Kyrgyzstan through my eyes 1. Before it all started
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It’s been over a month since I got back to Japan and I was thinking it’s about time to put together what I saw, felt, thought, and experienced in the land of nomads with beautiful mountains and lakes: Kyrgyzstan.
It still feels weird to be back, to be honest, and this unnatural feeling with a bit of confusion makes me wonder if it was a dream of actually living in Kyrgyzstan or I am still dreaming of being in Japan. I’m fighting with this strange feeling while writing this right now and it’s harder to get words out of my brain and place my words on the screen. It takes a lot of time just to finish a dang sentence, so I hope you will bear with me even if it takes forever to reach the goal. The starter pistol has just been fired. For those who do not know me well or have no idea what I had been up to, I am going to briefly tell you about myself and what on earth I went there for.
I am Charlie, a guy a bit obsessed with languages. Charlie is the nickname that I used to be called back in college, well more specifically, I told everyone who I got to know to call me that way because at my first English class in college, there were two other guys whose name were same as me and I thought it’d be less confusing if people called me Charlie. Charlie comes from one of the most lovable comic books in the world, yes, your guess is right, Peanuts. It comes from the Charlie Brown and accidentally at this moment when I am writing this, I am wearing a shirt with Charlie Brown on it, which my wife gave me while I was living in Germany. As I told you, I am a language lover who speaks 4 languages (here “speak” means I can communicate with people and make them understood mostly) and am currently working on two more. I used to work in high school teaching English in Japan. Well, that is pretty much all I did after graduating from college.
So, what brought me to Kyrgyzstan? Maybe it is better to say Kyrgyzstan chose me. I was participating in a volunteer program, where people go to developing countries serving whatever they can offer for two years. Deciding which country to choose, Kyrgyzstan was the only option I thought I had at that time, considering what I can do with my experience and knowledge as an English teacher. I wanted to work for people or communities in an unprivileged area or part of the world by making use of what I had experienced. Here you go Kyrgyzstan, you chose me. I was assigned to a local school there mainly working together with English teachers in and out of class and organizing an English club.
To be honest with you, I have never heard of Kyrgyzstan before applying for the program. I somehow knew it should not be in Africa, for part of the name sounded familiar to me. There are some STANs in Asia such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. At that time, my guess was somewhere in Asia or the Middle East and I was, more or less, right.
It goes back to 2015 that I first encountered Kyrgyzstan. I was in the junior year in college and I was completely at a loss about what I was going to do with my life. One day I happened to capture an advertising poster hung in a train that said, “there’s certainly something we can do”. This was it. The moment I saw it, I knew what I was going to do next. The poster was made by an independent corporation called Japan International Cooperation Agency (aka. JICA), which provides a two-year volunteering program abroad as a part of their main projects.
As soon as I got home, I started to research for JICA, looking through what needs to be done to apply for the program. It was then that I got to know Kyrgyzstan for the first time in my life and I made it my first choice on the application form. Noticing the time gap between 2015 and now, you might have figured out by now that I could not get in on my first attempt. I believe there is always a reason for failure. I did not have any experience of working or specific knowledge and skills that were good enough to “help others”.
I still do not know whether all my experiences that I had and all my skills and knowledge that I acquired by now are sufficient to work for others living abroad but let’s just not talk about it now. It is 100% a coincidence that I chose Kyrgyzstan on my second attempt. I was the one that surprised the most to see it is the only option I had, and I loved it. Maybe it’s destined to work that way because later I learned that I overlooked the fact that there is one more country applicable to me and I just went past the country even though I thought I did careful research on the requirements and stuff.
Let me show you some pieces of Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan, located in Central Asia, is a mountainous country that locates itself relatively high; the capital city of Bishkek is about 800 meters (2,600 ft) above sea level. Believe it or not, its average elevation is 2,750 meters (9,020 ft). Whether you think it is high or not depends on where you live. You may wonder if the air thin enough to feel thin, but it is fine. I never felt difficulty in breathing, or I was just overwhelmed by the other distraction of the air. I will talk about this later.
Kyrgyzstan is bounded by four countries: Kazakhstan on the northwest and north, China on the east and south, and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the south and west. The population is about 6 million and contains diverse ethnicity: Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Russian, Dungan, Tajik, Uighur, and so forth.
The former part of the U.S.S.R declared its independence in 1991, and you can still see the nostalgia of the U.S.S.R walking along the streets in Bishkek some other areas of Kyrgyzstan. Both Kyrgyz language and Russia are official speak languages and most people speak or at least understand both. If you want to live or visit Bishkek, it is a must to speak Russian there. I am sure it makes your life better. But if you want to get along with local Kyrgyz people or simply make them happy, Kyrgyz is your choice. I do not speak Russian, but I am glad I learned Kyrgyz because you know you are never going to learn that language. You can learn Russian anywhere through the internet or books. I know Russian is one of the most difficult languages, but you still have a high chance if you have guts to do it. There are a bunch of textbooks available for Russian whilst you can rarely find ones for Kyrgyz. I do not even have an official one and I wonder if there is one. Anyways, I am not going anything deeper here, but I hope you get the small step towards Kyrgyzstan. Congratulations!
I finally managed to finish my first story. Thank you for reading and I hope to see you in the next story again.
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