling single of all time.

Sunday – I am off to Naryn for the end of year routines, and on my return to Bishkek we have to round of this eventful year.  Of course, it’s hard to fit everything that’s happened into a postcard, but once again I am approaching my word limit, so that leaves me with just one thing left to say: S Rozhdestvom!, or Merry Christmas!

Tags: Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Weekly_Postcards