Almost every day during my stay in Bel/Borbash village there was something to do after teaching at the school.
As I mentioned earlier, Tamara and Sharif’s home was kind of a central meeting point for the local kids. They would gather there and hang around as if the place was their own. There would always be some activity on the dirt road immediately in front of the house. The video below is typical, but sometimes there would be a football (soccer) game or some other group game happening.
The kids would always ask myself and Gary to join. It was nice, but I was actually pretty tired at the end of the day. Because of the language barrier, it actually was quite humorous once. Nine-year old Aseema told me that I couldn’t take a nap because I had to stay up and play with them 😛 . Well who knows, maybe that is what she really meant! I could not refuse anyway!
On one particular evening all the ladies gathered at the home. I think they came to meet us foreigners but the plan was to have a football game. Again I thought I was misunderstanding something, or it was a joke. No! They actually wanted to play football with us! They are actually quite competitive! Thanks to Gary for catching part of it on his phone:
Other activities would be tutoring a couple of kids who for some reason could not come to the school during the day. Again we couldn’t say no.
On this particular evening, Balot’s friend (and I think classmate as well) Bakbergen came to visit us. Balot told me he was the son of a shepherd. I had assumed he was also a shepherd but was mistaken as I’ll explain later. Bakbergen’s hobby was singing. On this night he treated us to a performance of a traditional Kyrgyz song:
I learned a few weeks ago (about 3 months after meeting Bakbergen) that he followed in the footsteps of many of the men from his village. After graduating from high school he had taken a job as a migrant worker in Russia. Although a job in Russia is much coveted in the village (because of the income it brings to the families), I was a little disappointed. Well, the charter of the youth club was to provide the kids other opportunities than migrant work. In the future, they’ll have more choices.
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-The Rover
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