So, I have been in America almost a week now. Sleep deprivation before and during my marathon 30 hours of travel have helped ensure that my jet-leg has been decidedly light. My flights went off without a hitch, and even the six hour layover in Moscow was made absolutely pleasant thanks to the company of [...]
Please login first to post comments.
On my last night in Naryn, I came back to my homestay house relatively early. I came in to finish packing my bags. My host family called me in for tea, and the distance was a little strange.
It was strangeness compounded on a strange “farewell” dinner we’d have the night before. My host family had [...]
Well, my friends of these past two years, I am delighted to say that things came together better than I could have imagined.
So, the folks in last week were a family from Ohio. Back home, they run a mini mill that caters to the exotic fiber industry in America. Through a series of acts of [...]
My time here in Sunny Naryn, folks, is desperately, and quite quickly coming to an end.
This last week here has been one of preparation and relax. At the moment, in my possession, are more handicrafts than I can hardly even imagine. Most of these, folks, are for you! Right now, my pride and joy is a [...]
What more can I say? Thanks to your overflowing donations, last Saturday we planted not 500, but 540 fruit trees! A stunning and unbridled success! That being said, though, this was grassroots level work (see what I did there?) and it wasn’t without its frustrations.
It started, folks, in the town of Ananyevo, on [...]
While Farmer Dan and I were cavorting about this beautiful country, we were missing some mighty strange weather back here in Sunny Naryn. While it was plenty warm in the low Chuy Valley and the higher regions of Talas, even when I arrived back in Naryn there were still freezing temperatures. One day, amidst a [...]
It has been a whirlwind of a week for Farmer Dan and I. We finished our national training series with a total of twelve sessions, 202 participants (many of whom were teachers themselves) and 15 communities served. I do believe we successfully sapped Dan’s brain of any and all knowledge he was prepared to dispense. Furthermore, [...]
Well, Farmer Dan and I have been as busy this week as one could imagine.
From the cold and snowy mountains of Naryn, we headed into the dramatically warmer Chui valley. This is the land of Bishkek, where there is more money, and much more will grow. Dan was surprised to see how prolific the small [...]
I am as excited to write this letter to you all as I have been about any in ages. It is the chest-tingling kind of letter that reminds me all about why I am here, and why I love this work so much.
So, folks, I’ve got my delightful friend, Farmer Dan, here by my side, [...]
Well, as they say, all’s well that end’s well. And if our Close of Service (COS) conference was any testament to that saying, then I must be vindicated when I write that: all has gone very well.
That’s right, folks, this past week saw the final closing ceremony for my class of Kyrgyzstan volunteers. Now, we’re [...]
That’s right, spring is in the air! Every time the snow falls around here in Sunny Naryn, it is as though it melts the very next day. Folks, spring time means planting time, and planting time means fruit trees. Are you folks ready to plant some more fruit trees?!? To bring another 500 spindly little [...]
Well, we’ve had an exciting week out here this week! The president rolled through Naryn oblast, stopped a volunteer schools, my host-mom’s hospital, and even one of the handicraft cooperatives that I work with. And I, in true ambulance-chasing fashion, followed right on her coat tails, but with projects of my own.
Those particular trips, however, [...]
Well, for those of you who remember my humble past as a nameless backpacker, today we’ve a letter that rivals any I’ve written before!
Last weekend I tagged along with a group of volunteers who packed up to a local village to teaching local English teachers how better to teach. My goals, however, were not nearly [...]
“Valentine’s Day, do you have this holiday? It is the lover’s day.” Or so said more Kyrgyz people than I could count.
I don’t remember this day making such a splash last year, but the other day Sunny Naryn was a bound with discussions of the holiday. While the typical public signs of holiday were missing, [...]
Now, I must admit, all this talk about my service ending must seem a little strange, being that it is more than three months away. After all, if I were studying abroad, my semester would be just beginning! But here, the transition is a very real, very delicate thing, and it is the subject of [...]
While so much of America was getting pounded with snow this week, so too did we in Naryn get a little bit, though only an inch. While it still took me an hour to clear our whole driveway/compound, it was easy work; easy work that catered well to having a three-year-old helper at my side.
Folks, [...]
As you may or may not know, my dear friends and quiet confidants, I am a lover, not a fighter, of all things Chicago. Among all the many things within it that I hold dear, one of them is football’s greatest rivalry. That’s right. I said it. Kyrgy Carl isn’t just a slap happy do gooder. [...]
Weight; my weight; and the weight of a volunteer. These are topics of consternation for all parties involved, not the least of which being parents (just ask my worried mother).
