Fulmer diary
A life in pictures
They are kind, open, tolerant, and concerned [?] interesting [?] people. The 20- to 30-year-olds I’ve met are all well-educated.
The towns are mostly made up of old, ’Stalinist-baroque‘
Soviet-style buildings, but in Bishkek, even at a small family-run hotel we
stayed, all [?] most [?] spoke good English. In villages people live in poor,
simple buildings, usually with large families. Children are in school during the day, where
they wear uniforms. Young children go to school alone, up to 5-10 km away, as
public safety is good. Based on the division of labour in village families, it
is observed that traditional gender roles are dominant, but girls and women are
also part of the vibrant social life. One of the interpreters told us that his
grandmother was abducted to become a wife, a crime that is now prosecuted by
the state. His story also goes that the grandparents lived happily ever after.
Shepherds in the mountains are engaged in
traditional livestock farming, as their ancestors have done for centuries. They
are cheerful, happy, friendly, curious and hospitable. The further people live
from civilization, the more kind they are. Many older country folks cannot read
or write. They travel by horse, never in a hurry. In summer, families live in
yurts in the mountains, in winter they retreat to villages.
Omur, a shepherd who grazed the pastures
nearest to the camp, worked hard for us. He lives in the mountains with his
wife and 6 young children from spring to autumn. They ride a gentle and
well-trained back horse. They do not name their animals; in a conversation Omur
calls his horse simply ‘the horse’. Same as the interpreter, he wonders why we assign
individual names to our animals.
Tariel, who is now working for us, is a modern young man, critical of his surroundings, with a similar vision of the world for the Hungarian youth.
The local helpful beekeeping family invited
our party to their home, welcoming us with a princely lunch, hardworking and
kind people all. We returned their invitation at the camp. The woman has a
beekeeping shop. She had her children educated, they went to university, and one
of them worked in South Korea.