Life is Fiction - How messing around with weapons in Angola can help chairing a Department of Spanish Philology

These days I received a visit from some Spaniard friends of mine. They're traveling around the region and - as usual when friends of friends are involved - me and Federica are providing logistic and gastronomic support for what is in our power.

On Tuesday we had dinner together with some Kyrgyz friends and a German journalist in a restaurant with good food and ill-mannered waitresses.

We spoke a lot about countries in Central Asia, especially about Kyrgyzstan and - most of all - Uzbekistan.

One of this Spaniards has an insane interest towards soviet history and knows a huge amount of paradoxical anecdotes about that period, but all these stories were nothing compared to some people he met in Tashkent.

Photostory - Weekend at Voronzovka

Last week end I went staying for three days in the Regional school of Chuy Oblast, located in Voronzovka.

I was invited through Achim Merlo, my UNV supervisor, to join together with other International UNVs a summercamp for children far from home and orphans. My Office had no problem in authorizing an "unofficial" day off for me to go there on Friday early morning, they all commended the idea and the initiative.

In vino veritas

Sunday morning was devoted to food shopping for the Italian cooking-class day.

I had the chance to practice a lot my Russian with Marshrutka drivers, sellers, passers-by, beggars, drunk people.

A police officer in plain clothes - after checking my documents - praised my good Russian. A small girl selling juices did the same with a very good English. Also a miller commended my use of his difficult and fascinating language.

Hint for a good PhD topic

"The non-consistency of glass doors in the conception of plastered Kyrgyz girls - A series of case studies".

What do you think?

The Rocky Horror Election Show

On July 23 Kyrgyz people have been called to poll station to decide who's going to be their President for next 5 years.

Against all expectations, Presidential Apparatus played a fair and transparent game.

Kyrgyz odisseys - On the road... again!?

I just came back from Chong-Kemin. On the way to the town our driver stubbornly refused to hear our suggestion on the itinerary, just to get lost in the middle of nowhere.

When we finally got to convince him that we were very close to leaving the country rather than reaching the Community Based Tourism we were looking for, he noticed we were running out of
fuel. We had to drive 25 minutes back to find a petrol pump.

It took us 5 hours to settle in our Yurta, that was 150 km far away from Bishkek.

It’s classified. Please help yourself.

One of our Spanish friends is a researcher from a European Research Center; his PhD work focuses on political instability in region under influence of former Soviet Union. After some months of travel and interviews in a couple of former USSR countries he finally reached Kyrgyzstan, where he was expected to conclude his pilgrimage.

Last week we met Alejandra, Lecturer of Spanish Language at Kyrgyz National University and common friend, who told us that his laptop and backup disk has been stolen couple of days before.

QED - Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Yesterday in my last post I wrote about the armed attack near Uzbek border.

I also presented two options for the follow up to these events. One of the two options was that Uzbekistan would have blamed some unknown extremist group coming from Kyrgyzstan for what had happened in its territory.

Border Service of Kyrgyzstan tightens security measures on border with Uzbekistan

The Border Service of Kyrgyzstan announced today that it has tightened security measures on borders. The Border Service of Kyrgyzstan confirmed information about the explosion that occurred in the night of May 25 and 26 in the Uzbek town of Khanabad, also known for hosting a US airbase (K2 or Camp Stronghold Freedom) vacated in 2005 after unrest in the area.

"According to the obtained information, the explosions are reported to have taken place at 02:00 in the town of Khanabad of the Republic of Uzbekistan on May 26," the Border Service of Kyrgyzstan said.

On the other side, Uzbekistan is claiming for clashes to have started in Kyrgyzstan.

How to get robbed by police offers in a dark street in Bishkek

Sometimes things happen to you when you really don’t expect them.

Well, to be honest this was definitely not the case. I've been warned so many times about bad behavior of local police officers that when they stopped me I was already expecting something more than a standard passport control.

But let's start from the very beginning.

On April 20 I went out for dinner with a group of friends. We had a pleasant dinner in a “dirty-but-cheap-and-tasty” class Chinese Restaurant not far from my place. After dinner, me and a Spanish researcher – by the way, he’s writing a paper on political instability, which is the unofficial name for The Kyrgyz Republic – decided to come back home walking.

