A dear friend of mine, Kieran, is currently abroad in Kyrgyzstan. Clearly, he is much more adventurous than I am. He also has a questionable mustache. That was not entirely pertinent or necessary but I thought some direct characterization was in order. I also wanted to make fun of his mustache. Anyways, he is both a wonderful writer and person and is currently experiencing a world that for most of is literally unimaginable. Here's his first post:
Pre-departure
It didn’t set in until I did the laundry the night before. Five months of clothing: three jackets, four pants, twelve shirts, five sweaters, fifteen underwear and socks, hiking boots, running shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes, a scarf, a beanie, and a pair of gloves. Oh, and a “comfort item”, as my handbook suggested. What can bring comfort to me in a third-world, post-Soviet, virtually unknown country? My best guess was a set of pictures and a necklace my girlfriend made me. And of course my books.
The morning of departure was full of frantic movement streaked with tears, like drops of rain on an airplane window. Except I’m not a precision-welded metal machine, I’m a fleshy, sensitive young man hurtling across the planet to what could be a twenty-first century gulag, for all I know.
Transit
Sleep is hard to come by for me on an airplane, even on what I was told were two very smooth flights. The first, from New York to Istanbul was 8 hours and they had a fully-stocked, if a little dated, in-flight entertainment system. There were scores of films and I settled on Moneyball. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane, the cocky yet conflicted GM of the Oakland A’s who played baseball by numbers and very nearly succeeded, was captivating enough to distract me during the lengthy periods of turbulence over a stormy Atlantic. With some deep breaths, I was able to calm my neuroses enough to reach what everyone else around me knew so well: the stillness of sleep.
Arrival
So it turns out Bishkek isn’t a gulag after all. Upon landing, we failed our first Russian signage test and turned the wrong way out of the plane, only to be pointed in the right direction by a local Kyrgyz man. The visa process went smoothly thanks to our program coordinator, and we retrieved our luggage. To get outside, we walked through a gauntlet of hired taxi drivers with their Russian hats and unsmiling faces out to the parking lot, where our hired taxi driver was. Dina, our coordinator and guide, had her bag lost in transit and so we were told to wait in the van while she checked on its status. Without any Russian to save us, we were alone, helpless yet joking. The joking was only to cover up the deep and almost dormant fear that had been present since we boarded at JFK and that I don’t expect to leave for some time. I am unsettled, closer now to the characters of Kafka and Dostoevsky than I ever have been. I am in a modernist crisis, and I’m blogging my way through it. Join me.
Me again everybody.
Best of luck Kieran. While you're over there try to change the 'y' to 'ie': an eponymous country would be a nice souvenir.
The rest of you can join me in keeping up with Kieran's travels and thoughts at: http://kiergyzstan.tumblr.com/
Best, CL.
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