Leaving Civilization…

Leaving Civilization…

So the long awaited Peace Corps fate has been finally revealed. Where will I be sent for the next two years? The snow-covered mountains of Naryn? How about Osh, the silk road city shrouded in mysteries? Or will it be Talas, the birthplace of Manas? Will I be spending two years basking on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul?

And…

ISSYK-KUL WINS. The next two years I will be living in a small village in the extreme north-east of Kyrgyzstan, ride next to the Kazakh boarder. A place so far from what the modern world would call civilized that I can’t help but shiver when I think of it. A place encompassed by mountains, nature, grass. A place which is quite out of contact with anywhere I have been before. Yet there is still such a demand for English and Korean language that I cannot help but find myself surprised when students on the street ask me when I am going to start teaching.

A week has passed since I have been here and while I am adapting slowly I think of how this Peace Corps experience contrasts with living in the US or Korea. Two countries where for me all the material goods I could want laid right at my fingertips. Countries in which I would discuss ‘lacking resources’ of developing countries with friends who also would never actually experience the concept of ‘lacking resources’. In Korea where everything is operated 24/7 at any time that I wished I could have had food to eat, drinks to drink, and things to do to satisfy any boredom I might have experienced. Without even realizing it I was living shrouded in luxury.

For two months during training my material standard of living has dropped a bit but it is not comparable to real village life. During training instead of a flush-toilet I used an outhouse. There was no free running water, when the water decided to work it would come out one droplet at a time. And there was unspoken rule that we would bathe once a week. Yes, little luxuries were lost – nothing big. On top of that I was surrounded by many fellow friends and ‘family’ who replaced any loss I would have felt. Of course there was change, but I just didn’t feel it that much. However, upon hearing the news about training being over and all of us going our separate ways I knew that this comfortable routine that I was in during training would be finished.

The ride to Issyk-Kul was an unforgettable one. As we headed on the scenery would suddenly disappear. Mountains would cease to continue. Villages would fade away. Only to find them replaced ten kilometers down the road by similar villages and mountains. And then the sprouting villages would just stop leading into fields which continued to the horizon. As we went further into the countryside the scenery changed again. Out of the dry fields mass, lumpy clouds which touched the sky suddenly appeared. It was so strange, but the clouds were circling around the mountains as if someone was pulling them along.

And then the giant lake appeared…

After the sun set we arrived at our destination. Being surrounded by darkness I couldn’t make out any images, but the bumpy stone road spoke novels about what kind of place I was in. To sum it up, I left what we call civilization. And then I realized, over the next two years my life will be dedicated to the people of this village of which I know none. They will be my group. And now, the only thing I can do is try my best, work hard, and try to fulfill needs of my community the best way I can…

Wish Me Luck!

Sheep Slaughtering

The long awaited sheep slaughtering finally happened…

May 9th, Victory Day, my family headed to the mountains for a day of celebrations. A fairly forgotten holiday in America, Victory Day remains vivid in the minds of the hundreds of millions scattered across the Soviet Union who remember and honor the thirty million Russian lives lost in World War II. To welcome the holiday that honors the sacrifice of so many others we sacrificed an animal (and proceeded to boil its carcass in hot water.)

Arriving to the beautiful mountains I was anticipating a day of frolicking, playing, and enjoying nature. That is how it started after all…a nice hike my little brother took me on while the family prepared for the day’s festivities. Upon returning I see my host dad carrying a tied up sheep. Together with his brothers my host dad was hoisting the sheep to a far off place where it would meet its destiny. It looked oddly calm – exhibiting little struggle or resistance. After a quick blessing a swift flick of the knife sent blood rushing from its neck onto the warm green grass which lay underneath it.

It was over before it started. It died with its eye open staring at us while we cut it from neck to tail. While they were cutting the sheep up my family pointed out the different parts of the body in an attempt to emphasize how close they were to their animals and to show me that what we see on our supermarket shelves did not start like that. It really drove the message of ‘conscious eating’ home – killing one’s own meat that is.

After finishing the basic preparations my host dad really surprised me. He took me aside with one hand, while holding a ten pound sack of something in his other. He brandished a knife, gave me the sack, and with a swooshing sound cut the neck of the sack of which a gooey, greenish paste leaked out of. It was a ten pound sack of shit.

He told me to go to the tree nearby and squeeze the warm poop out of the bag. I tried not to throw up. A cousin came over to help me and after sufficiently squeezing the sack clean my cousin asked me to fetch water to clean it out. They were planning on eating this organ of which I just squeezed ten pounds of the smelliest doo-doo in my life out of…

After rinsing it out through-and-through, my most powerful ‘wow im in kyrgyzstan’ I proceeded back to where my host father was dividing the organs – inner intestines and the head were in one pot while what the Western world would consider to be edible meat in the other. The festivities proceeded with a stretch-a-thon in which the two meter long five inches wide intestinal tract was elongated to an over ten meter long string-thin wide piece of floss. The head was then tossed in a pot of boiling water. The colon was also chopped up into teeny-tiny pieces resembling tiny calamari. After all was chopped and ready it was thrown in with the head to sit boiling for four hours.

When it was thoroughly boiled we were taken to the tuz to enjoy the long awaited delicacy. Every organ was slowly brought piece by piece out of the dripping water. The last to go was the face. At the tuz they proceeded to chop the meat into even tinier pieces. The last piece of meat to be chopped up was the face. It started with the cheeks and ended with the eyeballs. Every part of that sheep was consumed. To wash down the taste we were all given a bowl of shorpo, the water of the ass of a sheep.

My peevishness and hesitation did not by any means win approval from the crowd, after all this dish, besh-barmak, is the national dish of the country but I could not participate to a level that would have been approvable. Most likely I never will either. My first sheep-slaughter is full and complete, one thing more checked off of the list…And all I wanted was a day in the mountains.

From the Center of the World

Andrew