Half way to our home, while we were walking in a dark street, a car without any official sign on it rushed on the footpath right behind us and two police officers jumped out from it yelling us to stop. The two officers (wearing uniform, handcuffs and holster) asked us who we were, and if we had drugs or arms with us. We answer that no, we didn’t have anything like that with us and we were told to show our documents.

According to standard UN procedure, to avoid exactly this kind of situation all staff is required not to have the passport while walking around but just the accreditation card provided by the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is of course to avoid two main dangers: first of all law enforcement agencies don’t speak English at all, and this can originate some problem as they could not be able to check your data. Secondly (and most likely), they could think that seizing your passport is a good (and relatively safe) way to extort some money.

After having passed our documents to the third policeman who was still sitting in the car, the taller officer standing asked us something we didn’t really catch at very beginning. Then he moved to the backdoor of the car, opened it and repeated the same question. Roman (the Spanish guy) stepped back and refused firmly.

The officer was asking us to empty out our pockets and put all content on the back seat of their car.

After this request I had the first series of choices in front of me:

1. Call the DSS (Security Dept) on their mobile and let them talk with officers as to let the latter know that our Security Advisers were aware of their behavior;
2. Try to solve the situation without involving anyone else, try to calm down the officers and obey to their orders without allowing them to do whatever they want, eventually calling DSS in case of deteriorating situation.

After some bargaining we agreed to obey only if we were allowed to put the content on the bonnet of the car, and only one at a time.

To be honest, here we committed the first ingenuous mistake. As I was looking very carefully to what was happening to my friends, the third officer decided it was time to intervene, exit the car and started affably asking me useless questions.

Notwithstanding this, Roman won the day taking some big risk. When the taller was checking his belongings without any specific official utility, the second officer – a short, pudgy idiot – started aggressively grabbing random stuff asking obvious questions. Roman had very few som, but also a 50 euro banknote.

When the pudgy saw it, tried to stretch out his hand to catch them asking -what are those? Roman, who was standing right in between the short idiot and his target angrily rejected him with force and raged at him that they had to touch his belongings only one at a time. At that moment, I seriously thought we were close to end up the evening in the Police Dept.

Fortunately the situation slowed down and they finally decided Roman’s belongings were not so interesting, at the end of the day.

It was my turn.

The procedure was exactly the same: I was controlling the tall officer’s actions while the pudgy one was trying to catch everything to divert me from paying attention to his colleague and the “nice” one was diverting Roman from controlling us.

But in my case, something went the wrong way. Respect to Roman, I had more som and – even worse – my bank card. The pudgy idiot tried in vain to distract me from watching carefully his colleague, until he got to grab my bank card. At that point I had to pay attention to the damned asshole and the tall one managed to hide one of the three 500 som banknote I had with me.

I immediately regained control over my bank card, but it was too late: the game was over and it was not me the winner. They suddenly lost any interest in my belongings and said I was free to put them back into my pockets. As I took the banknotes I immediately saw one was missing, but there was nothing to do. Accusing them of theft after the fact would have only made my situation worse; I decided that 40 euro were not worthy a night in a Kyrgyz Police Dept, I swallowed my pride and put my stuff back into my pockets.

The hardest part was to stand the three assholes saying “you can go, ok? Everything is ok, right?” without yelling at them that no, it was not all right, that their mothers were to be charged for crime against humanity for giving birth to such a bunch of stupid assholes.


Annex

Lesson learned:

1. ALWAYS ask them to show their ID BEFORE doing anything by your side;
2. ALWAYS write down their names and post as to put them off and to eventually be able, later on, to sue them through DSS Advisers;
3. ALWAYS impede them to search you (we didn’t allow them to do it, but we were confirmed only later on that they are actually forbidden to do that);
4. ALWAYS demand them to provide a well-grounded reason for their request to empty out your pockets.
5. ALWAYS know by heart the quick code for calling DSS Advisers without having to look for their number on the phonebook.
   

Introduction to local politics

That is to say: "Why I had to spend a Friday buried into my flat".


On Friday, 27th of March 2009 opposition called supporters to organize rallies all around Kyrgyzstan to ask for President Bakiev to resign.

