Orientation

Elzan sells hats at the bazaar. Fresh snow covers the ground and temperatures are dropping; its a good time of year to be selling winter hats. But sales are unsatisfactory. As a CNN addict, I am eager to point to the global economic recession. Elzan shrugs off my prods to for some analysis of the decline. 

He is located at a cross alley of sorts. The main pedestrian avenues of the bazaar run north to south. Due to the shape of the cargo containers which compose the skeleton of the bazaar this elongated rectangular shape is the most efficient use of space. Similar to how in many US urban areas the blocks are composed of houses which face their streets of access and abut another home at a shared reared inner space. So too do the containers abut butt to butt. Intermittently, there will be either a cross avenue or alley so that one can get from one main drag to another. Elzan occupied one such spot. He occupies no container but pays a regular rent for his space which he occupies everyday from sun up to sundown (at least during the short cold winter days).

Rent is $100 a month and earnings are "too few." The hats come from all over but principally hail from Turkey, Iran and China. 

Elzan occupies a very middle post on the bazaar social totempole. In terms of retailers, he has a spot but not a "container." His goods are displayed on a wall. Many who do not own containers provide vital but economically marginal goods and services. There are the tea sellers with their stollers of tea as well as sellers who operate off of a matt. They are highly mobile and able to occupy any space made available by any container being closed for whatever reason. Each table or spread costs a daily rent of 20 som, or about $US .50. Despite the potential to work anywhere in the huge and sprawling bazaar, most sellers with a matt which I have talked to set up in the same space (if located in a less busy area) or in the same basic area if it is a more crowded area. Similarly, the tea sellers tend to work a limited area as well, preferring to limit themselves to one or two "blocks" of the bazaar rather than wandering all around it.

So even the mobile and flexlible sellers at the bazaar seek to ground their trade in a limited geography. In this way they are able to form consistent customers (many of the tea sellers' principle clients are merchants who would like a warm drink but would like to stay at their stall and/or container).

Sellers that operate off of wheel-barrel type stands, mats and small tables also tend to set up in the same area everyday. Gaining knowledge of the flow of a day, the regular pulses of the bazaar and the a basic level of comfort with one's physical and social environment are an important factors for many sellers. Even though their operations are small enough that long-term relationships with clients are unlikely to emerge as a significant financial incentive for occupying the same space every day, other less tangible incentives emerge. Perhaps risk aversion, trying a new spot everyday could be result in low sales. Moving to a new area of the bazaar would take a tole on one's social harmony as well as finding a place that would not ruffle the feathers of pre-established sellers could be stressful. 

I am trying to spend at least two hours a day at the bazaar now and have set a number of people to talk with everyday to help get me out of my complacent bubble (formed by attending to necessary but non-bazaar related errands). So far, it's coming a long. Happy Solstice. The sun will now get higher and the days longer! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

If one were 

Ak Bata v. Kyrgyzgaz

The communities around the bazaar are known as "novastroika" or new construction. Almost all of the so-called villages came into being after independence and sprang up on land that had pretty much been farmland. The situation made land rights a hazy affair. If people moved to the land before privatization but were not supposed to be living there, who owns the land. The state had more pressing matters to attend to than to sort out the legality of new residents during a time when the very basis of the legal framework was in shift. In the context of widespread economic disintegration the population of "squatters" grew quickly. Soon, their were too many to simply evict them. The squatters, well aware of their potentially tenuous position were fairly well organized, united in an interest to hold on to land, sensitive to threats to their situation and, perhaps most important, had little to lose. Eventually the de facto situation gained official recognition by the government and the squatter communities were incorporated as villages. Many of the underlying land issues, however had not been fully resolved.

One area of a village happens to have been constructed over the sight of a gas pipeline. The company which owns the pipeline, Kyrgyzgas, now claims that the pipeline presents a danger to the community. Furthermore they are claiming rights to a swath of land above the underground pipe. They want the residents to leave. However, it also appears that if one pays some 10,000 som (about $US 250) that it will be possible to keep the land.

Residents are concerned by this development. The families are, generally speaking, not well off. But they have invested their time and money into improving their homes and neighborhoods, not to mention the fact that there is a strong sense of community that many are not eager to abandon.

The residents have organized a group to express their concern over the potential ouster. They have hired a lawyer and have met with a judge. The matter is now before the judge with some sort of a decision about the legality of the gas company's claim expected soon.

The families are not hopeful that the judge will decide in their favor. I am not trying to harp on the corruption issue, but judges, like all civil servants make very little in the way of monthly salary and selling out just one or two cases a month can do wonders for their standard of living. The residents also lament that they are not positive about the caliber of their lawyer. Many are not sure what they will do if things go against them. The $250 sum is very high and there seems to be little guarantee that the payment would really resolve the situation. Moving to a new location would also be very expensive and socially undesireable.

