More Great Stuff From Eric in Kyrgyzstan

So, I’ve been to a lot of internet cafes in some places that are pretty far away from God Bless America, but this one ranks as one of the most far away and one of the best.

Here is Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. That’s a five hour bus ride on top of 17 hours of flying from Colorado Springs, it’s on the eastern side of Lake Issuk Kul…I could go on and on about all the exotic beauty involved in getting here, but my time is limited. Suffice to say a two lane road bordered by double rows of tall, slender poplars, behind which are cultivated fields deeply green and painted by acres upon acres of yellow and pink-going-maroon flowers. Dried fish for sale twist in the breeze on roadside racks.

This cafe doubles as an art gallery. There is a crude, long table with four Dell OptiPlexes and Compaq monitors circa 1995, canvases hang on the walls, some lovely, others amateurish, there are big framed photos of the surrounding mountains. On the other side of the computer table a man works at an easel behind a partition, I plan to spy on his work on the way out. It smells of oil paint and tea and some spicy Kyrgyz soup. A pair of young women that we’d call Chinese in the states are running the show.

A few minutes ago a family of five or six came through the door, ushering in Grandma, or great grandma, a little Kyrgyz lady about four feet tall in black velveteen pants, red slippers and a white muslin shawl over her head. Her face is a complicated topograhical map of a lifetime of smiles, little sideways apostrophes for eyes, big round cheeks. They sit her in front of a monitor and cluster around as one of the propritors taps away, hunched over the keyboard. In a minute they slip a pair of headphones on her and, flash, an image of a relative pops up on the screen. It starts moving jerkily and they tell her she should start talking (I’m guessing here, a week in Kyrgyzstan hasn’t really improved my Russian, they’re probably speaking Kyrgyz anyway). She’s skeptical, but starts shouting into the screen, and her whole face lights up when the jerky picture starts talking back. It’s too precious when the image changes to that of a newborn baby, and everyone clustered around grandma sucks in their breath and says, Oh! Oh! They start taking pictures and clapping their hands. The blue glow of the screen flashes on Grandma’s gold teeth.

This place is amazing.

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