Where have all the tourists gone …
One of the few songs that I can sing all the way through is a folk song which was popular in my youth, ”Where have all the flowers gone?” It helps that the words are repetitive and like a round, so they are easy to remember.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Subsequent verses followed the same pattern with just two lines varying each time:
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
The final couplet of the last verse was a bit more poignant, in that it went:
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
The song was originally written a few years earlier by the popular folk singer, Pete Seegar, who was inspired by a reference to a traditional Cossack folk song in the novel “And Quiet flows by the Don” by Mikhail Sholokov. Although it predated the swinging sixties, it captured the anti war mood, especially when the Vietnam War was in full swing.
I thought of this song when I saw a news report a couple of days ago:
“Smallest number of tourists visited Kyrgyzstan in 2010”
The report said that, according to the National Statistical Committee, in 2010 Kyrgyzstan had the one of the lowest numbers of tourists visiting the country for a decade. Something like 584,000 tourists visited the country last year, which was a decline of 27.6% on the previous year. In the last decade, only 2001 and 2005 saw fewer visitors, (514,000 and 537,100, respectively).
There was a definite discernable upward trend in the statistics during the first years of the millennium, followed by a dramatic plunge in 2005, the year of the Tulip Revolution. That year a lot of Kazakhs, in particular, decided not to travel to Issyk Kul but go elsewhere for their annual holidays. In terms of Western tourists, many had been planning their holidays for some time in advance, and although they watched the situation closely, most continued with their plans and those who did decide to cancel their trip were those who were due to travel at the beginning of the season, shortly after the events of March 24th, when the White House was stormed and Akaev fled the country.
In 2006, the numbers recovered themselves as if nothing had interrupted the trend, and for the next three years plateau out at just over 800,000 visitors a year, (according to the National Statistics Committee figures). It’s probably not surprising if the number of tourists fell again in 2010, following the events of April 7th, and throughout the long hot, troubled summer months.
What did surprise me, however, was not the fact that the number of visitors fell, but that it was as high as it was.
Of course, that raises the age-old questions about statistics: What is meant by the words “tourists” and “visitor” in these statistics?, How was the data collected?, To what extent do the statistics give a accurate picture of the situation … and so on.
The answer to the question, “where have all the tourists gone?”, seems fairly obvious … somewhere else, almost anywhere else, rather than Kyrgyzstan. Oh, there were tourists who had planned their trips long beforehand and were obviously reluctant to put them to one side, and either cancel or postpone them. There were people who wanted to travel the Great Silk Road, and that meant traversing Kyrgyzstan. There were even some Kazakhs and Russians who decided to try the resorts on Lake Issyk Kul, despite the graphic reports they saw on their television screens.
The image of the country, or rather the events that were unfolding in the country, was not conducive to enticing people to come here. The mountain scenery, the historical connections and even the traditional nomadic culture of the Kyrgyz whilst spectacular was offset by news reports of mayhem and riots, death and destruction.
At the moment there is a debate going on in the country about the victims of the violence a year ago, and the awarding of honorific titles such “Hero of the Revolution”. Maybe we should also recognize those who chose to come to Kyrgyzstan as tourists, who disregarded the negative images and took the plunge to come here. Fortunately, (if the blogs and other travelers’ tales in the press are anything to go by), most of those that did come had a memorable and enjoyable experience.
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Bishkek