Kyrgyz parenting inspired by NPR

I just finished reading an article on NPR about global parenting habits that have not caught on in the USA.  While reading this I was comparing it to my experience in Kyrgyzstan and all of the things kids do here that would likely never fly back home.  Some of them are repeats from the NPR article and some may be things we do at home, but never being around young mothers and children that much in the states, do not know for sure.  Also a lot of these relate to my experience with my host family and may not be true for all of Kyrgyzstan.  Here is the link for the NPR article

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/08/12/339825261/global-parenting-habits-that-havent-caught-on-in-the-u-s

1. It’s a repeat, but kids stay up late.  Too late.  10 O’clock would be perfect, but no 11 or 12 sometimes 1 am in my family.  My host family is made up of my Apa (mother), her son, his wife, and their 2 kids.  Their kids are ages 4 and 1.  The one year old has no regular sleep pattern, sleeping irregularly throughout the day.  The 4 year old is often up all day starting at 8 then not going to sleep until 11pm on most nights.  This makes for one grumpy kid by bed time.  My family also eats dinner very late around 10pm and at times 11pm contributing to his late bed time.  The worst part about this is the crying and screaming I hear on almost a nightly basis around this time.  I miss peace and quiet.  Here is a picture of my little brother taken around 1 am at a 50^th birthday party I went to with my family.  The party didn’t end till 3 am and they were up the whole time.

2. Parent’s don’t let their babies be free.  During Syakal’s (the 1 year old) first year she was never on the ground playing or exploring by her self until about 9 months.  Some one was always holding her, she was always in a stroller, or the toy with wheels she sits in and can run around in.  She was never able to sit on the ground by herself and play with toys or explore.  Along these same lines parent’s don’t let their babies cry.  The second a baby makes a sound someone runs, not an exaggeration, to the baby and begins to cosset them.  Maybe this is how it is in America, but I don’t believe so.  Paradoxically by the time a child is 2 or 2 and half they are out running around in the street completely unsupervised. 

That is the look of a child that wants to be free

3. Young boys have no discipline.  During my first year I experienced a 4 year old spit, hit, kick, throw toys, throw food, throw eating utensils, hit his mother, hit his grandmother, hit me and the list goes on.  Real discipline for these actions was non-existent.  When it did exist it would normally be one of them playfully hitting him back in a non-violent way, which would incite him even more.  Instead of any form of discipline they would seek to stop the antics by pacifying him with candy or saying that what they did was wrong instead of explaining to him what he did was wrong.  Time outs don’t happen, and apologies were a snow balls chance in hell until recently.  One day I was washing my hands and I used the soap.  Daniel asked me which soap I used and I told him ‘the big one’ and he proceeded to yell at me and try and hit me for using his soap.  I went to my room and about 5 minutes later he came into my room, apologized, and told me the soap is his but we can share.  This was a changing point in my relationship with the 4 year old and was one of my happiest moments with my host family.  I wish it would not have taken 9 months to get to that point, but better late than never. 

4. Children have horrible diets, but so do the parents.  If you are in any way familiar with Kyrgyzstan you know they persist off a diet of potatoes, noodles, bread, tea, fat, and small amounts of meat.  In my homestay 75% of the meals are made of that combination and nothing more.  As a result people here are always tired, always sick, and 50% of them die from heart disease.  However they don’t associate their diet with these problems at all.  Instead they tell you they need fat to be strong and because we live in the mountains.  Their food is all natural so it is good for you unlike our food in America.  While I can’t disagree with the last statement when you slice off chunks of pure sheep fat and eat it, it is not good for you.  It is no coincidence then that the babies eat this way too.  Mashed up oily potatoes, bread soaked in hot water or milk covered in sugar, sugary tea or sheep broth in a bottle, mashed up noodles and sheep fat, or a bone to chew on are all perfectly acceptable and common baby food.  They have created a vitamin and mineral supplement for babies to combat this diet that is available for free at the hospital, yet parents do not use it for a number of excuses.  As a result the babies along with the rest of the family are often sick and tired. 

Photo by Bob Self

5.  Children > 3 years have freedom.  After the child has began walking and no longer is held hostage by the parents they have a ton of freedom.  The kids normally stay close, but it is not uncommon for an unsupervised 5 year old to be herding cows, a 7 year old on a bus going across the country by themself, and a gaggle of kids outside playing in ditches and streams.  This is one of the few parenting habits I agree with here.  Kids get to be kids.  They can learn to play, share, be responsible, cry, and hurt themselves all by themselves.  I can’t imagine this in many places in the states. 

