The 'pot hole' and other it-only-happens-in-Kyrgyzstan stories

Apparently one’s klutziness is magnified in Kyrgyzstan, whether from altitude or otherwise—or so we’ve been told by our trainers and experience has thus proved:

Exhibit A: Leaving my friend’s house after a study session one evening, her host mom asked if I was scared to walk home because it was getting dark. “Of course not; it’s not too dark,” I replied in Kyrgyz (proud that I could say this), then proceeded to stumble blindly down the three stairs leaving her house.

Exhibit B: Another evening another friend and her sister walked to the store to get ice cream and on her way back, my friend fell right into a hole on the side of the road—a ditch really. A closer inspection proved that a) she was really lucky she didn’t hurt herself because it turned out to be three-feet deep full of protruding rebar; b) it was literally forested with cannabis, leaving us to conclude that she had indeed fallen into a “pot hole.”

Klutziness is however not to blame for all our mistakes and misfortunes here. They say you’re not a true PC volunteer until you’ve experience the joys of diarrhea, fondly known as “the fear.” Last Friday found me getting rather familiar with the family outhouse, thanks to a bout of stomach virus. However, my experience comes nowhere close to my friend, who admitted one week that his runs were so bad, that instead of tackling the task of washing his $50 pair of underwear by hand, he just chucked them down the outhouse. (Why he brought $50 pairs of designer underwear in his luggage still eludes us.)

Kyrgyzstan is fortunate enough to have the remnants of a well-established Soviet-era public transport system. Most families do not own a vehicle, so a passenger is left with two options: 1) the crowded marshrutka, or bus, which charges cheaper fare, but will literally be packed to its cubic capacity, or 2) the taxi. This can be any driver who is willing to pick up a passenger—for a price. In the cities, the system is fairly well established, with set routes and fares. In the remote country, it’s a crap shoot, which as I’ve been told can result in anything from a 3 hour wait on the road in sub-degree weather, to breakdowns that require the passenger’s assistance pushing the car up an ice pass—then it starting and taking off without them (it waited and hour up the road at the top), to sheep sharing the backseat. My own failed taxi experience was nothing of the sort. The car was barreling out of town, and I was about to be annoyed that it hadn’t stopped for my outstretched hand (I’d been waiting over an hour at this point), when I looked behind the wheel: the driver was no more than 6-years-old; his father—I assume—was calmly seated in the passenger seat as the careened down the road.

Perhaps my favorite part about Peace Corps is being able to share something with my students that blows their minds and excites them to learn more. Technology is usually at the crux of this, and my success the other day was thanks to an iPod and a portable speaker. My students took me on an “excursion” to a horse pasture down by the Naryn River for a cookout. After games of soccer and volleyball and a fish fry, I broke out the iPod. First we tried every 80’s move in the book, then I put some Latin music on and proceeded to demonstrate the salsa. 15 minutes later, I had girls leading, following, spinning, and generally having a ball amidst the cow patties. It’s moments like these that I remember why I love my job.