7.
GOLDEN GIRL OF THE JAILOO
A loud crack of thunder. Our hoped for horse ride would have to wait. Kristin and I were anxious to ride, but all afternoon one thing after another had interfered with our plans.
First we had to observe the ritual welcoming of guests to a Kyrgyz home, namely drinking tea. We seated ourselves on cushions around the low table in one of the two rooms of the wagon where the Jainakovs live in the summer as Gulbaira and Elmira, their thirteen-year-old grand daughter, laid out food.
The Kyrgyz practice pastoral nomadism moving between low elevation, winter grazing lands called kyshtoo, and mountain, summer pastures called jailoo.
Nomadism is shrouded in romantic notions of free spiritedness and rootlessness. Ella writes, “The nomad’s life enthrall me. Its restlessness pursues me: it is as much a part of me as of the sailor. All ports and none are home to him, and all arrivings only a new setting forth.” But Kyrgyz nomads aren’t sailors and they aren’t vagabonds. Their society is strict and tradition bound, and their movements are rarely arbitrary. The Kyrgyz didn’t roam from place to place, settling in a spot for a while then abandoning it on a whim. They moved in aul (family groups) between lands that were recognized as belonging to them.
The Russians arrived in the mid 19th century, bringing with them railways, cities, and settlers, which had a devastating effect on the nomadic way of life, much like the effect American westward expansion had on the Native Americans.
Thousands of Slavic and German farmers arrived to establish farms on “unclaimed land” preventing the Kyrgyz from following their herds. By the late 1880s, thirty thousand settlers had arrived in present-day Kyrgyzstan.
Soviet rule was even worse. Stalin’s policy of collectivization (1928-1932) rounded up farmers and herders onto kolkhazi (collective farms). All livestock had to be turned over to the state, the nomadic lifestyle gone. In a destructive and heartbreaking act of resistance Kyrgyz, and Kazakh, herders slaughtered their sheep and horses by the millions. Many Kyrgyz fled to China, which in retrospect wasn’t such a good move.
Since independence some of the old ways have returned.
The traditional jailoo dwelling is the yurt. Having a wagon, though, is considered a step up the economic ladder by the Kyrgyz, but not nearly as exotic to us westerners. The Jainakovs’ wagon was silver with blue trim and made me think of a gypsy caravan. Inside, there was a room for eating and one for sleeping. And like in a yurt, there was little furniture; in the eating room there was the table and a buffet where dishes, glasses, and the vodka were kept. Items like family photos, paper and pens were stored in plastic bags hanging from nails on the walls. In the other, bigger, room was a unit of shelves for cooking pots and teakettles. In the front right corner were the stacks of bedding, pulled out every night and put away every morning.
The Jainakovs had a small, red, Chinese generator powered by a small solar panel. The generator, in turn, powered two fluorescent lights in the wagon and a stereo that was built into the generator itself. A canvas tent that served as the kitchen and storeroom was pitched next to the wagon. There was a sheep enclosure a several yards in front of the wagon and junk, turkeys and chickens lived under the wagon.
By local standards, the Jainakovs were well off, with their wagon, their generator, their hundred plus sheep, cattle and horses and eighteen foals.
The views were spectacular, wide-open grassland giving way to majestic snow-capped mountains in all directions. There was a narrow creek running just below the sheep pen and the grass growing near it was lush and the ground soggy. As the land rose behind the wagon tufts of long, tough grass punctuated the short, coarse grass. The sky was endless.
We ate and waited for the water to boil in the samovar that was set up outside. A stovepipe had been attached to the top and Gulbaira shoved sheep dung through a door at the base of the pipe and lit it. When the water was ready, she filled two thermoses with the boiling water. At the table, she poured a little hot water into a teapot containing loose tealeaves to brew very strong tea. She then poured small amounts of the brew into handle-less cups; a tiny strainer attached to the end of the spout caught any escaping leaves. Finally, she added boiling water to each cup and passed them around. The tea must then be sweetened to the taste of each drinker, and if you are Kyrgyz that means adding sometimes as many as five sugar cubes, or jam, or smetana, or all of the above if you are Alina.