Last winter was the coldest on record for decades in Kyrgyzstan and life in the houses of the bazaar ring villages was difficult. By many accounts even harrowing at times. Many I know stocked up on coal and wood to last them through this winter but while so far the weather has cooperated but another sort of trouble may be on the horizon.

Protest in Iranian Bazaars

Here is the times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/world/middleeast/11iran.html?ref=world

The bazaaris are often depicted as being an urban group with economic weight that tends toward greater social conservatism and support of the Islamist laws.

The declining oil prices of the economic contraction are already making for interesting dynamics and already the bazaar offers a decent window on the changes.

Tour De Dordoi

Today Urusbek took me and a family staying at my host family’s guesthouse around the bazaar. Needless to say, being on a sort of guided tour made for more information that I could soak up, organize and coherently present. Regardless, here it goes.

The first two things I noticed while approaching the bazaar were the mosque and containers stacked two high. The mosque is located at a T-intersection where the main road from Bishkek goes past the bazaar and a spur into the bazaar meet. Imams sell religious texts, Islamic trinkets, and symbols of Islamic faith. Though the mosque is only about 3 years old they are already planning on adding another story as soon as next year.

Containers serve as retail and warehouse

The bazaar as a whole is changing, which is to say growing, quickly. Only 5 years ago Dordoi bazaar had almost nothing in the way of permanent structures. Tents were set up each morning and taken down each night to shelter the merchants and customers. Today, the recently standardized international cargo containers comprise the skeletal structure of the bazaar. They are arranged into rows with plenty of walking room in the middle.

Dordoi bazaar is divided into six sections – each owned by a different business man. “They are all very very rich men,” reported Urusbek. Each of these sections tends to specialize in a certain kind of good or source country, for example, there is a Chinese section and a European section. The China section sells cheaply made but extremely affordable goods. The European section sells mostly upper end clothing. We didn’t get into the other sections, but I am sure that it will be cleared up pretty quickly when get back to the bazaar in November.

One area was called Mir Zapat, meaning world of shoes or shoe world. And so it was. Shoe World stretched on and on five or six rows of cargo containers, each row at least 100 meters long. There were shoes from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam, Indonesia. None of that is surprising anymore in the globalized economy. But consider that Kyrgyzstan lies more than a thousand miles from the nearest deep sea port, and the presence of such a boutique of footwear is impressive.

As we walked around the bazaar, we spotted a number of militsianeri, police officers. Unprompted, Urusbek complained that he despises the militsia. “They are not good guys. All they do is try and intimidate you for money. And they leave all the thieves alone, because they take money from them.” The militsia are hired by the bazaar owners.

After about two minutes Urusbek told us to be really careful because someone who he knew to be a pickpocket was following us – and had been for about the last 10 minutes. After I turned to look at him, he disappeared into a crowd.

The thieves are mostly pickpockets. The ones that Urusbek knows about are all between the ages of 11 and 20. They are experts of their trade. Due to the accumulating complaints of customers about pickpockets, for the last couple year the militsia have rounded up all of pickpockets and detained them for a little while. Urusbek views this action as a half-hearted attempt to intimidate the youngsters. After all, it happens once or twice or year all in one day – they manage this feat because the officers already know who to detain and where to find them. One distinction that I do not completely understand is between the militsia, who Urusbek derides, and the private security company guards that supervise a particular entryway or building and patrol the bazaar at night. These guys Urusbek viewed as honest, “All they do is guard.”

One area that has changed since I last was in Kyrgyzstan is that child labor has been prohibited (and the prohibition quite stringently enforced) at Dordoi bazaar. Last time I was Kyrgyzstan, many teenagers worked as porters moving goods from storage to retailers and transferring purchases form one merchant to another or in the warehouses loading and unloading trucks. The work was hard and the pay, considering the difficulty of the work, was meager. Details on the work and the pay are in the Asambek entry.

The porters haul very heavy loads around the bazaar and are paid based on the difficulty of the load and the distance traveled. If they get to the bazaar before dawn and work until the end of the day (about 10 hours later on average) they might be lucky enough/have worked hard enough to bring in as much as 1,000 som (around $US 30). Most days, however, the take is somewhere between 300 and 500 som ($US 10-15).

Porters haul goods from a storage area to the retail area. Its gets interesting when they meet the crowds.

We arrived at the bazaar late in the day, so by the time we left things were slowing down. Closing time does not occur in a single moment, rather the further removed shops tend to close first. And as a few storefronts close for the day, customers are less likely to visit that area. As crowds diminish, more store owners in that stretch of bazaar are enticed to close for the day. The process rolls from the margins to the center. At moments the sporadic nature of the rolling-close is odd. A main corridor will still be totally packed with customers and almost every shop still open while slightly less central passageways which intersect the main corridor will be totally empty.

