The River Near China
Today the river in At-Bashy, reflecting the sun, put purple spots in my eyes and I could barely read the book I had brought down to the banks. The water, now a grayish green, had been muddy just a few days before, bringing clay and red dirt out of the mountains. As I sat there a memory, almost two years old popped into my head, my mind racing from too much coffee and the prospect of leaving very soon.
The At-Bashy river, fed by snow melt and mammoth glaciers, falls out of the 7,000 meter peaks of the Tian Shan in eastern Kyrgyzstan and merges into the At-Bashy river, then the Naryn river and on to the Syr Daria River. The Syr Daria, one of the most prominent in Central Asia, continues on all the way to the desiccated Aral Sea.
From where I sat in mid August 2008, on the raised boulders above the banks of the At-Bashy River in At-Bashy village, it looked like little more than a wide riverbed full of scree and shrubs and lined with sinuous ribbons of water. Except for a few deep pockets where the thin streams converged and rushed through, it never got deeper than a few feet.
The At-Bashy (literally horse’s head) Mountains rear up almost immediately after the river and fades into grass heading southwest into the glare of the sun. This range is a subgroup of the Tian Shan, which flank the At-Bashy range’s 5000 meter peaks all the way into China. On the other end of town, to the north, sit the Naryn Too Mountains. These parallel the At-Bashy’s, tumbling off into the distance. From the bank I sat on looking southwest, it felt like I was inside some giant bowl. The sky here is so big that entire storms are contained in the distance, glowing like giant walls of grey marble. This was my home.
I had just arrived in At-Bashy, placed there by the United States Peace Corps, and was going to be teaching English at a primary school in town. A short walk from my host family’s house ran the river, the twisting mountains and the sky. Work hadn’t begun yet and so, in those first weeks at site, I went down to sit and look and listen to the river. My language ability was poor at the time, having only had 3 months of training. The result was a nagging loneliness that was easiest dealt with by surrounding myself with the harsh topography and wide-open space found at the end of a muddy road.
Sitting there one day, I noticed him. The sun was setting behind him so he wasn’t much more than a black set of limbs among flowing pools of white light. But I could see he was preparing himself for something. He took off his shirt and broke a long stick into two. Then he turned and stepped into one of the deeper sections of the river.
His chest, blocking the flow, sent water up over his shoulders and for a moment it looked as though his feet had lifted from the rocks and he drifted back. He had lifted his two hands above his head and it seemed like a plea for help. As I got to him I realized his hands were held above his head to keep his deconstructed rifle and clothing dry- the butt and box of bullets in one hand, barrel and shirt in the other. He looked up at me and then back up river. In a moment he was on a boulder beside the rushing flow, shaking himself dry and wringing out his pants. He smiled up at me and then brought two fingers to his mouth. I gave him a cigarette and we sat there quietly smoking. Freeing his hands, he pieced his rifle back together and then hopped up the boulders onto the dirt road above. With the cigarette still dangling between his cracked lips he caught my gaze and nodded down river. He began to walk. I followed.
His house was several miles away and by the time we reached it the sun had set. I walked in and took my shoes off. His wife came out and stared at me, confused. I have no idea what was said but soon she had placed a bowl of steaming tea in front of me and we all sat, legs crossed, drinking out of cracked cups and eating chunks of bread and stale fried dough called borsok. The man left for a moment and returned with a little photo album. Inside were photos of his kills. He pointed, smiling at a particular photo. In some photos he sat next to marco polo rams with antler spans that were longer than he was tall. In others he was posed with his guns, sometimes knee deep in snow.
I said goodbye to his wife and he refused to let me walk home alone in the dark. I invited him in but he just shook my hand and turned and walked swiftly away. Inside, my host father yelled at me. They had been worried. I hadn’t slept a week in their house and already I was getting into trouble. They told me only bandits and drunks hang out down by the river (this turns out to be basically true) and I just said it wasn’t a problem and I wouldn’t be out after dark again.
I’ve only seen him a few more times during my service. Once in town I passed him on the street and he introduced me to his daughter. A smiling, little thing that dangled from his hand and hid behind his legs. I don’t even remember his name. I still remember his face, though. As clear a memory I have of living in Kyrgyzstan. His smirking mouth stuck to a cigarette drooping from his dry lips.
Volunteer work wears on the soul, especially of the development sort. I’ve been in At-Bashy now for almost two years and I’m not sure what exactly I’ve accomplished. The Peace Corps is aware that this sentiment is common among vols. and so they created 3 goals to quantify success at site. Two of the three state, essentially, that by just being here we are succeeding. They go something like: to spread awareness of US culture to host country nationals and to gain knowledge of the host country’s culture and to pass on that knowledge to US nationals. It’s extremely useful for PC to have these two goals set up because it makes failure almost impossible. Unless, the volunteer hates it in country, she can probably manage these two goals. The third goal, though, is the most important to the majority of vols. It is to improve the capacity of the host country to meet its needs- basically the meat of the whole endeavor. Obviously, it’s the most difficult. I’ve helped kids get into programs in the US, written grants, run summer camps, etc. But, for some reason, I rarely feel like I’ve helped in any significant way. Is Kyrgyzstan better off from my service? I’m not sure.
Anyway, my point I guess is that when I leave it will be memories like the one above that help me to remember why I came and stayed and consider the whole thing to have been worth it.
The last time I saw him he was going to fish and carried a net and a pole for the job on his back. He was riding a bicycle that must have been twenty years old and made of solid iron. He looked like he might be pushed over by gusts of wind but he never fell. He stopped and we spoke awhile. I asked how his family was. He asked if I had a cigarette. I said I didn’t. He threw a pinch of dark green pellets into his mouth and pushed them under his lip with his tongue. Known locally as nasifai but what I call bird turd because of the rumor that it is made from bird shit, this stuff makes your head light and your feet as heavy as cinderblocks. The last time I put some in my mouth I almost fell off a horse and then off a mountain. He invited me to some and then to come fish and I said I would the next day. We shook hands and he rode on into the wind and dust. I could hear his bike squeak against itself even after he turned the corner.
