Becoming an expat
I am often asked how I ended up in Kyrgyzstan … and my answer tends to vary according as to how mischievous I am feeling.
For example, sometimes I say it is because I failed the Eleven-plus examination … if I had passed, then I would have gone to a grammar school where I could have studied Physics at A-Level as well as Maths – and could have ended up as an engineer … or something else … and not meeting Tony, who was later to suggest my coming to Kyrgyzstan. My life would have taken a totally different course. As it is, I went to a Secondary Modern school, studied Maths, Geography and Religious Studies at A-level and went on to train to be an RE teacher, met Tony who gave me the opportunity of coming here at an appropriate time of my life when I was looking for a new challenge.
At other times I say it was a mistake or an accident … after all, I originally came here just for one year … and just never really went back home.
In a way they are both true …
In fact it wasn’t one decision, it was a series of at least three over the course of just over a year: to come here; to stay and what to do once I had decided to stay. This is how it happened.
Tony, a friend whom I had known since my days in Oxford, worked as a lawyer for a large international firm based in London. He was in Moscow on a mission for an international organization about the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There were something like fourteen people in the team and when they heard that something was happening in Kazakhstan, (note – Kazakhstan, not Kyrgyzstan). Kazakhstan is a big ocuntry – the size of Western Europe. It had gold, oil and nuclear weapons. Maybe they needed to send someone to Almaty, (which was then the capital city, before Astana was granted that status), and so three of the team were chosen to go there and see what was going on. He was one of them. When they got to Almaty, they realised that just 250 kilometers away was Bishkek, the capital of another former Soviet Republic, and maybe it was worth sending someone there as well. Well, there were only three people to choose from – and he got the job. (Sometimes we joke about whether he got the long straw or the short one.)
Anyway, he loved the place. He is from New Zealand and he said that it reminded him of life back home when he was growing up. Mountains and open spaces, lots of sheep and abundant wildlife, a multi cultural and friendly people with a friendly openness and hospitable tradition. At that time there were very few Westerners that made it to this part of the former Central Asia, access to this part of the Soviet Union was strictly controlled, and he was feted everywhere he went, (again, we sometimes joke that he was “fated”, if there is such a word). He took every opportunity to come back and eventually decided he would like to open his own law firm here as he saw great potential for development.
On his suggestion I came here for a holiday in 1994 and liked the place, but I never thought that I would eventually move here. However, when he asked me to come out and help him to open an office I agreed. I originally came for one year, but things never quite go according to plan and as the year was coming to an end there was still lots to do, so I stayed on to finish the job. I could have gone back home. I had a job waiting for me and staying here meant saying goodbye to that and a career that I had been developing for twenty years. To be honest, however, I had been teaching in the same school for seventeen years and felt a little jaded. I was ready for a change and I looked forward to meeting the challenges of starting something new. The idea of taking a one year job abroad sounded like “just the ticket”, but on the other hand it involved throwing everything up, leaving my job, (where, even if I did feel a little jaded, I was comfortable, knew my job “back to front” and had both status and position), to return a year later to an uncertain future. I wasn’t too sure. Then I was told by my school that they would let me take the year off as a sabbatical … the job would be there for me when I returned … and if I decided to stay, (who knows what might happen), well, they would just have to cope with it. Suddenly, it didn’t such a bad offer. I decided to go for it.
When I got here, I wasn’t so sure that I had made the right decision. I arrived at the height of summer … the sun was shining … I was meeting lots of new people … learning Russian … everything was fine. On the other hand, there was also officialdom, bureaucracy and uncertainty. What is more, living in a country is quite different from visiting it as a tourist.
Work on establishing an office went slowly – the pace of life here is much more relaxed than I was used to back in London. It was becoming clear that we weren’t going to get everything done on time … and I was going to have to stay longer, or run out on the project. In the UK, teachers have to give notice two months before resigning – three months in the summer … which meant if I was going to stay having to resign by the end of May. The year had suddenly shrunk. It was to shrink even further because, if I was going to resign then the school would need to replace and that process normally takes about a month – so we were now talking about making a decision by the end of April.
I am still not sure why I decided to stay and “finish the job” – even at the time I thought I might have been making a mistake … but you can’t put things off forever and so I made the fateful decision and one evening phoned the school and told them.
Work continued on the office and once it up and running it was a case of trying to decide what to do next.
We looked at several options, including: investing in a mine, a shoe factory, buying a Chicken Farm and opening a tour firm. My favoured option was the Chicken farm – everyone has to eat and I could see the customers. The economics looked good and of the sixteen chicken farms operating in the Republic during the Soviet period, not one was operating properly after the break up of the USSR … so we would effectively have been a monopoly. The deal fell through, however, because the president made a decision to stop the privatization of agricultural enterprises. In a way, I am grateful to him. Sometime afterwards the price of eggs and chicken meat fell drastically and I am not sure how the firms that have managed to go into this area manage to make a profit.
Tourism was the next favoured choice, although I am always anxious about one crucial point … where are the customers going to come from?. As it happens, we thought that we had identified a gap in the Kyrgyz tourism market as it was then and felt that we could fill it. Since Soviet times there have always been a lot of visitors from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia to Lake Issyk Kul. Apart from that there were mountaineering and hunting expeditions, and the occasional Silk Road tour which crossed one of the few land crossing points open for passenger traffic into China. We thought that there were lots of Westerners, like ourselves, who would welcome the opportunity to visit and explore this little known region. Perhaps they had spent their long vacations when they were students visiting interesting parts of the world and were willing to accept the rigours and hardships of travel. They had time available to simply wander and explore but had little money to spare. Now, however, they have jobs and responsibilities that meant that, although they have money, they have limited time available and “had to be back behind the desk on Monday week.” They still wanted to visit remote and interesting places but needed to make the most of their “two weeks” annual leave and didn’t want either the hassle or discomforts that they were prepared to accept as students. With this image of our potential clients we started the tour company, together with another British friend who was also interested in the potential of the region, and opened a couple of hotels, one in Naryn and another in the capital, Bishkek. We would have liked to open more, but, (as I keep saying), things don’t always go according to plan.
For the record: in the meantime Tony met and eventually married a local girl and together they have two children. They now live in Australia. Tim is still in the UK, and I am still here.
Bishkek