Up In The Valley Where Time Stopped

Trees arouse the strongest of emotions in all but the most insensitive people.  The mere mention of a tree will whisk people away into a parallel realm.  Birch.  Elm.  Eucalyptus.  Trees of life.  They stand still in the landscape, populating it as if the soil is what had grown around it.  The sounds of a tree , its branches, its leaves, rustles in the background.  People saw their cultures in trees.  Like the trees up in the valley where time stopped, culture has been brought forth from generations and millennia ago.

Burned out car amongst the summer snow

The landscape sets the scene as it whirls past the window, though this is not the narrative to this movie.  In the Allay Valley, this is a story of people that are impervious to movements around the Pamir Ranges that grip tight to their history, their blood, their peoples and refuse to stop wrestling the changing sands of time.  The yurts are lit by incandescent lights.  They meet with the aid of cellular.  The tides of development are present, but the remoteness provides a barrier that the wills of ten thousand horseman couldn’t overcome.  Roads remain unbuilt. Water is merely a river that is shared with human, yaks, camels, horses and sheep alike.  Education is what your father and mother tell you it is.  Health is a spur of the moment response.  Rome was not built in a day, but it is built today. 

A kyrgyz family enjoying the festival

 

One cannot paint a country with a single brush stroke.  Being in Chon Allay aroused the emotions and recalled the reasons for being a humanitarian in Kyrgyzstan.  Remote, mountain communities like these are so far from newly industrialising it makes a mockery of the whole world.  Next door, China builds roads as trucks come and go taking container loads of modern equipment necessary for the peoples of the region: cheap imported eggs, poor quality water coolers, impersonations of Turkish rugs, it’s all there in plain sight.  One hundred miles to the South, an alliance of wealthy individuals pound Afghanistan back in to the dark ages, which seemingly didn’t take much pounding.  Here, in the heart of hearts, almost the furthest place on earth from a coast, it remains the centre of all things and the middle of nowhere. Is this why we come, is this the dream?

Defeat in the arena of Kyrgyz horse wrestling

Hundreds, stand around in a circle, hollering and hooting, drinking and laughing, watching the games unfurl in front of them.  On the loudspeaker, they announce the names of villages and their local strong men.  Kashka Suu! A corner roars, and a man in his mid 20s is thrown in to the centre, willingly taking off his shirt.  Daroot Korgon! A muted response, they know they are up against the champion in yellow.  Something that resembles a boy in comparison is thrown into the middle, ready to prove himself to his village and the communities around.  They tie the ropes around their waists, and embrace each other.  The wrestling has begun.   

The crowd gathers around the wrestling

Every move is watched carefully by all the voyeurs.  A slight shift of the weight, an attempted lift.  The crowd roars, more money is given to the man with the microphone.  No result, they keep pacing around in circles, in circles, around and around, gripping each other as if their lives are stored in the hips of the man they embrace.  A clean jerk, and the yellow shirt of Kashka Suu has the Daroot Korgon boy shuffling backwards, backwards, more up right, a twist of the arms and bodies, and the boy is on his back.  The crowd cheers.  The wrestle is over for now.  Rematch? Not from Daroot Korgon, but there is always someone else charged with vodka in the crowd willing to take on someone else.  Quick to anger, things can turn quickly.  But then, a blue of the loudspeaker later, everyone is up and walking to the horse track.  The race that started heading east 45 minutes ago sees the riders coming from the west, riding at full pace on their steeds over the hills in the mountains and down the valley.  Pride takes time to win, and a local from Achyk-Suu has it stitched up.

After 15km the endurance race comes down to the wire

The festival and games provide a well earned break in the midst of summer.  The herds are up in the communities’ Jailo in the high mountains, eating fresh pastures knowing that in six months snow will cover even the valleys and feed will be hard to come by.  They eat and eat, fattening themselves, herded by donkey riding boys who whistle them from blade to blade.  As the sun will rise tomorrow, they know the winter will follow.  Survival is the greatest game played here, and only through collective action and learning have they lasted this long.  Development?  That’s a luxury.  The story cannot be told through the eyes of a voyeur, it cannot be told through the words of others..  The story can only be told one person at a time.  This is the real story, not the bride stealing, not the wrestling, not the horse racing.  This is the story of people who eat, breathe and live the mountains.  This is my friend, Bairam.

Bairam of Kashka-Suu, Potato and Wheat Farmer

Bairam in his village is considered an old man.  He has been a farmer all his life, and is the head of an agricultural cooperative with 15 neighbouring families. In this remote area of Chon Alay, Southern Kyrgyzstan, the winters are long and harsh.  For Bairam, that means he has three months to produce his crops.

Bairam preparing his field of potatoes

  

For the past ten years, Bairam has been growing wheat and potatoes 20km west of his home village in a Greenfield site with little access to infrastructure.  Out here, he plows his one hectare plot with a communal tractor – a new site each year, looking for the best soils.  The water is abundant, though the canals are in constant disrepair.  Unfortunately for many farmers that means not having water for the whole season, while today Bairam is heading home because again he is unable to water his crops.  

The biggest challenges for Bairam are good quality fertilizers and seeds at reasonable prices.  The fertilizers are imported from Osh, which makes it expensive costing him 30com per KG.  This is almost double the price last year, and about 10com per KG more than the cost in Osh.  Seeds for potatoes, wheat and barley when available are imported from all over Kyrgyzstan and even as far afield as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The potatoe seeds from Tajikistan are particularly good, as they can be grown from paddock to plate in 60 days rather than 90 – a very precious saving of 30 days in these short summers.  All of this is sourced through the agricultural cooperative, making it cheaper and easier to supply.  While the soils are poor quality, with sufficient fertilizers and good quality seed the paddock will be viable.  

A greenfield potato crop of Bairams

 

Bairam is not wealthy, and for him the risk of farming is particularly significant.  He has to pay for seeds, fertilizers and fuel for the communal tractor well in advance of seeing any money for his crops.  Meanwhile, the price of potatoes and grains are particularly low this year.  He may be able to store his potatoes in an underground communal facility for the winter, which may increase the price from 13com to 18com per KG, though it will still cost him 2com to transport it to the Osh Market.  However, Bairam may still need to sell a family cow to repay the small loans and survive the winter.  

Farming in this part of the Alay Valley is risky business.  There are opportunities to improve the financial viability across the value chain from paddock to plate with some external support.  But it is no wonder that many of the young men in his village choose to go to Bishkek seeking employment opportunities, rather than toils this tough land.