David Crow's Blog

I've returned to West Point.  It's the same as when I left it, only with fewer people here.  Mess hall food rarely tastes good, but it was very nice to have peanut butter after a month.
Yesterday's trip took 28 hours.  I'm not sure what else to say about it.  I got food poisoning about an hour before landing at JFK, so last night was pretty miserable and I'm still not feeling too hot this morning.  Fortunately, today is pretty relaxed.  I have the morning off until 11, when I'll meet up with CPT Gookins to settle my TDY pays, then eat lunch, put all my uniform stuff back in the trunk room, and head down to JFK again for my flight to Minneapolis to visit Ellen.  My cell is turned back on in case any of you want to drop me a line. 

Ok, sorry, I didn't end up using this blog nearly so much as I thought I would.  I hope it's been at least a little bit useful or interesting to a few people. 
We're into the home stretch of the trip.  This week has seen more work done on the houses and a few partial days (only working till lunch) to let us enjoy the city.  We've basically finished the foundations on both houses during our time here, meaning we've accomplished most of the manual labor.  This is a good share for a bunch of college guys (and two young women), as the majority of Habitat volunteers are retirement-age, and we don't want them getting sore.  We've also been doing the first layer of mud on the inside and outside of one of the other houses (covering the reeds).  The next group will put up a wire mesh, then another layer of mud mixed with a little concrete for the exterior to make it weatherproof.  It's nice to see the start of new homes, especially since we've gotten to know the future occupants fairly well. 
Tomorrow we will only work for about an hour and a half.  The rest of the day will be a "farewell luncheon," and we're supposed to have some Kyrgyz musicians coming, too.  That will be interesting.  The evening will be ours.  Wednesday is a free day to pack and get ready to go.  Thursday we'll leave the hotel at about 6 a.m. local, fly to London, then after a two hour stop-over continue back to JFK, arriving at about 6 p.m. local.  Most of the group will return to West Point by van, though several people are catching their next flights that night or spending the night in the airport.
My plans for the next few weeks have changed substantially.  My next training, Small Unit Leader Training (SMULT) at Ft. Bragg, got cancelled, so I'll have two weeks of leave.  This makes me upset, as that would've been cool training and now I have to take time out of next summer to replace it, but the leave will be enjoyable.  I'll be home during the warm months for the first time since coming to the Academy, and on the way back I get to see my sister and brother-in-law's new house in St. Paul for a few days. 
The time at home will give me an opportunity to get the pictures from the trip consolidated.  Our main photographer has been CPT Gookins, our officer-in-charge, and she'll probably mail me a DVD of photos which I'll post somewhere public.  In the mean time, here's a link to some of her earlier photos, up to and maybe including our first R&R.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while; Central Asia is not the place to go if you're looking for a dependable internet connection.  I kept getting a DNS error somewhere in Germany, so I couldn't hit Vox. 
Anyway, the trip has continued.  We had several more days of work following my last post, then went to Issyk-Kul, the second largest lake in Asia.  The water is salty, beautiful, and quite cold (not too cold to swim, just too cold to swim comfortably).  The group stayed in a resort bordered on two sides by the President's summer house (kind of a Camp David sort of place).  We were basically beach bums for two days (private beach), including a short excursion on a yacht.  Pictures will follow after I get my film developed and get somewhere I don't pay for internet access by the byte.  On the third day we drove back, stopping along the way to go white water rafting.  That was a blast; it looked just like southern Colorado.
Several days of work have followed.  We're basically done with the foundations for both houses (I've said this before not realizing how much work was to be done).  CONSTRUCTION DETAILS FOLLOW.  We set the outsides first, about one foot thick and up to maybe four feet vertically (a foot or so of that's underground).  The concrete is mixed by hand, guides are made of 2x4s nailed together tightly (nearly water tight initially and after a use or two with that much concrete they're definitely water tight), and we set big rocks in there to decrease the amount of concrete we have to mix.  It's not structurally-sound, but it'll do.  We fill the foundation up to about 4 cm from the top with sand (shoveled in and compacted by hand/foot).  We make finer concrete by sifting the gravel we're using for aggregate through what looks very close to chicken wire, then spread that over the top about an inch thick.  On top of that we set down a layer of insulant/reflective stuff, then the in-floor heating pipe, then another layer of cement (the floor).  We're done with that process for 2/5 of the first house; the rest of that house and the second house both need from the pipe up, but we're waiting on a shipment of gravel that got stuck in the mud (no, I'm not making that up).  Above the foundation the houses are made out of wood frames with bundled cane/reeds for insulation.  The outsides of the walls are covered in mud.  It's traditional but effective.  If the gravel isn't ready by tomorrow we'll be working on an earlier group's house, putting the mud up on the exterior walls.  /CONSTRUCTION DETAILS
I'd mentioned earlier that the people here had good work ethic.  I think that warrants another look.  The people work hard when they're working, but they'll also take any excuse to take a break.  While that's not much different from anywhere else, it's really starting to grind on my nerves to be told to take a break when I've only been working for 10 minutes since my last break.  I kept track today, and we were on break for 3 hours and 35 minutes out of the 7 hour work day.  It gets old really fast.  My fellow group members don't seem to have this frustration, and I don't like to get ridiculed for working through my breaks, so I guess there isn't much point in making it an issue.  Still, if I wanted to spend my summer sitting under a tree watching the day go by I'd do it at home and avoid all the cigarette smoke.