As the corridors empty, a great deal of discarded plastic and cardboard is left behind. At this point, one of the few instances of non-glass recycling I have witnessed in Kyrgyzstan occurs. Old ladies and young kids collect plastic bags and cups as well as cardboard and sell it to processors. A kilo of plastic pays 1.5 som (that’s about $US .05/lb), cardboard is worth double. The cardboard is also harder to package and carry to the recycling center. Many of the women also are hired by the bazaar to clean the bazaar before opening the next morning. Whatever doesn’t get harvested for reprocessing is swept up and thrown away.

This shot shows a storage street marginal to the shopping center. Its a big place.

More photos are here.
They are all captioned, which make the gallery more informative than this post.

Photos of a Saturday Afternoon at Dordoi Bazaar

I toured around Dordoi bazaar with my camera and a former worker. It was highly informative. Working on much of anything that requires some internet speed is a PAIN here. I finally got them all up and captioned at http://wandersponders.smugmug.com/.

For now here is one example of the goods:


Imams sell religious texts, ornaments, trinkets, beads and other symbols of Islam outside the main mosque at the Dordoi bazaar. The bazaar is located at the main enterance/intersection of the mosque.

Asambek

Asambek recently moved away from the boroughs surrounding the bazaar. He is not exactly thrilled about it. His siblings are living on their own or with other relatives. At 19 he has been uprooted from his community and friends at the bazaar boroughs and, to add insult to injury, must live alone with his mom. This is perfectly normal here, just a bit boring. Asambek had come to know his borough of Ak-Bata as home though he came there only seven or so years ago from a small village. During the late 1990s the government of the Kyrgyz Republic was in the process of putting the finishing touches on the extraction of the government from ownership in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. His mother and father worked on the kolkhoz, or collective farm. His father managed the herds of cattle and sheep. His mother worked in the fields – it was not entirely clear to me in what capacity.
The government sold the livestock and stopped paying the salaries of the workers. There was nothing to sustain them in the place they had called home on the South shore of lake Issik-Kul. Fortunately Asambek’s aunt made a living vending cigarettes and lemonade at the Dordoi Bazaar, just North of Bishkek. Getting started was simple enough, all one had to do was buy some cigarettes in bulk and buy some lemonade and walk around the bazaar with a tray similar to those carried around sporting events.
Entry into this line of work was so simple that quite quickly there were too many cigarette and lemonade vendors. Profits dried up. Around this time Asambek’s father died, devastating the family not only emotionally but financially as well. Asambek as well as his two older brothers and older sister had to drop out of school and begin working just to get by. His brothers were old enough to look for work at construction sites abroad, which they did. They worked in Russian cities of Siberia newly relatively flush with cash from rising oil prices. His sister and mother went to work for his aunt, who had astutely moved out of the vending business and into the lemonade making business.
Asambek, along with a couple of neighbor boys, scoured the bazaar for discarded cups and bags. These they sold to his friend’s mother. She washed the cups and sorted the bags for resale. The cups were sold to the lemonade or tea vendors and the bags back to merchants. Asambek and his friends could make about 50 som/day (a little less than $US 2) doing this.
Asambek and his friends were in this line of work for 3-4 years. About two years ago Asambek graduated to work loading and unloading cargo trucks. This job offered much better pay but much more strenuous working conditions. The work day typically started at 07:00 and lasted until sometime between 17:00 and 19:00. The regularity of the work ebbed and flowed along with the wholesale trade at the bazaar but most weeks they had to be there at least six days. These regular workdays earned each porter about 200 som (~$US 8). In addition, however, once or twice each week the boys were required to work through the night, that is from 07:00 one day until 07:00 the next. “That is really, very hard,” he said of the long shifts. His eyes and the serious pause for emphasis underscored the point. I responded saying that I can’t imagine, it must have been extremely difficult and tiring though obviously I can’t really relate to that kind of exertion. “Yes, it was.”
The 24 hour shifts paid 400-500 som.
Other days the “night bazaar” demanded their presence. The night bazaar, apparently (Asambek was unsure) is when Kazakh traders come to Kyrgyzstan to buy wholesale goods. Waking up to work at 2 or 3am is no simple task. The only way to work is to walk and the temperatures last winter stayed around -15 to -30 degrees at times. The bazaar cannot cease to function because of a cold snap.
Asambek is in another line of work now and hopes to work in the service or tourism industries.