After enjoying a cup or two of tea, out came the shot glasses and a bottle of vodka.* Only two shots were required today. Before the first shot, our host made a toast of welcome. For the second shot, Kristin or I was asked to make the toast. Kristin succumbed to a bout of shyness, so the task fell to me. I acquitted myself most admirably, considering that speaking off the cuff is not one of my strengths.
“Thank you for your hospitality. You have a beautiful country and a beautiful jailoo. We are very happy and honored to be here.”
Having dispensed with the welcoming ritual, we were sure that it was time for our ride. But no, the mares had to be milked, one of four milkings a day. It is a chore that requires strong legs and good balance. As a mare is taller than a cow and her udders don’t hang very low, stools are worthless. Gulbaira had to go down on one knee, holding the bucket on the other, as she milked. Raw mares’ milk, called saalmal, is whiter than white and has forty percent more lactose than cow’s milk. To make kymyz from saalmal, pour the milk into a wooden or plastic vat and add yeast. Using a paddle, called a pishpek, stir or churn the liquid. Fermentation can occur in as little as a few hours. In the past, saalmal was placed in horse-hide containers and strapped to saddles, the motion of the horses doing the work.
After milking the mares, Gulbaira had to milk the cows, and separate the milk with a manual separator.
To separate milk, she heated it up in a kazan, a large cast iron cauldron that is the most important piece of cooking equipment in the Central Asian kitchen. When it was warm, she scooped out a medium-sized pot’s worth and poured it into the separator, covering the bowl of the separator with a piece of cheesecloth. Then the cranking began. Around and around the handle went as the milk started to stream out one spout into a bucket and the thick cream came out of a second into a metal bowl. Kristin, Alina and I took a turn at the crank but with arms unaccustomed to the task, we had to give up after several minutes. The cream was left to set, appearing later on the table, looking like a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It would be spread on bread and cookies or dropped into cups of tea.
That’s another thing about nomadism that isn’t very romantic: the division of labor is precise. The men tend to the livestock and the women do everything else. Besides milking the cows and horses and separating the milk, women see to the children, prepare the meals, cure the hides, make the felt, and, in the past, made the clothes and bedding. For every ten chores that Gulbaira and Elmira performed, Assambak did one.
Gulbaira was fifty years old, though I would have guessed her to be much older. It was not because she had lots of wrinkles; I know women who are younger and have more wrinkles. It was her body, which was quite shapeless, and she moved slowly. She had the aura of an older person. She was frumpy, but then her life did not allow her time to worry about clothes, make-up and working out at the gym.
She had been ill recently and still had not completely recovered. She had had a kidney stone removed. She showed it to me, carefully unwrapping the cheesecloth to reveal a stone the size of a walnut in its shell.
Gulbaira and Assambek, whom we affectionately called Babushka and Dyadushka (Grandma and Grandpa), were lucky to have Elmira with them. She loved her grandparents and the jailoo and was always ready to help. And there was always something to do: penning and un-penning the sheep, moving the cows and sheep from one grazing spot to another, milking the mares and cows, moving and tying up the colts, feeding the chickens, churning butter. With all that hard work that started early in the morning and lasted until dark, it was no wonder that so many young people wanted to move to the city. But not Elmira, who, on or off a horse, was all over the place, up and down the hills. Not at all like most American children I know. She never said she was too tired, or she would do it later, or that she didn’t want to. She was the first one out in the morning and the last one in at night.
* I had to channel my inner frat boy on this trip to be able to drink as much vodka as I drank on this trip. Drinking vodka is part of the culture, a legacy of the Russians, and to abstain was to cut myself off from some really great experiences
Photos: (1)View from the Jainakovs' wagon, (2) The wagon, (3) Gulbaira at the samovar, (4) Assambek and his grandson
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