Some People Lead More Exciting Lives Than Others
On Sunday, April 11, I received an email with the message line "Hi From Kyrgystan" from Molly Loomis (Tyson), a Teton Valley resident and regular contributor to our magazines. I'll reprint it here. (As it was sent to 'undisclosed recipients,' some of you may have already received the message from Molly.)
As some of you may know, Jaime and I came over here to Kyrgyzstan for a ski mountaineering expedition with a woman named Ann who is studying climate change in the Tien Shan. I arrived on Tuesday morning. That afternoon a revolution started. Ann came back from renting kiddie sleds from some seven-year-olds when the Embassy called, saying there were protests in Talas and that they were trying to overthrow the government. Protests were being called for in Bishkek (the capital, which is where we are) the following day. It's hard to condense the next 24 hours and the days following into a short email. (Our Internet access is really limited—no Internet cafes are open yet and we're using a friend's connection that has limited time.) We've all found it challenging writing home, in not wanting to sensationalize things but still accurately conveying what we've seen and what's happening. The entire city is not destroyed, but at the same time many of the images you all have been seeing on the TV are real—the fires, bullets, looting, cars and buildings in flame, blood-splattered pavement, etc. But there is also calm in the midst of all of it, like the old Russian Babushka selling daffodils on the street corner the day after, as people were sweeping up piles of glass from all the looting that occurred the night before.
We're in an apartment a few blocks from the ‘white house’ [the country’s presidential office building]. We can see it from the window, so we saw some action, but we felt safe. We were three stories up in an apartment building and had lots of people we could call if we needed to.
Things are returning to normal. Yesterday, the square was filled with people for a mass service. A yurt was up and an Iman was conducting mass prayers. They're calling [the fallen] heroes. Everyone I've spoken to is astounded that the government would kill Kyrgyz citizens. It's an interesting perspective. I've been able to meet with a number of people that were involved, and their stories are really amazing. Corruption and higher electric bills are the quick explanation, but there is a much deeper explanation, as with anything.
So, it's a different kind of storm day—we joked about how we couldn't have been better prepared, as we had all our expedition food and fuel in the apartment. Now stores are opening back up. Jamie baked delicious cookies today. We are hoping to head into the mountains this week, but waiting for a little more news. Bakayiev, the ousted president, still has not resigned and his whereabouts are unknown. There are lots of rumors flying around about what he's doing, including that he's just getting drunk in some camp high in the mountains. Who knows?
It sounds like we missed some of the winter's best skiing in the Tetons—shoot. Take care!
After asking Molly's permission to post her correspondence here at the blog, this morning I received the go-ahead along with this postscript: We are heading into the mountains today. Yahoo!
To learn about an altogether different sort of adventure undertaken by Molly, read Santa at the South Pole in the winter 2009-10 edition of Teton Valley Magazine.
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