Change In Plans

Wednesday was a day of contrasts. In the morning, I went to the local school in Karakol where my host works, and we taught several lessons together to her 9^th and 10^th grade students. The kids at the school are very lively, self-confident, and eager to learn English. They've been peppering me with questions since I set foot on campus. Many of the kids speak Krygyz, Russian, English, and German. They ask a variety of questions, ranging from pop culture – Have you seen Avatar? Read Twilight? – to politics – What do you think of Bush? Obama? The eagerness and enthusiasm for learning is heartening for me as an educator. I was invited to play soccer with several of the boys after school tomorrow, and generally left the school on a high.

After school, I visited an NGO called Leadership which seeks to develop civic leadership skills in teens. Five of the teen participants, also students at the school, then set out to take me on a walking tour of some of the town's sites. The group was a mix representative of the ethnic diversity that characterizes the region. One boy and girl are ethnic Russians who have lived in Kyrgyzstan their whole lives. Two are ethnic Kyrgyz girls who most Americans would probably guess were Chinese based on appearances. One is a Krygyz boy who looks less Chinese and more Turkish. Just before we went out I received a call through Eliza from the local Peace Corps group, who had invited me to dinner that evening but were now canceling because they had been told not to leave their apartments because of political unrest in the north. For some reason, this didn’t worry me too much, and I headed out with the kids. We made a brief visit to the Russian Orthodox church: On our way out one of the Krygyz girls, who had not entered the church, told us that her parents had just called her (yes, Kyrgyz teens have their cell phones, too!) telling them that there had been political protests in Talas, in northwest Kyrgyzstan. Sure enough, another kid's cell phone lit up, and we had news that there were “Men with guns in the center of Bishkek.” The students initially seemed more excited by this news than afraid. One of them immediately said that the president, Bakiyev, had “made a lot of corruption” and the other students nodded agreement. Shortly I saw my host, Eliza, waving from down the street as she was evidently trying to track us down. She had heard the news as well, and wanted me to go back to my guest house, and stay there. “In Karakol, we are not as political, but it's probably still better that you stay inside,” she said. She sent the girls home, and asked the boys to walk me back to my guest house. Along the way we talked about recent Kyrgyz and American presidents, and their relative competence. They had praise for neither Bush, nor Bakiyev. The walk was unremarkable in terms of signs of unrest, although we did intentionally steer clear of the government offices in the city center.

Back at my hotel, the two local channels were not working – one showed a static mountain scene, without any sound, and the other footage of an octopus undulating underwater. I didn't see any sign of the two military-types who had been at breakfast at the guest house. The cable, however, was mostly working, and Al-Jazeera International had some footage and news about the unfolding protests in Bishkek. Initially it was the same limited footage and information being repeated ever 30 minutes, but as the afternoon turned to evening, more information became available. One of the other teachers at the school called offering to bring me dinner, but I told her I had enough snacks at the guest house to make do for an improvised meal. From my window, I could not hear any signs of conflict in Karakol – just dogs barking, and the smell of burning leaves that is common here. Eventually, two local channels came back on, now apparently take over by sympathizers with the protesters. The channels switched back and forth between footage of the protests in Bishkek and groups of two or three men in a studio making short speeches. Unfortunately, I could not understand anything of the speeches, but the footage of the protests was clear enough. The time signatures indicated some of the footage had been take less than two hours earlier, and it was not the same material seen earlier on Al-Jazeera. Five- to ten-minute chunks of video were shown, mostly from around government building in Bishkek. The footage was from among the protesters, and showed burning cars and military personnel carriers. Occasionally the camera would focus on groups of riot police behind fences that surround the government buildings, staring out at the protesters, and not looking too confident. One segment of footage showed several bodies being loaded into ambulances; it was impossible to tell if they were alive. The camera man then followed a trail of blood to what looked like a riot shield, and sickeningly, a larger pool of blood as well as some small pieces of flesh. The camera lingered there for a while, and then became distracted by a single man who was walking up to the fence around the government building. Most of the massed protesters seemed content at the moment to mill about on the street, 75 feet or so from the fence. This short, stocky man walked up to the fence, occasionally shouting across it, stabbing his left hand into the air. He then walked several paces through a gate in the fence and stopped. He spread his arms, yelled something at the riot police, and pounded his chest. He stood with his arms spread, apparently defying his opponents to do something. He then tore off his sweater, and undershirt, and stood bare-chested, arms spread, again yelling at the police. The police were not to be provoked at this moment, however, and a more cool-headed friend eventually convince the man to rejoin the masses. Gun shots could be heard in the background, but given the lack of movement amongst the people on camera, I guessed it must have been celebratory in nature. Other footage had shown groups of protesters showing off AK-47s. At about 10 pm, both the local channels went off the air again, and so I switched back to Al-Jazeera, which now had footage of a group of 15 or so uniformed soldiers, standing in a line in front of a government building, opening fire with automatic weapons.

Now it’s Thursday morning, and I am at school. Classes were canceled for the day, but there’s still no sign of unrest here in Karakol. The news out of Bishkek is still patchy and contradictory. Reports are that from 65-100 people died yesterday, and certainly the TV footage I saw last night would seem to corroborate as much. For now, I’m just going to see what happens. IREX, the organization in charge of my program, has said I should sit put for the moment and we’ll have to see how things develop. It’s unclear as of yet whether there will be school or not tomorrow.