Personally, I am fairly characteristic of the Peace Corps norm: I have lost significant amounts of weight since coming to country. Where I rolled in at a [...]
First, as a disclaimer, I cannot directly speak to the stories portrayed in the recent 20/20 piece, or the other stories that ABC news has recently promoted, as I have had no personal experience with the people or countries involved. However, as an actively serving volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, I can speak about the [...]
So, it’s cold here in Naryn, even with our paltry amounts of snow. On the one hand, the city is dry and dusty without its winter snow; on the other, the roads are safer than last year without their 6 inches of caked ice…
Along with the cold, folks, comes indoor activities. While I don’t [...]
Kyrgy Carl here, writing from my snowy home in Sunny Naryn!
In response to many questions I’ve received lately about Kyrgyzstan and Christmas: No, people don’t celebrate it here. Yes, they know what it is, but No, not really. Let me explain.
See, one of those weird little quirks in globalization is that every hears about Christmas [...]
Well, the snow is finally here. The last two times that I have written about snow here in Sunny Naryn, they were one time, freak events. Where last year we had boat loads of snow from October on, this year it has taken its sweet time. But, if the international news is serving me well, [...]
A seed; a bud; just a small kernel of a moment blossomed into a mighty flower this week. Its zenith found poetry, and came in the form of a text message:
“Love is sharper than a knife, deeper than the lakes, and effects all people. Carl, I have fallen in love with you. Please, give me an [...]
Let me get to the meat of it folks, I shook hands with Hillary Clinton. That’s right, I said it. Her hand was soft. None of that, of course, explains the grin captured on my face in this official US Embassy photo, however. I thought I was just smiling sweetly the whole time, [...]
Before Thanksgiving dinner, my friends, I was hungry. My home here in Sunny Naryn had been absent responsible, adult supervision for nearly three weeks. Between the eating habits of my 14, 13 and 6 year old host sisters, food was thin and Kyrgy Carl was getting grumpy.
Come ol’ Turkey Day, however, that all changed. In [...]
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for your overwhelming responses to my last email. Who knew I could get such a boost by just admitting to feeling under the weather.
The response to my illness by the locals, now, was a bit different. My favorite came from the stoic, Russian teaching woman who makes my [...]
Just as the French word for seal led to the expression, “pardon my French,” so too might the Kyrgyz one day say, “Pardon my English,” thanks to our word, sick, which carries a similarly unmentionable meaning. That being said, just in case any Kyrgyz people out there are reading, I’ll put it softly: I feel [...]
The game, folks, in Kyrgyzstan is called Ulak Tartysh. It is kind of like our polo, but with a significant difference: instead of a ball, the riders fight over a headless goat. That’s right, I said it.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ulak is not a game unique to Kyrgyzstan. Among other countries, it is also played in Afghanistan [...]
For the second time in as many weeks, ol’ Kyrgy Carl has left the mountain paradise of Sunny Naryn for the warmer, more urban bastions of Kyrgyzstan. However, unlike last week’s frantic mission for sewing machines, this journey was a slower, friendlier, more artistic adventure.
The whole event started in the far back seat of [...]
This happy day catches yours truly freshly home from a tradition set forth by my father, and his father before him: the business trip. Unlike in the stories of old, however, my trip was neither a sales call nor a networking event in the Bahamas; I left on the mundane errand of [...]
I once wrote how when my Uncle Dennis died, it was my host-grandmother who provided the only real comfort from anyone in my vicinity. I came to believe, then, that it was not necessarily our host-family relationship that led her to reach out to me, but something more fundamental: only that she is a Grandmother. [...]
Even the wizened gristle that was Kyrgy Carl not but a few months ago knew little of the saw of the Last Big Candy. But I have grown with age and with experience, and today, my deep and dear friends, I will tell this story to you.
See, in my humble dwelling on our backstreet of [...]
Last week found ol’ Kyrgy Carl jaunting around Bishkek and the serene Lake Issyk Kul. See, with my natural dyes course all but wrapped up, I took the opportunity to indulge myself.
Bishkek, folks, is a city in its own right. There are little cafes and shady parks. Kyrgyz people sit beneath trees [...]
I have finished up the Natural Dyes component of the this training just in time. The sugar beets were ready for harvest, and the Horse Ear seeds were a deep brown. I will miss, however, spending my days cleaning onions in the bazaar, in exchange for the onion skins I collected. I’ve [...]
Well, folks, I ran into an interesting crew the other day.