Bakiev was elected President of the Kyrgyz Republic after Nationwide demonstrations in the spring of 2005 resulted in the bloodless Tulip Revolution and the ouster of President Askar Akayev, who had run the country since 1990.

Unfortunately, Bakiev failed to live up to his election promises to reform the country's constitution and transfer many of his presidential powers to parliament.

The political opposition organized demonstrations in Bishkek in April, May, and November 2006 resulting in the adoption of a new constitution that transferred some of the president's powers to parliament and the government.

In December 2006, the Kyrgyzstani parliament voted to adopt new amendments, restoring some of the presidential powers lost in the November 2006 constitutional change. By late-September 2007, both previous versions of the constitution were declared illegal, and the country reverted to the Akaev-era 2003 constitution, which was subsequently modified in a flawed referendum initiated by the President himself.

Bakiev then dissolved parliament, called for early elections, and gained control of the new parliament through his newly-created political party, Ak Jol, in December 2007 elections.

To be honest, there's is a lot to argue for.

Corruption is sky high (Kyrgyz Republic is apparently the 4th most corrupt State in the world), lawlessness is increasing day by day, judiciary is obeying to the government more than to the law, inflation is devastating spending power of the majority of citizens, while lack of adequate welfare is striking most vulnerable population. Finally, since 9/11 all Central Asian states readily adhered to the worldwide trend aimed to sacrifice Human Rights for State Security's sake; this obviously implied a relevant increase in abuses from law enforcement agencies and a general strengthening of their impunity.

This is the context that made opposition decide that time has come for the President to resign and call for new free presidential elections.

In UN this appointment raised immediately some concern. Officials present during 2006 rallies still remember when rumors wanting Bakiev to have had safe heaven in our offices brought part of the dissidents in front of the UN House asking for the President to come out and face their rage.

Of course the rumors were false, but the stones and bricks that crashed their windows were scarely real.

I spent the two days before D-day in Dostuk Hotel for the Regional Training on Adequate Housing and Forced Eviction, so I was not real-time updated about the frantic meetings and brainstorming that brought to the final decision about our presence in office on Friday, 27 of March.

To be honest, I was not especially worried about the situation. All kyrgyz friends and contacts of us seemed totally skeptical about some major disorder to happen, and the overall feeling that we perceived walking around could not have been more quiet.

At the opposite, the idea of receiving the order not to exit my flat and to stay totally alone, without Internet connection or TV for the whole day was much more annoying than the idea of a far possibility of being besieged for a while into the UN House.

The final decision from the Head of Agencies Meeting cought me when I went back to the office after the end of the last training day.

Due to major security concerns, all our Office but the Head of Agency and the National Program Officer was "invited not to come to the office the day after, and to strictly follow guidelines and directives from DSS".

Shit.

In the end, my day as 21st century hermit man passed by slowly and smoothly. That is to say that I had a quiet, boring day.

I infringed DSS rules only for a quick walk to the local market to buy some fresh vegetables and noodles. You can order me to stay 24 hours without internet and my whole life without Tv, but you cannot force me to stay one day at home alone without cooking. No way.




PS: FYI, nothing special happened on the 27th. Just 1000 people attended the rallies in Bishkek, and they never really moved from the area the were assigned to. In the rest of the country no more than 5-700 people organized rallies in different cities without any major problem occurring. Apparently, Bakiev decision to fix in a rush the date for next early Presidential elections, the uncomfortable location assigned for the gathering and the unpleasant weather contributed to deflate the tensions and to demotivate many. Now, everything is postponed to next July when Presidential election will take place.

The Dostuk Experience

I already mentioned that my office is dealing with the issue of the lack of adequate housing in Kyrgyzstan.

In this context, we organized a 2-days workshop with National and Local Istitutions and NGOs to present the Reports drafted by national experts. These Reports cover Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and deal with the national situation on adequate housing and forced eviction.

Location for the event: Dostuk Hotel, located in Frunze str. (Frunze was the soviet name for Bishkek), not far from the City Center.

Dostuk Hotel, as you can see from pics and description, is a huge, monumental and rocky building with 183 rooms, conference rooms and many other facilities sadly abandoned to dust and darkness.