A fun thing I've been able to do during some of our time off has been to go to the open-air markets in town.  That's quite an experience for anyone who hasn't been outside the West before.  I haven't had much to shop for, but I've been able to take advantage of a few deals that I saw there, getting some stuff of questionable origin for really, really low prices.  It's a little overwhelming (some of these markets have thousands of stands), but that adds another element of fun.  The language barrier is showing itself, but people here are obviously used to it: they use big calculators to show how much they're charging for something, and you can punch in an appropriate operation to bargain with them. 
Yesterday we went and took a look at one of Bishkek's many universities, the Kyrgyz National University, where one of our local volunteers is studying to be a linguist.  It was originally an all-female university in the 1950's with about 8,000 students.  It is now co-ed, and has about 13,000 students at two campuses.  "Campus" is a little different here, as none of the universities have dorms, a student union, cafeterias, etc; the students live in the city.  The buildings look nice and the campus is adjacent to a large city park, but inside the buildings it looks a lot like old high schools in the States.  I would have liked to sit in on a class or two, but classes are out for the semester.  Their final exams are spread over about a month and are still going, ending next Friday.
Other than that there really isn't much to report.  I've found lots of new places to eat that are generally pretty good and a few are even cheap (like the place I ate tonight, where I had a good meal for 65 Som/$1.60).  Tomorrow (Sat) is a full day, Sun is a half day, Mon is a full day, Tues is a half day and our farewell dinner, Wed is free time in the city, and Thurs we depart for home at 8:45 (0345 GMT).  Depending on how long our layover in London is, our flight could be as short as two hours after time zones.  Love flying west.  After I get home I have a day to recover and get over jet-lag before I head for Ft. Bragg for Small Unit Leader Training (SMULT).  I'm really going to miss all this good food, especially the good, healthy, leisurely breakfast every morning.
I'm trying to find a way to get a quick tour of the Kyrgyz military academy on one of the days off; no idea if that'll be possible or not.  I'd also still like to get out to Manas Air Base, but I don't know if that will be possible, as our hugely-overpaid bus driver wants to charge an extra $50 to drive out there.  Screw that; he's already making 35 years' salary for a month's work.
A few other observations I've made:
Parking here means pulling off onto the sidewalk.  The sidewalks are made for this and are nice and wide to accommodate cars.  I don't think I've seen a parking lot the whole time we've been here.  Cabs just stop at street corners and pull over to wait for business.  Public transport is by small buses (made by Mercades, you'd recognize the type if you saw it).  They're made to seat about 10-15 people and generally hold somewhere around 30.  Fares are 5 Som (12.5 cents) to pretty much wherever they're headed.  Cross-walks are easy to find, but they're not widely used.  The difference is that Kyrgyz drivers are quite sure that they have the right-of-way, so you have to be quite alert when crossing. 
There isn't a Kyrgyz postal service of which I'm aware.  There is, however, DHL and FedEx.  Small world. 
Street-side vendors are on most blocks.  They all serve the same things for the same prices (an assortment of gum, cigarettes, ice cream, soda, etc).  The bad part is I'm eating more ice cream than I should, but on the bright side it's only 7 Som. 
Lots of people smoke.  Like maybe 40% of the population.  Much worse than Europe.  There are no "non-smoking" sections anywhere.
Littering is worse than in U.S. cities, but not horrible.  Interestingly, pop bottles and such have little symbols to get people to throw them away rather than the same thing to promote recycling.
Music here is largely American and mostly stuff you'd hear in a dance club.  There's some Russian and the odd German song, too.  I have no idea what traditional Kyrgyz music sounds like, but I know the traditional Kyrgyz horse culture has two kinds of violin-type instruments and one kind of guitar-type instrument, plus some flutes.  I still don't like to dance in clubs, but I've joined my fellow group members in a few.  They usually go out about every other night (the second night is recovery time).
I had breakfast with a member of the UN Development Program a few days ago.  He had a lot to say about the progress in the region and in Kyrgyzstan specifically.  There are issues with competition for influence between Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakstan, and the U.S., which frustrates a lot of initiatives because somebody will back the domestic opponents of most programs, preventing them from being effective.  Domestically, there are huge issues with distribution of wealth.  Here, the son of the Kyrgyz President has majority control of something like 80% of the country's economy.  On the up side, nearly half the adult populace has a college degree, which is a lot higher than, say, the U.S.  Now if they only had enough jobs that they didn't have M.D.s driving buses for a living (I know of two of those).  Infrastructure would be nice, too; the drive to Issyk-Kul was really bumpy.  We're talking about a road so bumpy that a van full of bleary-eyed, hung-over cadets couldn't sleep.  Yeah.  There is such a thing.
Sorry for all the grammatical/mechanical errors in this (Mom).  I'm out of practice and, hey, it's a blog, nobody cares how bad the sentence structure is.
Oh, and stop letting Ellen be the only one to comment.  At least give me the illusion that somebody cares what I have to say.