These guys own the block

6. The world is your bathroom.  Most people in Kyrgyzstan have outhouses.  I think these would be challenging for young children to use properly so I give them some slack.  When a child is a baby, diapers or cloth diapers are used.  After this time they have small porta potties that they use.  This is great until they are using it in the hall way, in the kitchen or other public places for us all to see and smell (the 4 year old).  Another common practice for younger children is the parent holding the child for them to do their business on the side of the road, in a ditch or wherever they happen to be at the moment.  I’m okay with this if they are young but by the time you are 4 you can do better.  Just yesterday I look outside to see my 4 year old brother taking care of business outside my window on the ground.  After his mom wiped his butt and left the tp there along with his business.  It sat there all day.  Someone finally cleaned it up and disposed of it in the evening.  Public defecation is common here especially among toddlers. However when outhouses are everywhere and a parent is holding a child doing its business, they could just as easily hold them over an outhouse!  It is no surprise hep a and other diarrheal diseases are so common here.

7. Mummy children.  Kyrgyzstan is cold, very cold in winter.  The Kyrgyz hate the cold, even when it’s hot.  Cold drinks are forbidden, cold yogurt and soda will be heated before they drink it, and excessively warm clothing will be worn when it is not needed.  I am from Florida, cold is not my specialty, but ear muffs are not needed in 60 degree weather!  They bundle babies up here in so many layer of clothes they can barely move.  Imagine Ralphie’s brother from a Christmas story, but the baby version.  Syakal will often have on 2 to 3 pairs of socks in summer and she will take them off.  Instead of letting them stay off they immediately put them back on her.  Her feet feel like they belong on a stuffed animal.  2 hats, 3-4 shirts all completely normal even when it is not winter.  The children look miserable and when you touch them there skin is often sweaty and hot.  I am thankful I am not a baby here because being that bundled up and sweating sounds like a nightmare.

8. Kids in the driver seat.  Most of the parenting practices here are different, but culturally and logically make sense.  The one I disagree with the most is children in cars.  The roads here are horrible and the drivers are worse.  Accidents are common, drunk drivers are in abundance, and everyone knows someone who has been killed in an accident.  Despite this seat belts are never used and I have never seen a child seat outside of Bishkek.  What I do see everyday are children in the driver’s lap, children in the passengers lap, children standing in between seats and babies being held in the front seat.  I have taken part in this too.  A lot of cars have seatbelts that do not work or have been removed, I assume they were a nuisance.  When there are seatbelts they rarely use them, except when driving by police they will hold them over their chest for a minute then return them to their resting position.  Due to these factors, when there is an accident the result are catastrophic.

Yesterday while sitting in my office at the hospital I heard lots of screams.  It is a hospital, kids don’t like hospitals and I thought nothing more of it.  The screaming continued and it started to sound like real screaming not, I don’t want this shot screaming.  I venture out of my office to see what is happening and see one kid, bloodied and screaming on the hallway couch of the hospital being tended to by the nurses.  There is an abnormal amount of commotion going on and I assume something out of the normal is occurring.  I go outside to make a phone call in the quiet, and see the ambulance pull up, which I have never seen used for medical purposes before.  Then a man on a makeshift stretcher with a blood soaked bandage on his head is carried into the ambulance.  Later I asked my counterpart what happened and there was a car accident involving 1 car and it had flipped back on the mountain road.  There were 3 kids and one adult.  The only other piece of information I know is that on of the kids was in the drivers seat with the adult.  As the Kyrgyz say, Cudai Buirsa (god willing) everyone survived.  I know this served as the wake up call for me to start wearing my seatbelt every time I am in a car here and I can only hope parents start taking more responsibility for their children when they drive.

These are just a few of my observations from being here for a year.  I am not saying the way we raise children in the states is any better, we have lots of issues too, I just find some things they do here to be different from our idea of normal back home.  One advantage of being here is I feel more prepared to one day be a parent having lots of ideas of what I would never let my kids do and vice versa.

Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell.

