Travels in Central Asia

Conferencing Kyrgyz-Turkish Style

The walk from my apartment to the 24/7 Internet cafe is about one mile. I avoid the main drag, Chuy Prospektisi, and stroll on the parallel Kiev Street. At 4am, it is quite dark around the apartment (and inside as well, again tonight the lights dimmed at 10pm and 15 minutes later were gone again for five hours.) When they came back on, that was my wake-up call, so after spending time organizing my stuff for the trip home, I headed down Kiev for another bout with this blog.

Kate and others have asked about my apartment, so here is a description. It was built almost 70 years ago, is four stories tall, includes balconies on all windows on the outside and is another concrete monolith. Boxlike in shape, inside it consists of an 8' x 10' living/sleeping room with a pullout couch propped up on wooden blocks. The ceiling is at least 11 feet high and a single cord with a light fixture on the end (no shade) extends from the middle of the room. In one corner is a 13 inch tv with a 50s style antenna on a small table; in the opposite corner a portable closet is the sole storage place in the apartment. The kitchen/breakfast room has no sink, is 6' x 10' in size and has a hutch with assorted and unmatching eating utensils stacked among an odd collection of flowers, curios and two clocks. On the window sill is a small hot water pot plugged into the only outlet in the room. One table and two chairs complete the room furnishings. The bathroom is 3 x 7 with a tub, large tub and sink contained within, tight quarters to say the least. No wallpaper design, plug or fixture matches from room to room. The wooden floor is in need of years of stripping and finishing and is intermittently covered with a melange of throw rugs. Get the picture! You may ask, why not stay at the Hyatt? I counter with this: I would rather spend $25 a day on a translator to negotiate the cyrillic alphabets and multiple foreign tongues in Bishkek than the $160 a night at the Hyatt. Also, if I am awarded a Fulbright, I envision a place like this as my base, not anything remotely approaching stateside digs.

The past day was consumed entirely by the first day of the First International Symposium on Communication and Media Studies in the process of Social and Cultural Interaction (the title makes for a long banner!), a meeting whose aim was "to get together the communication scholars, researchers and sector professionals to present the latest research results, ideas and applications in the field of culture, communication and media studies." Long ago in March I submitted a proposal to speak about the outlook for technical communication in Central Asia.
It was accepted and I began the process of raising funds, adjusting schedules, getting a visa, checking my shots and, in essence, planning the trip. This was a bold move for me as travel arrangements for last year's trips to India and Armenia were handled by support personnel at the University of Central Florida and Project Harmony. I am glad that up to this point everything has worked out well.

Seyit was scheduled to pick me up at 9am for the 20 minute ride to the symposium site at Kyrgyz Turkish Manas University. At 9:05 he called to say that he was tied up and asked me to take a cab. No problem, I said, I had passed by the campus on the way to Al Archa the day before. However, the symposium is being held at a branch location some 5 miles away from the main campus. He gave me directions, which I quickly forget, and told me to say to words to the cab driver: university najou. I was on scramble mode now, some 20 minutes away from the site with 25 minutes before the first meeting. Hustling out to Kiev, I hailed a cab within a minute. However, I forgot the word after university and said ajow instead. The Kyrgyz/Russian speaking driver had no clue. I knew it was near the main campus, so we headed down Manas Street and stopped at three universities to ask for directions to the branch campus. Finally, at the third one, I found one student who spoke English and he told the driver where I wanted to go.

The facilities for the symposium are topflight. The building for Iletisma Faculti (that is not elite faculty if you are translating as you read; the Turkish word for Communication is Iletisma), is open air, multi-leveled and mostly white inside. We were met by the dean of the communication faculty who ushered all of the presenters into her office for tea or Turkish coffee. Two groups of people were sitting in separate clusters, three men and three women. I introduced myself to everyone and then sat with the women, (but I wondered why the groups weren't mixed). Each of the women spoke at least passable English so we chitchatted about their fields (marketing and mass media), drank our coffee and waited for the opening session to begin. At least 20 students in the school of communication assisted all of us: at the registration desk (the fee was $50 cash), getting coffee, offering directions, advising us on the current displays which dotted the open areas of the school, and simply being nice to all of us. We were offered free copies of the school's publications on Turkic studies and given a welcome gift, a traditional Kyrgyz hat.

At 10am, the starting time for each of the three days, (late by U.S. standards to be sure, but comfortable, nonetheless) we gathered in the 200 seat auditorium. Theater seating, with translation earplugs at the ready, the room had a control booth in the back and an ample stage for performances and presentations. At least five different video cameras and three still photographers were documenting the proceedings. Each of the presenters in the audience (the entire crowd was probably 50) were photographed watching the proceedings.

The morning session consisted of five forms of welcome from the rector (president) of the university, the vice rector, the dean of communications and two Turkish professors who were scheduled to present during the symposium. Most telling about the morning session was the common theme of media exaggeration of the events of March 24-25, particularly by CNN. The rector reminded us that only two classes were cancelled on the day looting was reported and shown in the New York Times, CNN and elsewhere. He and others rued the fact that several presenters cancelled their trips because of the March problem, and that the negative reporting will cost the country in terms of economic progress. Yet, the question remains: what should be shown and how do we know when we report on something how the endgame will play out. What if the type of violence which occurred in Uzbekistan, the western neighbor of Kyrgystan, had followed the looting? Would the country and others be criticized for not having a free and accessible press? Great questions which are open to debate, and certainly of critical interest to the educational power brokers in this country.