It continues to be an interesting time.  We went up into the mountains last week.  I have never seen anything more stunningly beautiful.  Glacier Nat'l Park is awesome, but it really doesn't compare to the mountains here.  It's so great to be able to see any kind of distance after being stuck on the east coast for so long, and this is indescribable.  We drove out there in a van, then crossed two gorges on horseback (trail ride).  The riding here is much like in the States (western), but the saddles are a little more primitive (less leather) and the stirrups are set much higher (smaller horses).  The horses look like something between an Arabian and a Paint and can't be over 12 hands tall.  At the other end of the ride we ate lunch and then hiked around for an hour or so, before taking the van (they went around) to the ranch house where we were spending the night.  We used a sauna there (kind of a traditional thing, I guess; showering in your own sweat isn't as nasty as it sounds).  The following day we had another hike up to a waterfall (pretty, but nothing special) then we tried to go to some hot springs, but it was like Thermopolis without any hygine requirements.  Too many kids in the pool for me to want to go in.  I was sad to leave those mountains.  It really is a lot like home, but undeveloped and 1920's poor.

Since then we've had three full days of work.  We finished the foundations for a second house today, and a couple of us went and worked using mud to cover the cane on one of the other houses.  We hauled some lumber today in preparation for starting above-ground work on one of the houses we started.  We have to do the floors first, though, which means more concrete.  That's not much fun when you don't have a mixer.  These construction techniques are so primitive it's not even funny.  I don't know why we're not using modern techniques; I guess we just have a lot of labor and not much money. 

Tomorrow we leave to spend a few days at Issyk-Kul, the second biggest lake in Asia.  We're doing some sailing, which will be a first for me, then being beach bums for a while.  After two days there we're headed back to Shamsay Gorge for white water rafting.  Sweet.

Cultural observation of the day: women dress much more nicely here.  It's really common to see women on the street wearing dresses.  Traditionally the Uzbek women wear a long shirt/dress thing (knee length) and pants that's very brightly-colored.  I'm not sure how exactly those go together, but they're interesting. 

We found a really good Chinese place.  The food is not amazing but it's very good, and we usually eat for about 160 Som (something like $4).  It's on the next block over from this internet cafe, which is 4 blocks south and one block east from our hotel, right in the middle of downtown Bishkek.  It's so nice; their White House is two blocks east of here.  We ate there a few hours ago. 

Now I'm going to walk back to the hotel before it gets late.

This is the first reaction I wrote on 31 May.

Geographically, Kyrgyzstan is a lot like Wyoming.  I thought I'd flown home when I got off the plane: beautiful mountains on the horizon, plains on all sides, you can see 100 miles, and there are cottonwood and pine trees along the road.  It's a bit more humid, but I'm coming from NY, so I'll take what I can get. 

