Beshbarmak

Beshbarmak means five fingers, and it's a Kyrgyz dish (traditionally eaten with five fingers, hence the name). It comes in many forms, depending on where you eat it. At this restaurant, it came in a bowl with noodles, soup, beef pieces...and five huge pieces of congealed fat. (Yes, all that yellow is fat.)

Beautifying drab buildings

Three ways to beautify a drab building:

1. Sunlight.
2. Leaves.
3. Someone's colourful washing.

Kyrgyz madonna

There is a certain patience and resignation in this Kyrgyz mother's face that reminds me of Mary, who said, "Be it unto me according to your word", knowing faintly what suffering that would entail.

Waste not, want not

I think village dwellers often have to be more resourceful than city dwellers. And certainly, some Kyrgyz city dwellers have picked up the more wasteful aspects of materialist Western culture. In the villages which I've visited, however, waste is sacrilege. Nothing is wasted. If an animal is killed, every part of it is either eaten or used in some other way. While a horse lives, it is used for work (including the work of tourism - allowing ignorant but grateful foreigners to go for horse rides). Even its 'waste matter' is not wasted: dry dung, it turns out, burns nicely.

Another use for sheep

Sheep are useful sources not just of metaphors and similes, but also of wool. The Kyrgyz art of felt-making quite naturally developed from their nomadic, shepherd roots. I had the privilege of witnessing this man making tapachki (slippers) from scratch, well, from wool, anyway. Wool, soap, water, a bit of dye, and a lot of rubbing, and hey presto, you have felt slippers! The lady, Svetka, is spinning wool to make yarn with which to sew bags.

All we like sheep...

The Warp and Woof of Kyrgyz Rural Life

I thought I'd post some pictures of Kyrgyz rural life for those of you who haven't had the chance to hear from me in person. I've had a few opportunities to visit rural Kyrgyzstan and I've enjoyed the hospitality that Kyrgyz villagers have shown me. This picture is of shyrdaks (Kyrgyz rugs) being hung out to dry. The embroidery on these shyrdaks is often mindbogglingly intricate: every one of them represents days of work by a Kyrgyz woman, often in the company of other women. Shyrdaks are, in a literal and metaphorical sense, part of the fabric of Kyrgyz village life.