Psychic Wanderings through this desolate land...

I’m psychic. Yup. All available evidence points to the fact that I am completely psychic. I’m not just any run-of-the-mill psychic, mind you, I’ve got a specialty of a sort…a uniqueness that should be in high demand if I can ever find a way to market my services via late-night infomercials. I’m a food psychic! I can predict now beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what my host-family will serve me for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Jealous? Yeah…us psychics look at all you common folk with a certain loving placation knowing that you’ll never fully appreciate the grandness of our universe…even if it is limited to Kyrgyz culinary disasters.
Every day for the past month I’ve predicted correctly the bread and butter for breakfast, the soup made of a mysterious amalgamation of potatoes, beans, meatish substance and broth that constitutes every lunch, and last night I had a dream about the Beshbarmark I’d be eating for dinner tonight. If I haven’t yet fully explained the absolute terribleness of this particular dish please allow me a brief digression while I illuminate the particulars for you, my loyal reader.
Beshbarmark is made with large, flat and greasy noodles piled on a large round plate. Well, sometimes the plate is square or even rectangular but that doesn’t matter here. What does matter is the meat that is dumped on top of it. If you’ve ever been to Safeway’s meat section you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever been to an actual butcher shop, you still have no idea what I’m talking about. In fact, short of anyone who’s actually slaughtered a sheep and taken a good look at what makes a sheep tick on the inside, no one but the Kyrgyz and their honored guests know what I’m talking about. The “meat” that’s piled on top of the large, flat, and greasy noodles isn’t actually “meat” (at least as Americans know…nay, the entire western world knows it) at all but a combination of intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys, and bits of meat still attached to a bone with the head of the sheep on top. Yeah, the HEAD of the sheep sitting on top of this gastronomic monstrosity! All of the meat (except the head, more on that later) is boiled for a couple of hours so that it loses all nutritional value and tastes like rubber before it’s ready to be thrown on top of the fat greasy noodles. Now, the head of the sheep actually gets fire. However it gets only enough fire to make its brain cook (yeah, the brain is still inside) and its hair fall off. Then it too gets thrown on top.
Maybe this doesn’t sound too bad to you? Maybe boiled intestines and other miscellaneous organs layered on top of fat, greasy noodles actually sounds appetizing? Well my friend, welcome to every single Goddamn Kyrgyz party I’ve ever been to. However, the reason that Beshbarmark is served on a large plate isn’t to ease the distribution of servings to dinner guests…oh no, it’s so that everyone can sit around it on the floor and dig in with their hands! There’s nothing quite so breathtaking as the sight of a 75 year old Kyrgyz woman sitting on the floor, mashing up noodles and intestines with one hand and shoving the whole mess in her mouth, before reaching for some fresh noodles that you’ve carefully stashed as close to you as possible to minimize organ contact, thereby getting her organ/noodle/saliva mix thoroughly drenching her hand evenly distributed around the group-plate as fairly as possible. Then she asks why I’m not eating with the same carnivorous delight as the rest of the eager participants! Well, my dear, it just so happens that I don’t like meat (easiest response, and in my case a complete fallacy whilst enjoying the comforts of America, but it’s veracity due to my temporary Kyrgyz zip-code cannot be questioned). Oh, she says, you’re Apa says you eat meat all the time. Ha ha ha, I say before feigning a bout of terrible misunderstanding (I am still new to this country after all) as I relieve myself to the toilet.
But I digress.
Last night I had a dream about being back home in America and explaining Beshbarmark to my friends and family while sitting around a lavish Thanksgiving dinner replete with wine, Turkey, (insert every item you’ve ever imagined would be at your ideal Thanksgiving dinner here) and a nice medley of various Holiday music permeating every conversation. Why and how Beshbarmark made its sordid self known to this otherwise lovely dream of mine I have no idea. However when I awoke with a tear in my eye and the taste of home fading into yet another distant memory I remembered that I am, indeed, a food-psychic. That’s when I broke out into a cold sweat and looked at my reflection in the mirror as the winter sun slowly rose in the early morning sky. I cried and cried screaming say it isn’t so, please God, say it isn’t so! I’ve had such a great Beshbarmark-free two weeks, why now? Why now oh God of mine—WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!! Ours is not to question why though, only obey and suffer as Catholicism dictates. Comfortable accepting this dogma I made my way once again to my now-frozen sheets and spent the next few morning hours loathing my profound psychic gifts for ever making themselves known.
Sure enough, I awoke later this morning to the smell of freshly baked bread (out of all of the otherwise tasty foods that the Kyrgyz have somehow managed to make practically inedible, their bread is delicious. Seriously. I will miss it when I’m gone…it’s truly the best bread I’ve ever had, and I’ve been to France) and ready-made coffee permeating the restless atmosphere of my sanctuary, er, room. So I sat down and said well, that’s only one out of three meals…maybe, just maybe I’m not psychic after all! But alas, oh no, I thought as I sat down to lunch of potato, bean, meatish, and broth soup…I’m 2/3 of the way towards certain disappointment!
I spent my afternoon hours studying for the GMAT (yeah, this summer I’ll be taking it in Almaty, Kazakhstan) and reading On the Road. Then I got the dreaded “James, kel, kel, azr biz jaybiz!” As soon as I exited my adventures with Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac I smelled the smell of smells. I heard the simmering water still reeling from its intimacy with untouchables. Finally, I saw the eager smiles from my Apa and her guests as they dug in to the dreaded dish with a voraciousness unmatched in the ages. Come James, they beckoned me, come and eat our national dish (oh yeah, Beshbarmark is the Kyrgyz mothafuckin’ national dish…hence, it’s served at every single party in the entire country) and partake in our floor-sitting affair! Well, I did. Luckily I was at my house so I grabbed a separate dish into which I then scooped fresh (hopefully) untouched noodles and choice pieces of identifiableish sheep-meat while trying not to make eye-contact with the newly brazened beasts’ head before me. I ate what I thought was an acceptable amount (don’t want to insult them, after all) and I quickly made my leave saying I was busy watching a movie. I thanked them all for their hospitality, and declined to marry the teenage daughters they always seem to offer at every party (are they joking? I’ve been here for six months and I’m still not quite sure) before heading back to my room to devour as much candy as possible to get the taste of sheep out of my mouth.
And that, my friends, is what I call Wednesday.
I’m out of school until March 1, and before my AIDS Awareness and Life Skills training camp begins the third week in February Peace Corps has decided that all of the K-16’s need additional training (actually, it’s part of the whole program, everyone does it three months in to their site-service) so I’m going to Bishkek on January 9th for what will be plenty of good times with my fellow volunteers all week long at the infamous Issyk-Kul hotel for our IST (In-Service Training). Thank you Peace Corps, thank you.
Until then, Jakshay Barangiz (go well) and more updates to come from my soon-to-be renowned exploits during IST!