The people are somewhere between Chinese and First American in appearance.  There is a large range of ethnic groups, ranging from Uyghers (the group that's being oppressed in Xinyang province of China) to Uzbeks, Russians (blonde hair, blue eyes, etc), and a dozen other groups, but they're more of a minority.  Bishkek is a city of about 3 million, and it really is quite western.  The whole country is basically bilingual (Russian and Kyrgyz; kind of reminds me of Canada in that regard), and in the city most of the people speak at least some English.  In theory, all high schools require two years of English, but that English is about as good as my Spanish a lot of the time.  Fortunately, a very high percentage (I'd guess higher than in the US) of students go on to university.  There are at least five universities in town.  Unfortunately, the country is extremely poor.  I have no idea how it works out like this, but there's just no money in skilled positions.  For example, the driver for one of the UN missions here is an M.D., but he can make more money as a van driver than as a practicing doctor.  One of the guys who will be living in one of the homes we're currently building is a professor who taught at a university in Turkey for several years.  The average university professor here makes about 1000 Som per month (the exchange rate now is just under 38 Som per US Dollar).  The city seems nice, but it's like everything is in disrepair (lawns aren't mowed in front of grand old 1980s Soviet buildings, etc).  I think that a big part of the problem is the lack of foreign interaction; our local contact, Elsat, 25, said she hadn't used a computer or even heard of the Internet before she got to college.  There's an educated, willing (good work ethic), eager work force, but they have no lucrative employment.  This leads to the problem of many people leaving in search of work.  As a result, the female/male ratio is about 3-1 after age 22. 

Oh, and I want to reiterate, this is a western city.  People don't carry AK-47s here, they carry cell phones and watch Shrek 3 dubbed in Russian.

This works out well for the other guys in the group, who all seem quite interested in the night life.  I've enjoyed it a bit, but really haven't gotten into it quite so much.  I get the feeling that I'm babysitting a large group of 16-yr-olds who are set loose in a country where they can drink and where their money goes a long way (nothing like the most expensive drink costing $1.20 to make cadets loosen up).  I've been focusing more on enjoying the more cultural aspects of Bishkek, but I suppose they're getting to know the people better.  It's a growing experience either way.

Our general day starts at about 7:30 with breakfast (included in the hotel and absolutely outstanding).  We take a van to the work site and build houses from 9-5 with an hour lunch break.  The work is primitive (mixing cement by hand, digging a lot, no heavy machinery), but it's coming along well; we're almost done laying the foundation of a second house, with the full foundation of our first complete.  We won't finish the houses, but the next Habitat group will.  Habitat usually sends old people, so it's good that we're here to do all the heavy lifting.  I'll tell more about the houses in a later email once we start work above ground, but for now I can tell you that they're kind of like townhouses, with three families' homes connected side-by-side.  Lunch is made by the families who'll be recieving the houses; the 8 of us each gave them 1350 Som at the start of the month and they're buying groceries for the whole time using that.  Not a bad deal, considering that it's really good Kyrgyz food.  That means cold cucumbers and tomatoes and flat bread (not unleavened, kind of like a pizza crust) are a staple, with soup or a rice dish making up the main course most days, and tea.  The veggies are communal, so you just reach in with your fork and take a bite, same with tearing off some bread, while your main dish is in your own bowl.  I could live on this.  The men from the families are working with us on the new houses, along with a hired local project foreman.  After 5 we generally have some kind of sporting event, like soccer with the construction crew and their kids or basketball at the American game (a bunch of U.S. professors, UN or Embassy workers, aid workers, etc who get together for a pick up game).  If we don't, I like to hit our hotel's little swimming pool.  By the way, you can drink the water here, but it's not recommended (we usually drink bottled but brush our teeth in the sink).  I have become familiar with squat toilets, but not in my hotel room.  Anyway, after sports we break up and get dinner wherever (trying to stay in groups whenever possible as much for communication as for safety) and generally meet up to go to a club later in the evening (I go along to keep an eye on the rest of the group).

I've gotten to see some interesting attractions here: I went to their National History Museum, which isn't exactly the Smithsonian but was quite informative; we went to an open-air market, the second largest in Central Asia, and I found awesome deals but few articles of clothing made for someone who's 6'3" with a size 12 shoe.  Goods here are interesting: some are the same good for the same price as in the States, and others are vastly cheaper.  I would think, duh, it's counterfeit (which is generally ok with me), but a lot of the time both will be in the same store, so I really don't know.  Saturday morning we're going to the Shamsay Gorge, which is a beautiful part of the mountains about two hours from here.  We're going to do some horseback riding (I'm guessing trail ride, ugh, but it'll be interesting to see how they do it), lots of hiking, and maybe go to a hot spring.  A week later we're going to go to Issyk-Kul Lake and enjoy the beach.