Before I recount the symposium's first day, let me tell you about KTMU. The university itself is celebrating its 10th anniversary and stands as a collaborative venture between the Kyrgyz and Turkish governments. The latter has put up all the seed money for the project, which includes the construction or renovation of two campuses and plans for more, as well as the operating budget which exceeds $4 million per year. All of the 2000 students are on scholarship and compete for highly desirable slots by taking an entrance exam developed by the university. The Kyrgyz government has given or leased the university the land, and is guaranteed 35% of the 2000 slots for its use (provided these students pass the stringent entrance requirements). We received in our packet the modest, four color and four language catalogue which outlines programs and features of KTMU.

For the three days of the symposium, presentations are organized around five 90 minute sessions with each presenter allowed 15 minutes. For both Wednesday sessions, the panel moderators could be described as obsessive time watchers, warning each presenter with five minutes to go and summarily cutting off some when the witching hour struck 15 minutes. Content wise the 10 (two sessions of 5) presentations covered such topics as mass media, the role of television in Asia (Turkey has 700 cable channels), film critiques (one on Turkish films, the other on the films of Elia Kazan (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront among others), the changing image of the male body in men's and women's magazines, and my favorite, a survey of documentary photography who focused on migration (this included extensive treatment of the work iconic American photo-artists Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange, as well as a healthy dose of Turkish documentary photographers). Save for the presentation on the Kazan films, and a bi-lingual presentation of the paper on photography (the author gave his introduction and conclusion in English and the body of his work in Turkish!), all of the presentations were in Turkish or Russian. Enter my second student lifeline. If Seyit has been my footsoldier, looking out for my accommodations, transportation and well-being away from the symposium, my new lifeline is Elira Turdubayeva.
She is a 23 year old student at KTMU completing her masters degree. Once it was determined that the translation facilities would allow for only one language to be distributed, the needs of the sole English only participant (ME!) had to be addressed. The solution was to have the 8 and 1/2 months pregnant Elira language babysit me. As each presentation would progress, she would summarize, rather than simultaneously translate, what was being said. At this moment, I feel as if I have not missed a Russian, Turkish or Kyrgyz word. If the speaker used English, Elira, who speaks Kyrgyz, Turkish, Russian and English, simply sat next to me and produced written translations for the conference proceedings. What a talented student, who incidentally will present, in English, on the problems of online journalism in Kyrgyzstan.

About half of the presenters used PowerPoint to support their talks. One thing I have noticed is that the advantage for English speakers to view a language which is written in the Latin alphabet is enormous compared to the problems one has in viewing Cyrillic, Arabic or ideographic scripts. Even though the text would be Turkish to me, key words repeated in the presentation could easily be translated. At the same time, Turkish words such as "spor" (sport), "teknoliji" (technology) and "medya" (media) can quickly be decoded for English counterparts.
Several countries in Central Asia have already made the shift from Cyrillic to Latin, including Moldova and Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan intends to move in this direction, but like most of its "Inner Asia" counterparts suffers from a lack of funds to do so. Consider this development for a moment. Imagine if our goverment decided to "cyrillicize" or "hindiize" our latinized American English. How would this affect publishing, libraries, government bureaucracies, consumer signage et al? But, consider this as a tool for political correctness. In the 30s when the Soviet system continued to find ways to exert control over its Asian subjects, rules were enacted to scrub all texts, both past and future, which contained Arabic script. Thus, instead of banning books, the Soviets banned alphabets. This certainly brings new meaning to political correctness.

Outside the panel presentations, we were treated to lunch and dinner, the latter a lavish affair in the courtyard of the main campus. Just prior to the meal, our group was taken on a city tour. Since no one was taking the role of bus tour guide, I stepped up, and at least to those in English, gave my take on the significant tourist sites in Bishkek. When I was done, Seyit smiled and said that I knew more than he did about his own town. But back to the dinner. Long tables with white linen allowed us to dine under the 70 degree something Kyrgyz night. Five courses (tomato soup with croutons, cucumber and tomato salad, a meat plate of liver and sausage, an unnamed fish in creamy, tasty sauce and a fruit plate of fresh watermelon, apricots, cherries and strawberries, all doused with the drink options of mineral water, Coke, Sprite, cherry juice, orange-grapefruit juice or sauvignon wine) were served by more than 20 students from the school of hospitality management. An all female, three violin and one cello ensemble entertained us throughout the 90 minute meal. Following the meal, a form of a capello karaoke emerged with several participants (not me) grabbing the mike and serenading the audience. One university faculty used the moment to sing a love ballad to the dean of communication, who dutifully stood and smiled at him while this three minute song transpired. He then jumped off the stage and rushed into her arms. YIKES.

Another performer used the stage to sing a ten minute passage from the Manas (see my earlier blog on this epic poetry). He joined me later and, through Seyit, I learned that this student, who doubled as the master of ceremonies for the opening panel, had, years earlier, won a nationwide competition on singing the Manas. He remembers hearing his father sing this poem to him from the time he was two, and since the age of six he has performed passages. When he won the competition, he performed for six hours without a break. He also told me that the entire epic would take 24 hours to sing. Ah, in some cultures, the spoken word is still sacred.

I will end this now with the report of only one regret. My video camera failed after one hour of taping. Tomorrow I will try to borrow one from the video department to tape the proceedings. I also would like to interview several Kyrgyzstani students for the gang back home.

posted by Student Success @ 3:40 PM