the malls, people were making standard American consumer choices. “What should I buy for your mother? She’s so difficult!” “Which video game do the children want?” “How large a turkey? “Will anyone notice if we serve boxed Chardonnay?”
It was a stark contrast to the world I had just left. In suburban Maryland, the shops were open, and open late. In Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, where I’d spent most of the past month, almost all the shops were closed, and had been closed for several years; what was left of the retail economy had moved to the bazaar and street corners.
In suburban Maryland, lights blazed from malls, streetlamps, and Christmas house and lawn displays. In Osh, the lights were off for at least several hours each day. No one was sure why there were power outages in a country with enough hydroelectric capacity to be a net exporter, but the usual culprits were named—corrupt government ministers, incompetent local officials, the mafia, the International Monetary Fund, or some cabal of all of the above.
In suburban Maryland, the restaurants were crowded; in Osh, the few restaurants that were still open had only the occasional customer and most of the items on the menu were not available.
In suburban Maryland, people were spending their Christmas bonuses and maxing out their credit cards. In Osh, teachers, civil service workers, and others who had not been paid for months were wondering when (or if) they would ever get a paycheck again.
In suburban Maryland, people were buying gifts for the holidays. In Osh, some people were selling all they had to buy food; in subzero temperatures, they squatted on the broken concrete sidewalks, their possessions—kitchen utensils, auto parts, school textbooks, old clothes, Soviet memorabilia—spread out on blankets. I don’t know who was buying because most passersby were just as poor as the sellers.
In suburban Maryland and throughout the United States on Christmas Eve 1995, people were looking forward to the new year with hope. In Osh and throughout Central Asia, people were simply hoping that 1996 would not be as bad as 1995.
Not in the Holiday Spirit
When we arrived at Stephanie’s sister’s home, the party was in full swing. I was not in the party mood but could not explain why I felt depressed. “It’s the holidays,” guests said. “You’re supposed to be happy.” I tried talking about what I had seen in Osh, but they soon changed the topic. I excused myself, saying I was tired, and went to bed early. On Christmas Day, I put on a brave face as the children opened their presents and the family kitchen crew swung into action. It was a sumptuous spread. Social conditions in southern Kyrgyzstan were not a talking point over dinner.
I have no one to blame but myself for not working harder to make relatives and friends, all of them good and sincere people, think or care about what I had seen and learned. About shattered families where husbands, robbed of their jobs and the dignity of work by the collapse of the Soviet economy, turned to the vodka bottle. About babushkas and children, begging at the bazaar. About declining social and medical services, schools without heating or textbooks. About ethnic unrest, and the breakdown of the rule of law. But also about the resilience, spirit, and hospitality of people who, after many years of Soviet certainty, had suddenly seen their world turned upside down.
After years of media coverage of famine and conflict, the problems of the developing world can seem relentlessly wearying. Poverty, suffering, and conflict are comfortably encapsulated in five-paragraph or ninety-second narrative chunks, with the requisite quotes or sound bites. You could not understand southern Kyrgyzstan in 1995 from the occasional media coverage or even from my photos and stories. You simply had to be there.
I was there, and then I left. That was perhaps what disturbed me most. I had the freedom to travel, to move between the worlds of southern Kyrgyzstan and suburban Maryland. Most people in Central Asia were simply stuck, trying to survive. That Christmas Eve made me see my own world, career, and life in a new way.
Come Again, Mr. Secretary?
As a US citizen and taxpayer, it’s my duty not only to criticize government officials but to recognize when they do something useful. I happily acknowledge the contribution of US Secretary of State John Kerry to this introduction.
Kerry is probably unaware of my debt, because it was unintentional. On the eve of his first foreign trip as Secretary of State in February 2013, Kerry, in a speech at the University of Virginia, praised the staff of the State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) for their work in the “most dangerous places on Earth.”
They fight corruption in Nigeria. They support the rule of law in Burma. They support democratic institutions in Kyrzakhstan and Georgia.1
Come again, Mr. Secretary? Kyrzakhstan? Aren’t you confusing volatile Kyrgyzstan, where popular protests overthrew two authoritarian leaders in less than five years, with its stable neighbor Kazakhstan, where President Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled almost unchallenged since independence in 1991?
The State Department transcript of the speech helpfully clarified matters, replacing “Kyrzakhstan” with “Kyrgyzstan.” But not before reporters picked up on the gaffe. Kerry was teased for “creating a new country.” The flub was “all the more awkward,” said the British newspaper The Telegraph, “because Kyrgyzstan is a key ally in the US-led war in Afghanistan and a major recipient of US aid.”2
Russians poked fun in online forums. Among the comments: “I think we need to restore the USSR, so that the American Secretary does not confuse the names.” “Well, if the USA decided so . . . Let there be Kyrzakhstan.” “So what? Kyrzakhstan is a regular country. It’s to the east of Ukrarussia and south-east of Litonia. Not far from Uzkmenia. You should learn geography.” A cartoon depicted Kerry, cell phone to his ear, looking intently at a globe. “Where is that Kyrzakhstan? I’ve been trying to call there for three days.”
The gaffe was fodder for TV talk shows and the late-night comics. Stephen Colbert picked up on a comment Kerry made the next day in a lecture on freedom of speech to students in Berlin: “In America, you have the right to be stupid if you want to be.”
“Yes, in this country we are endowed with the inalienable right to be stupid,” said Colbert. “It’s right there in the Constitution between the peanut doodle and the ranch dressing stain. Folks, John Kerry doesn’t just talk the dumb talk, he walks the dumb walk. Here’s what he said last week [excerpt from speech at University of Virginia].”
Yes, Kyrzakhstan. And there’s just one thing about Kyrzakhstan. It does not exist. Of course, he’s got some ribbing in the press for making up a new country. And folks, it is well deserved. I mean, how could anyone ever confuse Kazakhstan [shows map] with its neighbor when everyone knows that in Kyrgyzstan [shows picture of yurts, the traditional tent-like dwellings] they play a fretless stringed instrument called the komuz which is nothing like Kazakhstan’s dombyra, also a fretless stringed instrument with a slightly thinner neck. And what are you going to do, Kerry? Go to downtown Bishkek and use a bunch of tenge to buy a new kolpak [shows picture of kolpak, traditional Kyrgyz men’s felt hat, and Kazakh tenge bills]. Not without first exchanging into soms [shows Kyrgyz currency], you’re not. Quit embarrassing yourself, John Kerry.3
Of course, Kerry was not the first US official to be, as the Telegraph put it, “tongue-tied by post-Soviet geography.” “Stan-who?” President George W. Bush is reputed to have asked when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed him about Uzbekistan. In August 2008, he mixed up Russia and Georgia, which at that time were at war, when he warned against possible efforts to depose “Russia’s duly elected government.”
I’m prepared to forgive Kerry’s