See, some documentary makers found themselves in my living room. Really. They are from the What Took You So Long Foundation, and are filming about camels, world wide. When they came to Kyrgyzstan, they met my host-father’s nephew. When they told this guy that they [...]
I was recently conducting one of my Natural Dyes trainings in the village of Jalgyz Terek (Lonely Poplar). When the women showed up ready with their notebooks, I noticed something a little strange: the notebooks all had T Pain on the cover. Kyrgyzstan simply never ceases to surprise.
You all, must have, by now, observed my passion for Kyrgyz handicrafts. I’ve been writing and photographing shyrdak rugs and other things almost since day one. Well, here in little ol’ Sunny Naryn, the last burning epicenter of Kyrgyz-ness left on God’s green Earth, today, and for one day only, we gathered up all the [...]
A more accurate translation of my host-brother’s comment is probably, “I no longer have an uncircumcised wiener,” but coming from a three-year-old in a swaddling fleece blanket and sporting a very grim countenance, this kind of statement is a tough sell.
See, what he had used the work chochok. This word specifically refers to a young [...]
At the Natural Dyes training this week, the women seem as interested in me as they do in learning to dye. I got applause after I introduced the training, and the women have been trying to marry me off ever since.
It is really a funny thing, these marriage jokes. First, they insisted on knowing what [...]
From the foreign excitement of last week, we have drifted into the equally exciting grandeur of the very local.
In these the waning days of summer, when the nights already getting cold, my stalwart Anne, right here in Naryn, brainstormed the right idea for a very Kyrgyz date: we went to the roadside kymys strip-mall called [...]
This has been a week of celebrity encounters, folks. During the past couple of weeks, a crew from the Kyrgyzstan – New Zealand Rural Trust (KNZRT) have been here monitoring their simple, and continuous mission: to help the poorest of the Kyrgyz poor. The second crew was a two heavy hitters from Peace Corps Washington, [...]
Well, the ten minute restriction turned into well over an hour. We had a truncated quiz show, and I watched how the KNZRT questions grew and developed in terms of the answers we had already heard.
After the meeting, of course, there was the food. This time around, however, it was paired with drinking and the [...]
The lunch we just received turned out to be besh barmak over rice. That seemed like enough, until a delicacy came out I’ve only ever seen once before: the organ sack, stuffed with rice, organ meat and fat, tied up to look like a duck, complete with a beak made of a carrot. It was [...]
These meetings seem to follow a similar pattern. They start with tough quizzing of the women on the group’s finances. Next, there are some fluffier questions about their plans for their collective future. Women seem to, in general, say they’d like to use the income garnered from their goats and their savings to move into [...]
We’ve moved from our follow-up meeting with the old groups, and moved into another large lunch with a new group of women, once again focused around goats.
It’s a curious methodology, these goat groups. According to KNZRT, a goat group costs about $3,800 to start. These costs are trainings, sainfoin seeds, and mostly, the goats: 5 [...]
The sainfoin field, unfortunately, was a bust, we have learned. A frost this May apparently killed the entire crop. It was an expensive investment that has now been reduced to rubble. In its place, generic grass and thistle took over the field.
“If this was New Zealand,” Brian said, “we’d have at least cut this grass [...]
Well, after a large, healthy lunch, we have made our way our to a sainfoin field. This is an Asiatic legume that KNZRT has introduced to these farmers as a highly superior feed crop in these high altitude areas. If the farmers weren’t producing this, they’d be growing simple hay that would provide very little [...]
As I promised, we’ve another mountain of food resting before us. We’re all seated on the floor around a low table, with women bringing us milky tea as we talk and await the meal. We’re talking development and markets, with the resident Kiwi experts trying to figure out what the ceiling for bakery production might [...]
I have now made my way over to the 2 year old Gulazyk bakery group. These incredibly active women make some of the best bread I’ve had in country. They are out in the farthest corner of nowhere, and finding a market for their goods is a challenge. They tell me they sell at the [...]
Well, instead of going to the bakery, we have found ourselves on the premises of a small sewing cooperative. They have four different sewing machines, and 4 happy ladies working here. Most of their products are school uniforms and frilly, fancy dresses. They say they also make curtains, and even some shyrdaks!
Brian regaled them with [...]
How many entries are we showing above?
For now, we are showing up to 50 entries on each page. Entries that
are too short are filtered out. For more entries, please use
archives.
|
Connect to Peace Corps Journals
About the Journal
Contact Us
Disclaimer:
| |
| Copyright (c) 2010 |
