Shyrdak

The Kyrgyz shyrdak (in Kazakh, syrmak) is a brightly-colored thick felt rug with intricate patterns and motifs, representing the nomadic traditions.  

Shyrdaks for sale at Osh Bazaar, Bishkek, 1997

For herding families, shyrdaks were used to cover the sleeping and living areas and walls of the yurt, the traditional tent-like dwelling, providing insulation from sub-zero ground and air temperatures.  It can take the wool from five sheep to make one large shyrdak and the process of cleaning, drying, dyeing, rolling, cutting and stitching the pressed wool is slow and labor-intensive. These days, most shyrdaks are sold to city dwellers and foreign tourists for their homes.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

The komuz--a national symbol

The komuz is a traditional fretless string instrument used in Central Asian music.  In Kyrgyzstan, it’s a national symbol, played at every festival either as a lead instrument or as part of an ensemble and featured on the one som banknote. 

It is often used to accompany recitations of the national epic poem, the Manas.  But it’s not only for formal occasions.  It’s also played in homes, in schools and by street musicians, like this one at the Osh bazaar in Bishkek.  The komuz is generally made from a single piece of wood (usually apricot or juniper) and three strings traditionally made out of gut, but today more often from fishing line.  It is generally played seated, held horizontally and strummed or plucked. Virtuosos can play the komuz in different positions--over the shoulder, between the knees and upside down. The komuz has many different tunings, and their names correspond with various styles of music.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

Recycling, Central Asia style

What Westerners today call recycling is to many people in the developing world simply a part of everyday life—what you must do to survive.  In Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s, people recycled because it saved money, and because there was often no alternative.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

Decanting cooking oil into soda bottles, Osh Bazaar, Bishkek

You couldn’t buy some items such as milk and cream at the bazaar or on the street unless you brought your own container. Beer, soda, and milk bottles were returned for a refund. Empty glass and plastic bottles, some retrieved from dumpsters, were resold on the bazaars. Tin cans were used as planters. Fast food such as samsa, piroshki, and roasted sunflower seeds came wrapped in scrap paper torn from a ledger or an old textbook. Once Stephanie and I were rewarded for our volunteer editing for the Kyrgyzstan Chronicle, the weekly English-language newspaper, with 30 kilos of onions. One of the newspaper’s advertisers was going through a liquidity crisis and had settled the bill with half a truckload of onions. We wondered how to store them. Our Russian teacher, Galina, said that Russian women keep old stockings around for such contingencies. Stephanie pulled out some old runny pantyhose; we filled them full of onions and hung them from a line on the balcony. Galina was impressed. “You’re a good Russian woman,” she told Stephanie.