Postcard from Bishkek

Tuesday, (March 1st), was Saint David’s Day.  It went, more or less unnoticed here in Kyrgyzstan … but then, there isn’t a large Welsh community here.

If I am asked about my nationality, then I usually say that I am pure English, but that it is hard to justify saying that with any confidence as we are hybrid nation with a mix of blood from the Angles, Saxons, Norse (the Vikings), Romans, Normans, German and goodness knows what other nationalities.  It’s possible, for example that I have a smattering of Welsh blood coursing through my veins but, frankly, I just don’t know. My mother’s maiden name was Jones … (it’s all right, I never use that as my “Secret Question” when it comes to password reminders, etc.) … which is a good welsh name and her family were supposed to have relatives in Swansea, but I have never met them and have no information about that possible branch of the family.

I do know one Welshman here in Bishkek, Nigel, and although he is proud of his heritage, (flying the Welsh standard outside his hotel in Issyk Kul – yeah … honest!), he is usually a solitary voice cheering for the Reds whenever England play Wales in the Six Nations … and takes a lot of ribbing for it.  I didn’t see him on Tuesday, but I did send him a belated “Happy Saint David’s Day” message with John, yesterday.

I thought about writing a postcard about St. David’s Day in Bishkek to mark the occasion … but as I said, it more or less went unnoticed here and as March 1st is also reckoned to be the first day of Spring here in Bishkek, I chose to write about that instead.  I also knew that a couple of days later, (today, March 3rd), there was another important day in Welsh history and the thoughts that I was thinking of including in that postcard could be postponed for a couple of days. More…

To be honest, the name of Al Biruni didn’t mean that much to me until, not long ago, I listened to a podcast about him, which aroused my interest.  In the past have more or less ignored references to him mainly because he was not from Kyrgyzstan, but I now have to admit that this was a mistake. More…

Welcome to the first day of Spring.  Here, March 1st is reckoned to be the first day of Spring.  If that surprises or confuses you, then, don’t worry … you are not alone!

For a start, it’s all relative.  If you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere, then Summer is coming to an end, and Autumn is about to start, rather than Spring, and even here, in the Northern half of the globe, there seems to be some confusion over exactly when is “the first day of Spring”. More…

The other day I was showing the kids the photos of our trip to Ala Archa and Alamedin, and the video that Alicia, Philippa and Sebastian shot and they asked me if it was possible to create a website for them so that they could upload posts about things that interest them.

I know from my days as a teacher of IT that it’s not that simple … and knowing Maxim and Andrei, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out … would they get bored quickly and lose interest, for example … but I thought why not.

Kyrgyzstan has quite a high level of penetration when it comes to internet usage, when you consider that few schools have computers yet alone internet access, and although people may have computers in their offices, not that many have them at home … the kids don’t, for example,  and they don’t have a telephone.  Still, they are at that sort of age when an interest in technology is at its highest and I know that many teenagers in the west spend hours in front of Facebook, MySpace and similar sites. More…

They say that you can experience all four seasons in one day in Kyrgyzstan.  I have come across this myself in the past.  The mountainous nature of the terrain creates plenty of scope for microclimates in different valleys, varying with altitude, aspect, (North, South East or West facing), different soils creating habitats for differing types of vegetation and so on.

On my recent trip to Naryn over the weekend we certainly experienced two seasons. More…

The postcard is shorter this week and a little late because I have been up to Naryn to deal with the end of year routines, (tax returns and so on).  Surprisingly, it wasn’t as cold up there as I had anticipated, indeed Bishkek is colder.

The prospect of a “third revolution” has taken on mammoth proportions, both in terms of general conversation and in the media.  It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over the country.  As one press report put it: “Spring is the traditional time for protest in Kyrgyzstan” More…

One of the books on my bookshelf which gets taken down every now and again in order for me to dip into and read a short section.  It’s a 2004 reprint, of an 1829 translation from the original Arabic, of a fourteenth century account of his journeys around the then known world, written by Ibn Battuta, the Rihla.

This medieval scholar seems to have taken to heart the exhortation of the prophet Mohammed, who is supposed to have said, “Don’t tell me how much you know, tell me how much you have travelled”, and he became one of the world’s greatest travelers.

In the West, nearly everyone has heard of Marco Polo, yet few will recognize the name of Ibn Battuta.  Although some scholars have expressed doubt about whether Marco Polo really undertook the journeys that he described in his published account, “Il Milone - Le divisament du monde”, (“The description of the world”, but better known in English as “The Travels of Marco Polo”), there seems no doubt that Ibn Battuta actually did complete the odyssey that he describes, although some Western Orientalists think he may not have visited everywhere he mentions and may have relied on hearsay from other travellers for some of the details.  Indeed, there is no indication that he made any notes during his almost thirty years of travelling, so, when he came to dictate an account of his adventures, he had to rely on his memory and to make use of manuscripts produced by earlier travellers. More…

A few months ago we had a film crew visit from the What Took You So Long Foundation, (Alicia Sully, Philippa Young and Sebastian Lindstrom).  They were travelling the world searching for camel cheese.  Having already been to China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan they came to Kyrgyzstan on their Uzbekistan and beyond.  I wrote a postcard about their visit at the time.

Well, they are now in the Middle East having been through several African countries and I have been following their adventures on Twitter and Facebook.  They were in Egypt, for example, just before the protests. More…

Maxim spent the back end of last busily scouring the internet for inspiration.   For homework one of his teachers at school had given him the task of drawing a poster, (a gazeta), to commemorate February 23rd, Dehn zashitnika Otechestva, (Defenders of the Fatherland Day – otherwise known as Army Day or Men’s Day).

February 23rd used to be designated as “Army and Navy Day” in the Soviet Union.  The holiday was declared as the “Birthday of the Red Army” in 1942 – and was supposed to have commemorated either (depending upon the source):

• an occasion in 1918 when rallies in support of the Bolshevik led Red Army took place across Russia …
• A victory by the Bolshevik led Red Army over German troops near the cities of Narva (now in Estonia) in 1918, during the civil war, or
• the first mass draft of young men (described by some commentators as “volunteers”) into its ranks in  Moscow and Pertrograd.

It is sometimes called, “Men’s Day”- and is seen as the equivalent of March 8th, (International Women’s Day). More…

The International Business Council, (IBC), is a business association, which was established in December 2000, whose membership includes a wide range of local and international businesses that have created thousands of jobs and have a combined investment of over one billion USD in the Kyrgyz economy.  The Celestial Mountains Tour Company was one of the original members, (in fact, the inaugural meeting was held in the Conference Room in our hotel in Bishkek, The Silk Road Lodge), and I have served several terms as a member of the Management Board of the IBC. More…