In Kyrgyzstan the sheep is a way of life.  A culture whose favorite meat is mutton, almost any large gathering will have boiled sheep, handicrafts are made from wool along with their yurts, they also have children’s game played with the knees from sheep chuko.  In the village wealth is measured in the amount of sheep or other livestock you own, at the animal bazar you choose a sheep by the amount of fat it has in its butt.  People go to the lush mountain valleys in summer to graze their sheep and other livestock.  Sheep play a huge role in Kyrgyz life and culture so this blog is dedicated to my least favorite animal in Kyrgyzstan. The Sheep. 

I have come to despise sheep.  The meat is gross, smelly, tough, and very fatty.  There are sheep feces everywhere I go.  I go on a hike 3 hours into the mountains and there is sheep poop, I go to a beautiful beach on the lake and there is sheep poop everywhere.  You can not escape it.  Every large gathering I go to there is boiled sheep, the jokes about me eating the slices of sheep fat have not stopped after a year, locals insist that I eat the fat and intestines so I become strong.  You would think after a year of me refusing to eat slices of pure sheep fat my Kyrgyz family would get bored of trying to get me to eat it, but no they have not.  Sheep also create traffic problems crossing the road en masse and until very recently (this year) the jail time for stealing a sheep in Kyrgyzstan was more than stealing a woman to be your wife.  I don’t now if I mentioned it but I hate sheep! 

This blog will not be about my hatred of this animal though.  It will be about the process of how the sheep goes from grazing to being on a plate in front of you for dinner.  It will be bloody, graphic and gross (just be happy you don’t get to experience the smells that go along with the actual process).  I’m hoping to prepare my parents for their upcoming visit.

1. Get a sheep.  Many people have and raise sheep.  If you don’t own them you will buy one either from a friend or neighbor in the village or from an animal bazar in a larger town.  From asking around the going price for a full grown sheep is about in the 3000-5000 som range (60-100 dollars) depending on how fat it is etc…

2. Tie it up.  Sheep are small but like any creature with a dull knife next to it’s neck it will fight back.  Usually one rope around the hooves is plenty.  To tie it up you simply flip the sheep on its back, grab the legs and tie them together.  From this point you are ready for the slaughter.

3. Omean (sp.)  Omeaning is the equivalent to saying a prayer.  For this part the women, kids, and men will come together for a quick prayer followed by the words omean.  They do this before any kind of animal slaughter.

4..  Slaughter it.  No girls allowed.  It is not pretty, it is not clean, but it is relatively fast.  Usually a quick slice to the neck and the sheep will bleed out relatively quickly.  They bring over a container to catch the blood.  Once the sheep is dead they will untie the legs and get it ready to be butchered.

5.. Skin it.  The first thing they do in butchering it is skin it.  It consists of gingerly knife cuts along with jamming fists in between the skin and body cavity to detach the skin.  They take care to not hurt the hide as they can sell it for a small amount, up to $10. 

Gingerly skinning

6.. Remove the innards.  Once the hide is detached they leave it under the body to act as a nice clean working surface.  From here they will slice down the ventral side of the body cavity.  Once completed they will remove the innards into a bowl. 

Organ removal

7.  Clean the innards.  This is always a woman’s job.  They will wash, rinse, and braid the intestines.  They empty the green smelly stomach contents away from the work area but never far enough.  It is a horrendous smell.  This smell and taste never leaves the intestines in my opinion no matter how much cleaning they do.  They often will use a small twig to help with the cleaning.  I think of it like a pipe cleaner.  The heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach, and intestines will all be eaten. 

A bowl of guts

My Apa (mother) cleaning the innards

8.  Cut it up.  As they butcher the sheep they will cut the sheep into manageable parts.  There is no nice clean butcher cuts like you would get in America though.  From here the parts will all go to the kazan (large metal pot).  All of the pieces will go in except for the head and lower parts of the legs.

 

Note the green gunk, that's what is in the stomach

Ready to be thrown into the Kazan

9. Singe the head and legs.  This can be done in numerous ways.  The goal is to remove all of the hair from the parts and cook them at the same time.  This is done through burning it, then scarping it with a knife until clean.  It smells like burning hair and is not pleasant.  I’ve seen this done using a blow torch and a fire.

10. Boil it.  All of the sheep parts, innards and meat are thrown in the kazan to boil for hours.  During this time the women tend to be inside preparing other things for the meal and the men smoke, drink, and stir the sheep around.  Sometimes people will separate the innards and the meat and cook them separate.  These people are heroes.  The meat isn’t good in the first place, but when you boil it with the innards it makes it even worse. 

