Of course all these could be chalked up to cultural experiences. But when I learned the school pocketed half the $300 monthly rent, I was sufficiently annoyed to explore other options. Of course, moving back to the schools “flats” – more like dormitories next door to English classrooms – would be even worse.
One of the English teachers at the school – a fellow Mid-Westerner named Kole – told me about a local student who mentioned she would love the opportunity to have a foreign roommate. I sent her a text message and we met the next day. She invited me to her flat where I met her other two flatmates. To Google-proof my present and future gossip, I will rename them Alya, Berma and Amira. The three of them all grew up together in Jalalabad, a city in the south near Osh and Uzbek border.
When the other two were out of earshot, Amira described their personalities as if they were some new Kyrgyz twist on Betty and Veronica. Amira saw herself as studious, intelligent, but a little impractical and forgetful. She characterized Berma as the mother of the three, who due to her excellent culinary skills ended up doing most of the cooking, and Alya, who I think Amira doesn’t really like, as the party-girl who rarely studies.
We sat in the kitchen drinking tea, and Berma said to me, “We’ve made you our National Dish Besh Barmak, because we thought you would like it.” Yum.
They showed me the apartment: the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room and the vacant room. It was quite big, with a double bed and a large row of three identical wardrobes. I was a bit confused, and I didn’t think the apartment had more than two bedrooms total.
“Where will you sleep?” I asked Amira. She brushed off the question and I pressed. She opened a door across from the vacant room, which had two desks, a computer, and a few rolled-up Kyrgyz bed mats on the floor. She quickly explained that they don’t sleep on the bed anyway, because they all have problems with their backs, and they prefer to sleep this way.
Before I left, Amira and I sat down and talked about our “schedules, hobbies and routines.” She told me some details about the house and asked if I had any questions. I asked how much the room was per month. She looked at me, astonished. “No!” she said, both surprised and emphatic. “You are our guest!”
I insisted that I must pay something, and suggested we split the rent four ways. I asked her why she didn’t want to let me pay. She looked at me, confused and perhaps slightly annoyed with my persistence. “Did you pay the other family to live with them?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That is very strange to me! It is not our custom. Maybe it is because I am from the south, and this is Bishkek, a big city. But it is not our custom to charge foreign guests when they stay with us. Sometimes I do not understand people from Bishkek.” She added, “It is my dream to live with a foreigner for 11 years.”
Maybe it is rude, but I had trouble accepting this, and she eventually agreed to let me pay something, which we have yet to iron out. I decided to stay with them, despite the American guilt weighing on me. The girls were all very nice, but I felt a bit strange about how excited they were about living with me. I am so exotic and interesting that a young girl in Kochkar asks for my autograph and gives me a lollypop in return, and in Bishkek three university students want me to have their only real bedroom.
Of course the more critical view is that I am just an average American who has managed to save up a few thousand dollars to take advantage of the extremely low cost of labor in Kyrgyzstan (remember: 4 dollars an hour for private Russian lessons), a country with comparatively few Western tourists, and am being rewarded with kindness and hospitality even though I don’t really deserve it, as the main reason I chose Kyrgyzstan over Moscow or St. Petersburg was the cost.
I haven’t been asked “Is it true that everyone in America has their own car?” but I have been asked “Is it true that in America everyone has their own bedroom and children sleep in beds?”
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