Cultural Learnings of Kyrgyzstan for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Canada

The countries Central Asia are the new Timbuktu of the world, a cluster of vaguely exotic locales whose location nobody is exactly sure of – at least, nobody outside of the ex-Soviet Union and maybe Turkey. Sacha Baron Cohen took advantage of this lack of knowledge in his shock humour classic Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a terrible movie that has, nonetheless, at least put the idea of Central Asia in people’s heads.

Still, when I told people were I was going I was met with polite nodding or an honest, “actually, I’m not really sure where that is.”

Well, I’m in Kyrgyzstan, not Kazakhstan, though if you didn’t notice that in the title you wouldn’t be alone. There’s a reason for this change, and it’s not my desire to trick you or hold your lack of knowledge over your head. In fact, I was supposed to be going to Kazakhstan, and would have succeeded if it weren’t for my own stupidity. For you see, I bought a visa to Kazakhstan last year only to be pleasantly surprised when the visa indicated I was eligible to spend 30 days as long as I did it within the next year.

So I waited 8 months. Finally, I bought a ticket, booked a place to stay, and took the bus to the airport. There was traffic and I arrived late enough to start hyperventilating in line about whether I would actually manage to have them put my baggage on the plane. All in vain as it turned out. I arrived at the counter one minute before the check-in deadline, placed my bag on the conveyor belt, and handed my passport to the check-in agent.

“Where is your visa to Kazakhstan?” she asked.

I flipped through the pages of my passport and handed it back to her.

“But this visa is expired,” she said. “See? February 8, 2016.”

“No no,” I said with mortifying self-assuredness, “it doesn’t expire until August. See? 08/02/2016.”

She took a picture of it and made a call. Adem grabbed it to look. “Kate,” he said, “look at this other date. It says 23/06/2015. There is no way you can be right.

The bizarre calm of accepting fear fulfilled descended over me. Adem and I strolled to the ticket counter in the hopes of cancelling the ticket before the plane took off. While we were there, I booked another ticket to Kyrgyzstan for the following week.

And that is the story of how I was once almost deported from Kazakhstan, except not really. It’s just the story of a three hundred dollar mistake that motivated me to scarf down a brownie and cry for a bit.

I arrived in Kyrgyzstan yesterday. The interior of the airport smelled funny, though I couldn’t place the scent. Body odour – of course, a classic – but something else. People pushed towards the customs officials in a line that resembled people waiting for the release of a new iPhone. (A.K.A. NO LINE.) When I was finally able to push my way to the front, I could see that the border officials were wearing hats that made them look like they were from North Korea.

This is not hyperbole; in fact, if anything the hats were like a hyperbolic version of North Korea army hats. They were green with a wide brim and even an extravagantly sloped top that reached it’s peak at the front of the hat and another, smaller, peak at the back. Affixed to the front of this verdant hat-valley was a large red star brooch flanked by sheaves of wheat, the official symbol of the Soviet Union. On the glass of the passport control booth was a large sign showing a camera with a red line crossed through it; I can only assume this is because Kyrgyzstan does not want the secret of the highly embarrassing and amusing border control hats to get out to the rest of the world.

The sheaves of wheat were a laughably ironic symbol also; during the Soviet Period, collective farming was imposed on neighbouring Kazakhstan, which had previously been largely nomadic. This resulted in mass starvation, with some sources claiming that 38 percent of the population perished. While this didn’t happen in Kyrgyzstan, the sheaves of wheat still seem an ironic symbol for a country that a. is very close to Kazakhstan and b. has not been a Soviet Republic for 25 years.

I haven’t had a chance to talk to any Kyrgyz people in any depth yet, but the hats were giving me the feeling that Kyrgyzstan may be a bit nostalgic for the Soviet period.

As I stood in line mentally besmirching the hats, the man next to me said, “So you are from Canada.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why are you coming to Kyrgyzstan?” He sounded like it thought it was a bit weird. In truth, it did seem weird; in that whole crowd of people, I’d seen only two others who looked like tourists from a place that wasn’t Russia. “Well,” he said, “there are lots of beautiful places. You can go hiking.”

It was my turn to go up to the border counter. I took a deep breath to stave off laughter at the hat and because somebody had vomited next to the counter and it hadn’t yet been cleaned up.

The border guard looked at my passport. “You’re from Canada?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a visa?”

“Canadians don’t need a visa to Kyrgyzstan.”

He looked for a moment at an sheet of paper pasted to the wall of his cubicle to find out whether I was telling the truth. His eyes didn’t appear to focus on anything, which made me wonder if he had actually managed to find Canada at all. After a few seconds he shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and stamped my passport.

And that is the story of how I’m pretty sure I held the first Canadian passport that that guy had ever stamped.

As for Bishkek, so far it is dusty and hot, but reasonably green.

The buses and marshrutkas come in different colours. This is a first for me.

The Bishkek movie theatre.

A literacy poster. This baby’s all like, “I don’t understand words.”

Is this a swimming pool, or is everybody just swimming in a fountain?

Kyrgyzstan is an ostensibly Muslim country but, like in Azerbaijan, few women cover. I also had pork shawarma today and they were doing a roaring trade.