The "Conference Holl" (Yes, this is the way it was written on the door) wasn't exactly an auditorium but a big dining hall with heavy curtains to keep out daylight and big kitsch overhead lights spreading yellow light all over the room. As factotum I also had to take pictures of the event, and I struggled all time with that damned light... I think I will photoshop some pic where the evil yellow light won the day.

Boymurod, our colleague from OHCHR Office in Dushanbe (Tajikistan), was also here for he directly supervised the Report on Tajikistan. He was supposed to stay in Dostuk as all other participants but, upon his arrival at the reception he was told that apparently his reservation was lost somehow, and they didn't have any other room to assign to him.

Now, Bishkek is not the top-destination in the world for tourism, march is usually low season and this hotel pretends to have 183 rooms for his guests.

I am not a CIA expert, but in my opinion the overall situation sounds weird.

After this denial he moved to another Guesthouse for the night, but the day after he had to be back to the Dostuk because they lost the reservation for the first day but they had firm in front of them the one for the second, and it was too late to cancel it.

When he came back to the Dostuk on the second day of the seminar, before the beginning of the works, he decided to check in and end up this annoying situation. But, when he entered the room he was assigned to he started walking in a swamp; one of the heating pipes was broken, and the floor was full of water. The desk, after asking him about any kind of responsibility of involvement in the fact from his side, unwillingly decided to give him a second key for another room.

Boymorod went up the stairs. He opened the door, saw happily that there was no water on the floor, but left the room in a rush when he discovered that there was someone sleeping in "his" bed.

At the desk they blamed him for not checking if the room was empty or occupied. I admit it is not so easy to reply to such a nonsensical accusation, so I understand why he didn't decide to just start yelling at them.

He just wearily took the third key of the day and went back to the elevator trying not to think about what was going to happen with this other room.

He reached the floor, walked the hallway looking all along to identify the right number. He stood in front of the right door, dumbly observing it in the useless effort to catch any potential sign witnessing the presence of someone into his room. When he finally decided that the only way to see if his deduction was right was to enter the flat, he inserted the keys and... nothing happened.

The locker was broken.

When we told this story to other delegates, they laughed more than usual. They explained us that probably he would have had some other surprise later on that night; the first night, all (male) delegates received phone calls in their room at around midnight. Someone was asking them about their intention to receive a "special massage" generously performed by two (or more) girls.

The one who weren't lucid or just awake enough for refusing, had the above mentioned girls in front of their door in no more than 5 minutes.

At least, they cannot argue about the services offered during OHCHR's workshops...

Scent of violets

Sunday morning, on my way to the UN House, I saw some kind of violet reflection on grass' surface. I'm walking that street twice a day (minimum) several days a week, hence I was surprised I didn't notice that particular light effect before. I approached the flowerbed and knelt down to see what was the cause of such an amazing effect.

Violets.

Dozens and dozens of small, colored and fragrant violets were all over the flowerbed enjoying Bishkek's early spring sun. I never thought there could have been violets in Kyrgyzstan, let alone in the very center of Bishkek!

This morning, walking to the office, I gently plucked three violets that I left with a "good morning" message on Saltanat, Nuriana and Natalia's desks.

It would be a nice life if every week could start with a new flower.

Eating Japanese style in Bishkek

Before moving to the "fancy" main part of this post, I would like to resume and conclude the previous Nookat Report issue. As probably very few of you were so willing to read it to the very end, I will shortly summarize the facts; whoever is interested in knowing a bit more can move to the "Nookat Report" post to have the full picture.

Nookat events of 1 October 2009 (based on the attached report prepared by a Commission of Inquiry established by the Ombudsman)