11. Serve it up.  Now the sheep is cooked and the table is set.  Time to eat.  It usually begins with a young boy going around to wash everyone’s hands.  While he is pouring water over your hands it is customary to say some wishes for the pourer.  From here they split up the meat.  The large chunk of pure fat from the butt almost always goes to the eldest lady in the room, or if it is an honored guest it will go to the woman if there is a male and female (possibly my mother when they visit).  The eldest male, will sometimes get the head or the honored male guest (possibly my dad when they visit) .  While these parts are served to them, they share.  From here they pass out chunks of bone and meat in chronological order, the older you are the more food you get.  The youngest females usually get the smallest amount and worse cuts of meat.  Normally 2-4 middle aged men will begin shredding some of the meat, fat and intestines for the besh barmak.  The ingredients for the besh barmak are simple, shredded sheep parts, plain noodles, and sheep broth.  They mix the ingredients up in a large bowl and then every one grabs their helping.  Traditionally this is eaten only with your hands, but many people use silverware now.  I tend to use my hands, but the after affect is horrid, hands that smell like sheep for days. 

 

Head and intestines

Passing out the pieces

Intestines braided to look like a snake

Rib bones count as silverware

12.  Omean.  At the end of the meal the hand washer will come back around, this time your hands are greasy and smelly, but soap is never used and everyone will use the same towel to dry their hands.  Once your hands are sparkling clean you omean again.  Thanking the guests, and wishing them fortunes.  Depending on what the occasion is for the prayer will sometimes be directed at them.  Once this is done everyone prepares their doggy bags.  These consist of plastic bags full of chunks of fat, meat, and left over besh barmak.  There is often times a separate bag with candy, bread, and borsok (fried bread).  When ever I leave one of these I tend to wash my hands at least 2 more times with lots of soap and water.

So that is the typical process in my experience of how a sheep goes from pasture to plastic doggy bag.  The first time I experienced this I was wide eyed and taking it all in.  Now I dread it.  I hope for the day when it is a goat, chicken, cow or horse slaughter in stead of a sheep.  Despite what the lyrics from a CAKE song say, in my mind, goats go to heaven, sheep go to hell.

Random act of kindness, holidays and breaking the peace.

So far Spring has been great.  The weather has warmed up, the new volunteers have arrived, 55 of them, but I haven’t met any of them and I think I’ll have my grant money in time to get everything ready for my camp!  The fruit trees are all blooming and I can’t wait for fresh apricots and cherries soon.  Most of my time has been consumed preparing for camp.  We’ve been getting lessons ready, scavenging up flipcharts and markers from other volunteers since I don’t have money to buy our own yet to get lessons ready, and finalizing our resource book.  The next week I’ll be going with my counterpart and tutor to Bishkek for a short 2 day training on youth camps.  After that I’ll be spending the next week in Bishkek making books and buying supplies assuming I have the grant money by then.  I am also happy that our weekly English club is now done.  We are going on an ‘excursion’ to the lake on Saturday as a little end of the year party. 

I remember back during PST we learned about the “cycle of vulnerability and adjustment” it is a little chart that shows typical volunteer’s feelings during their service.  Around this time I should be experiencing my mid-service crisis, but knock on wood so far no crisis unless being out of creamy jif peanut butter counts!  In fact I’m feeling very exciting and optimistic about the upcoming months, in June I have my camp, then travel with my parents in Turkey then showing them around Kyrgyzstan, in July I just plan to go to the lake a lot, and do some hiking, come august we have our mid service conference and I’ll start working on my next project, toilets and hand washing stations!  The beginning of the school year will be busy with monitoring and evaluating for my camp and closing my grant out and planning the next project.  Then in October I get to go to the good ole’ US of A for a couple of weeks for my sister’s wedding along with Gator football, good beer, good food, and good friends.  I’m very exciting to go home but it will be weird traveling home on a short vacation.

