Decanting cooking oil into soda bottles at Osh bazaar, Bishkek
FIGURE 3.5 Shirdaks for sale at Osh bazaar, Bishkek
Stephanie and I adopted a simple shopping rule: if we saw an item and we either needed or liked it, we bought it because we might never see it again. One Sunday (the main market day) in November 1996 at the Alamedin bazaar illustrates the buy-it-when-you-see-it principle. We began outside the bazaar proper in the hardware section where people lay out sheets, blankets, and newspapers with new and used car tires, batteries, radiators, alternators, bicycles, hand tools, electrical, plumbing and gas fittings, nuts, bolts, screws, and nails. We bought a drain hose for our arthritic washing machine, which had been dripping on the bathroom floor for two months, then a pair of slippers, some chopsticks, and a small, sharp, hand-forged cleaver. We made one babushka happy by buying her entire inventory—three small rag rugs. She immediately packed up and headed home, presumably to make some more. The catch of the day was a collection of commemorative lapel pins. I’d seen people selling these pins, issued in the Soviet era to mark many occasions, including holidays and sporting events. With the Soviet Union gone, I figured they were worth collecting. One woman had a large collection pinned to two worn red wall hangings with a faded picture of Lenin. She was asking one som (5 cents) for each pin. It was going to take too long to select those I wanted, so I went for a bulk purchase. How much for the whole collection of almost three hundred pins, plus the wall hangings? Although it’s traditional to bargain, the price was so low that it seemed mean-spirited to haggle.
The supply thread included recycling. Bishkek did not have a city recycling program, and any public appeals to reduce waste and protect the environment would have likely fallen on deaf ears. People recycled because it saved money, and because there was often no alternative. 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 at 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 we 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.
It’s almost a cliché to say that you can buy anything at the bazaar, including a few things that probably should not be for sale, such as hard drugs, Kalashnikovs, and samogon, the Russian moonshine, which, depending on the vintage, chemical composition, and distilling process can give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, leave you with a nasty hangover, or kill you. Unregulated, questionable or illegal activities usually took place on the fringes of the bazaar. At weekends, an informal sobachiy (dog) bazaar was held in a field by a creek, a couple of blocks from the Osh bazaar. Dogs of all breeds and sizes were on sale, no questions asked about pedigree or shots. There were litters of puppies in the trunks of cars; others peeped out from under the coats of their owners. The seamy side of the sobachiy bazaar was down on the creek bed where dog fights were held; crowds gathered along the creek wall to watch and place their bets. Dogfighting was illegal, but the police and market officials quietly let the fights go on.
Sign Language
Stephanie and I had taken two Russian classes to prepare for our stay, but for the first three months we struggled to communicate. We could exchange simple greetings, ask for directions, shop at the bazaar, and read street and bus signs, but not much more. One problem with being able to speak a little in any language is that people think you know more, and try to start a conversation. Stephanie was often targeted; with her friendly, outgoing manner, she looked like a willing conversation partner. Besides, with her shoulder-length red hair, she looked Russian. “Ya Sibiryachka [I’m a Siberian woman],” she joked, a reference to the fact that her grandparents had once lived in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia before fleeing to Manchuria ahead of the advancing Red Army.
A dubious Russian heritage and a few basic Russian phrases were of less use to Stephanie than her experience in amateur dramatics and improvisational comedy classes. When she didn’t know how to say something, she acted it out. For the first week, we didn’t have any dishwashing detergent and had no idea which cleaning product to use. Stephanie put on an elaborate performance (without props but with sound effects) for a vendor; she finished off a meal, licked her fingers, put down her knife and fork, carried the dishes and utensils to the sink, and turned on the faucet. Then she reached for an imaginary bottle of detergent and looked puzzled. The vendor applauded, showed her the product, and knocked a few som off the price for the free show.
Buying meat was another challenge. Parts of carcasses hung from hooks at market stalls, and customers ordered in quantities of 100 grams. Unless you knew animal anatomy, you were never sure which part of the animal you were buying. This was not good enough for Stephanie, who had recipes for different cuts. How could she buy a rump roast? She started by holding her hands to her ears, pointing her index fingers forward, and making a “Moooo!” sound. It would have been easier to learn the Russian word for beef, govyadina, but that would have ruined the first act. “OK, so what part do you want?” asked the butcher. He led her into the freezer room where the carcasses were hanging. She repeated her impression of the head and then traced her hand along the back of the imaginary steer, pretending to wiggle the tail. The butcher seized one carcass and wiggled a real tail. “Tochno! [exactly!],” said Stephanie.
A Turkish friend, Mustafa, recommended a Turkish butcher’s shop on Sovietskaya. It was more expensive than the bazaar, but it was clean and the quality reliable. The first time, Stephanie went through her usual routine; when she came in again, one of the butchers would lean over the counter, put his index fingers to his ears, and go “Mooo,” to the amusement of his colleagues. Stephanie added props to her routine and showed up with a cookbook. “Look here,” she said, pointing to one of the diagrams that showed the cuts from cattle and sheep. “I’m doing a rib roast. This is what I need.” The language barrier disappeared; she and the butchers were talking meat. After a couple more visits, the butchers borrowed the book, made copies of the diagrams, laminated them and put them on the counter so other customers could order cuts. One small step toward a market economy where the customer comes first.
The $2.50 Phone Bill
Even for those with good language skills, getting things done in Kyrgyzstan in the mid-1990s was a challenge. A seemingly straightforward task, such as banking or paying a utility bill, often turned out to be a complex, time-consuming activity that required visiting several offices, filling out forms and slips of paper, and obtaining signatures and stamps. Sometimes, it involved waiting around for the only person authorized to conduct the transaction to return from lunch. A case in point was our phone bill.
Living in the central district, our phone number began with the number 26. We were told we were fortunate to have that number. Bishkek’s Soviet-era telephone system was more reliable than most, but some exchanges in the city were notorious for dropped calls and crackly lines; by contrast, the 26 exchange usually worked. It’s all relative, because there was always noise on the line, occasionally interrupted by mysterious clicking sounds; it could have been the secret police checking on our dinner plans, but more likely it was simply the creaking and groaning of the arthritic switching system.
Although claiming we had a working phone seemed a stretch, we still had to pay for it. The phone had already been cut off once because the bill hadn’t been paid, but the landlord took care of it. We had just received