The annual celebration of Orozo-Ait and Kurman-Ait is taking place throughout the country including in Bishkek and has been a tradition celebrated in Nookat since 2005. An official authorization for this year’s celebration was issued by the mayor of Nookat on 27 September. However, on 1 October, when people gathered in front of the stadium where the celebration was to take place, the stadium was surrounded by police. The people then spontaneously went in front to the building of the local administration to ask the mayor for an explanation. After about an hour the mayor came outside the building, announced that the celebration had been banned and warned the crowd to disperse within half an hour otherwise force would be used. According to witnesses four young people were then taken inside the building, reportedly beaten up and then thrown out of the building in front of the crowd. The situation deteriorated when the police stared dispersing the people and some of them responded by throwing stones. On 2 October, a list of 90 people suspected in extremist activities compiled by the State Committee for National Security was given to the border authorities to prevent them from leaving the country (the list contained names of children as young as 4 as well as elderly people). After a very quick investigation (less than a month) during which all detained were severely tortured, including a pregnant woman who later lost her child, on 27 November, 32 people were convicted in a 4-days trial to up to 20 years of prison. On 17 January, a Court of Appeal upheld the sentences. The next instance is the Supreme Court –dates have not been fixed yet. Our Office is supporting the Commission's request to the International Community to monitor, advocate and push for the Supreme Court to repeal the sentences.

And now, finally:

Eating Japanese style in Bishkek

Yesterday evening I was invited as International UNV to the evening reception to launch a photography exhibition organized by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), UNV and HelpAge International. Pictures were taken by a Japanese UNV, Azuma Nakahira, who volunteered with HelpAge International collecteding photography, case studies and video interviews over a series of visits to older people between December 2008 and February 2009.
The "Winter Diary" aims to raise public awareness towards both the extreme vulnerability of many older persons in winter months and their critical contributions to sustain families and communities to live through cold weather. Temperatures in Kyrgyzstan routinely fall below ­20°c during the winter months, yet shortages in gas and electricity supplies, coupled with rising food and fuel prices, mean that many are unable to heat their homes. The venue of the exhibition, mainly inplemented bu JICA, was the Russian National Theatre. It has been a nice event with beautiful and moving pictures and videos, music performance and mixed Japanese-Kyrgyz folk cotillons and gadgets. The overall sight was amazing: geishas and kyrgyz women walking around in traditional dress and posing with participants who wanted to take pictures of this impressive pan-asian pastiche. Most of all, the main attraction of the evening was the announced Japanese catering that meant only one thing: Sushi for free!
To be honest, in the end I ate just a few things; I didn't want to be gross or appear ill-mannered, so I just bottled up my spontaneus instinct of flying in circle around the catering staff waiting for the right moment to "refill" my dish again and again, and I did avoid asking the staff - very thrifty in dispensing food - to be a little more generous as 90% of others actually did. In this way I just had to chance to taste a pair of maki, a meatball, some fried chicken and a few slices of outstanding sesame-flavoured beef but I can easily say that the overall level was very good. After the exhibition a small group of us (2 Italians and 3 Spanish) moved to a British-style pub where we had a beer (it's the second time I drink some alcohol in one month) and both me and Federica we had the chance to practice a lot of Spanish. It's always weird to speak a foreign language different from the one of the country you're living in, and as usual I provoked some funny moments such as talking to Kyrgyz people in Spanish rather than using the 4 Russian sentences that I've hardly learnt.

Apart from that, a new sudden decision has been taken: as soon as possible, we will experience Asian restaurants in Bishkek. Firstly, Corean, then Japanese and finally Chinese.

Will keep you posted on this ambitious plan.

Landing in Manas airport

15/02/2009

Note: This post has been written on the date specified in the very first line, which could differ from publication date.

My trip from Rome to Bishkek with Turkish Airways is divided in two. The first part, from Rome to Istanbul, has been a pleasant an quiet flight with a comfortable airplane and decent food. The second half, from Istanbul to Bishkek, is a totally different story. In Ataturk airport I met with my future colleague Federica, economist mastered at LSE and coming straight from London were she was working before accepting the UNV position in Central Asia. To be honest we met the first time in Bonn, Germany during the UNV briefing, so we were not a surprise one for the other and she immediately recognized me while I was sitting in a bar, struggling with a terrific powerful Turkish coffee and an embarrassing weak wireless signal.