Random act of kindness

Being a volunteer and a volunteer that looks very different from the majority of the population can be a drag.  People assume I don’t speak Kyrgyz, I don’t know how much things costs, and as a result many situations arise where I am talked about in front of me and locals try and rip me off.  I don’t care if people talk about me so that’s irrelevant to me, but I hate being ripped off.  I get where people are coming from when they try and get a little extra out of people that aren’t from the place and don’t know how much things cost, but that doesn’t make it right and I hate it just as much. At first I wasn’t sure how much everything cost, now I do.  And I refuse to pay when they try and charge more.  I even ooyat (shame) them when I am feeling in the mood.  This past weekend I was heading to Karakol to get some supplies for my camp.  Whenver I travel I bring a backpack with a little bit of stuff in it.  The trip to Karakol from my village cost 150 som ($3) always.  No matter how much luggage, or other things you have.  The ladies always bring their giant bags full of products from the bazar and are never charged extra.  When I got on the bus the guy tried to charge me 200 som.  I said no, I said it never costs that much, then he tried to tell me that gas is more expensive and I had a bag so it was 200.  BS!  Knowing it was BS I wouldn’t budge and give him the extra 50 som.  If you are in America reading this, an extra dollar is nothing, but when you live here, speak the language and live on a very small salary $1 is a lot!  Especially when someone is trying to cheat you.  So I wouldn’t give the driver the money then a young 10 year old kid who had befriended me at the bus stop gave the driver 50 som.  I then turned to him (Bek) and asked what are you doing don’t do that.  But he did.  Now I was pissed at the driver and felt like a jerk because this kid just paid.  I tried to give him the remaining 40 som in my wallet but he wouldn’t take it and showed me his 700 som (about $15) and said he was rich.  Of course this was money from his parents for the weekend.  Bek and I talked most of the trip until the bus filled up and some old out of shape middle aged woman made him get up so she could sit.  Once we got to Karakol the driver gave Bek his 50 som back!!! I felt victorious.  I then gave him some reese's candy I had that my parent had sent me.  Back in the village I’ve ran into Bek almost everyday.  He played kickball with us the other day and is coming on our excursion to the lake with my English club students on Saturday. 

Not Bek, but kickball

As volunteers we become very cynical towards Kyrgyzstan at times, the drunk men, the pushy women, the horrible food, the rude yet hospitable people, and more.  While what Bek did is really a small thing it was a big thing at the moment.  Like any place there are cheaters, drunks, and rude people and they often are the ones we remember but we are surrounded by so many more people like Bek all the time we just fail to take those moments in.

A random Kyrgyz lady who wanted me to take a picture of her and her cow while I was hiking

Holidays and breaking the peace

Holidays are huge in Kyrgyzstan.  In May I believe there are 4 or 5 government holidays.  For each holiday there are no classes, no work, and people get drunk.  We can thank the Soviet Union for the last one.  I bring this up because the drunks have been out en masse lately.  Normally there are a few in the center of my village but they stay there. Lately I’ve run into them in the stores, by my house, and saw one harassing an elderly lady.  This is madness.  Yesterday one reminded I wasn’t Kyrgyz so that was useful, I had almost forgot.  Today I had one ask me to buy him a jooz gram (100 grams of horrible alcohol) while I was getting some eggs, and as I mentioned there was a young 28ish year old guy screaming and pushing a woman who was at least 50.  That was unreal.  Fortunately their were other guys their trying to get him to chill out.  The holidays in May are all very nationalistic: the names according to Wikipedia, May 1^st Kyrgyzstan People's Unity Day, May 5^th Constitution day, May 8^th remembrance day (carried over from the Soviet Union), and May 9^th Great Patriotic War Against Fascism Victory Day (WW2).  These holidays give the men of Kyrgyzstan one more not needed excuse to get drunk and act obnoxious.  We even received a text alert from our Peace Corps safety and security officer saying “Tomorrow is victory day. Avoid angry drunks and beware of provocation due to anti-western sentiments in local media.”  I’ll be happy when the drunks move back into their homes and smoke filled billiard halls and off of the streets of the usually quiet and peaceful Karl Marx (my village).  Kyrgyzstan has also provided some history lessons during the holiday season, from a news headline “"Bishkek to host campaign 'We Have Won' dedicated to 69th anniversary of Victory in WWII,"” and another volunteer’s host brother informed her “As my host brother explained to me last year on WWII Victory Day: "Kyrgyzstan killed Hitler."”  I wish I was making this stuff up, I really do! I don't want to downplay the effects of WWII had on Kyrgyzstan in any way though, and almost 8% of the population of Kyrgyzstan died as a result of the war.  

I guess I can’t hate too much since we have plenty of drunk obnoxious overly patriotic Americans too.

Our village monument for WWII

Karl watches over us in front of our government building