When we moved to the gate we had the sudden feeling of being casually dropped in a totally different world; faces of people around us, their way of dressing, the sound of their voices, nothing of all that was similar to anything we were used to hear in a European airport. The security control seemed much more rigid than usual (at least to me) and the fact of not being able to communicate with us made the guards’ approach a bit rude. To make things easier, metal detector’s alarm was always buzzing, so the guards had to check a second time everybody with the portable metal detector while luggage was accumulating on the conveyor belt; of course this was making security officers even more nervous. While waiting for the crew to start boarding passengers, I went to the toilet that surprised me first of all for the hygiene, and secondly for the ash tray present in all single toilets, just next to the WC and below the No-smoking signal. Of course, the ash tray was half-full of dust. Back in the hall, I saw an American girl passing the security control experiencing the same communication problems we had 10 minutes before. Her nationality was clear to everybody, as she was wearing a tight (she has some problem with her weight, to say it all) green T-shirt saying “Thank you for supporting the American Army”. Now, if there’s something these last years of Bush administration made us understand, is that there’s a good half of the world were is not convenient to show off too much where are you coming from, if you’re from USA. Kyrgyzstan is, even if less than other places in Central Asia, in this half. Probably she was not informed about the though debate arisen few months ago between Kyrgyz Government and USA for the former wants Manas airport – actually the most important USA Air Base in the war in Afghanistan – to be given back under full control of Kyrgyz Republic. Most of all, she was not informed that in 2005 Kyrgyz population raged against Americans in Manas base as a soldier shot to death a Kyrgyz truck driver, right before being taken and brought back to the US accordingly to the classical impunity USA guarantee to their soldier committing crimes abroad. Being Italian I know many other stories like this one (Calipari, Massacre of Cermis, Gladio scandal, etc.).

When we finally get on board, we had an awful surprise: there was no more space in the overhead locker. After many minutes of indecision, I put part of my hand-luggage in the empty space under a free seat, and the rest under the seat in front of me, where in theory passengers can put bags and\or feet. This airplane, clearly made for flying out of European Union, was much smaller than usual and this space was only devoted to have room to put your feet in. Having occupied it with my bag, I had to stay immobile for the whole flight (more than 5 hours); I had twice the impression my legs were close to fall on the floor. Before I sat, the girl sitting next to me asked for changing our places; she was not likely to seat between two unknown men and she wanted to seat close to the window, she explained. I didn’t want to be picky pointing out that in this way she was going to seat close to two men anyway but in a more unsafe and unpleasant position without any kind of control from other passengers, so I just accepted her proposal. Her prudish behavior was in funny disharmony with her English book on George Best, someone declaring that “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars - the rest I just squandered”. Others curios things happened during the flight, but the strangest moment was when a girl sitting on Federica’s row on the other side of the airplane, in greatest calm, started working with her knitting needles on a wool pullover. We started wondering if knitting needles are not considered to be a dangerous weapon for Turkish security policy, and the only solution we found is that they probably consider that it wouldn’t be enough a serious and honorable way to hijack an airplane.

Another remarkable note I can add is that Federica sat on the same row with UN Resident Coordinator, our boss in general but her future boss in particular, as she is assigned to the RC Unit. He immediately demonstrated to be an open and easy-going person and they chatted for longtime.

At arrival at around 5 am, we immediately started procedure for obtaining the professional Visa and we spent the next 35 minutes filling in modules and arguing with the officer. In the end we get our 1-month Visa (we initially asked for a 1 year Visa) and we went to luggage claim area, hoping to receiving our baggage and to obtaining soon the extension for the Visa. It is to be noted that after passing the passport control we had to pass another security control with X-ray for hand luggage and after that we were all asked to put once more all kind of luggage into another X-ray machine placed next to luggage claim’s exit door. The X-ray machine being only one, the passenger around 120 and their luggage many more pieces, it took forever to exit that room. When we finally get to exit the landing area we felt in the middle of a bunch of self-proclaimed taxi drivers trying to catch potential customers or suggesting hotels. Luckily our freelance driver, Igor (yes it’s his real name, no kiddin’) was still there waiting for us and he took us to Bishkek on his minivan. With him, I had the first hint of something I would have understood being typical of drivers in Bishkek: The impossibility of understanding each other is not a valuable reason to resign communicating. I totally love this people, they continue talking to you trying to use a variety of words and gestures until they finally use the right one which allow you to guess what on the earth are they talking about. Excited by this huge improvement in communication’s level, rather than getting satisfaction from this success they immediately step up to next level restarting from the beginning this exhausting game.

Yes, I think I will fell in love soon with these people.