The Great-White-Pure Future Home Wishes

The villages which have sprung up near Dordoi Bazaar have prodigious names. They are as follows: Kelechek – meaning future, Ak-Jar – meaning Great/Pure Home, Ene-Sai – meaning Another Gorge. I visited the home of Urusbek in Ak-Bata (Great/Pure Wish). Ak-Bata is called a village, even though it is pretty much continuous with the rest of Bishkek. Technically it resides on the opposite side of the road which marks the city’s Northern-most boundary but even neighborhoods around the bazaar which lie on the Bishkek side are known as villages.

When I spoke with Urusbek about life in his neighborhood it was clear that indeed the settlements had the feel of a village. Everyone knows everyone in a village and so it is in Ak-Bata. In many other parts of Bishkek it is not a good idea to go out at night. In Ak-Bata and the other neighborhoods around Dordoi it is quite safe to go out at any hour. In fact, the neighborhoods were settled by individuals and families from villages, collective farms (Kolkhoz) and small cities all over Kyrgyzstan. And so the neighborhoods are cohesive and safe with a strong sense of community. “Village Leaders” are elected and the neighborhoods are governed actively. There are areas set aside as parks and football fields for recreation though their condition is universally poor. Dust and scrub brush abound.

The homes are made of mud and straw. Dust hangs in the air making everything dirty and litter is ubiquitous. Even when it is thoughtfully discarded, refuse collects in open holes about 20 feet from nearly every residence. When I asked Urusbek his opinion of the neighborhood he said, “I like it here and I do not want to say bad things about my village… but it is dirty and dusty and full of garbage.” Urusbek hopes someday to move to a more refined and established location. But looking beyond the dirt and the trash, there is much going on to create a pleasant atmosphere. The new residents have planted trees and though now they are barely taller than 2 meters, someday they will effectively shield the homes from erosion during the summer as well as the chilling wind and snowdrifts of the winter. Small gardens, young decorative plants as well as waist-high fruit trees mark the boundary between the well kept yards and the unkempt short grasses, thistles and scrubs which fill in gaps between habitations.

Most of the homes are very modest. One or two rooms compose a house for an entire family. Urusbek’s family of six siblings, plus mother and (occasionally) father lives in two rooms, each about 3.5X3.5 meters. One room is the sleeping/dressing room where as the room with the entrance to the house is the kitchen/living room. The floors are dirt but covered with linoleum. Urusbek’s family has a large TV and DVD player in this room yet experienced a very tough winter last year when temperatures plummeted (and stayed) around -20 to -30 C (about -10 to -25 F). Urusbek shivered dramatically when he told me about it, “I have never been so cold. They were the worst nights of my life and in the morning I could not feel or move my fingers.” This year the family has tried to be better prepared. They have stockpiled wood and a good deal of coal. Its still not enough for Urusbek to be comfortable because the price for a ton of coal went from around $US 70 to $300 in the last year. A wood/coal burning stove located in the wall which separates the room will heat the house in the winter.

While most of the houses are small, a few are rather expansive and bordered by high mud walls. Many are adding a second story. All of the construction I saw underway was slowly coming together because each home was being improved by its residents, sometimes with the help of a neighbor. Urusbek build his own house with the help of his older brother. His cousin who lives next door was mixing dirt and straw and water to make a wall for his neighbor’s home when we stopped by.

Water is free. It comes from a well nearby which supplies much of the neighborhood. Electricity is not free and is metered for each home just as it is in the older parts of the city. Right now there are rolling blackouts throughout Kyrgyzstan because though last winter was cold, it did not produce much snow. As a result, water levels at the dams which generate electricity are too low. The electricity stopped at 15:30, Urusbek said it would come back at 18:30 or 19:30.

Urusbek is observing Ramadan. He began going to the large main mosque located at the bazaar a little over a year ago and since then it has become an important part of his life. There are four mosques currently in the bazaar, the larger main mosque and 3 satellite mosques. The rest of his family did not seem as concerned about Ramadan fasting, and the duties of being a good host by sharing food certainly outweighed any religious qualms. His younger sister, the oldest in the family, was constantly occupied with cleaning, preparing tea, setting out food, making sure everyone ate to their full satisfaction and eventually cleaning up once more.

I had a great time visiting with Urusbek and his wonderful family. Their hospitality and generosity was astounding – as it typically is here in Kyrgyzstan (my host family has been so good to me that I am very sure that I will never be able to return the favor). We did not spend very much time discussing the bazaar but I hope that we will have the opportunity in the future.

It is a little late here now and I am a bit at a loss for analysis. I will just say that the thing which struck me most was the relative spaciousness of the settlement. Considering that it was founded by desperate families during a veritable economic catastrophe, the so-called villages emanate a strong sense of community and exhibit remarkable investment in the future.

First Entrée

There is a meat and cheese bazaar near my residence in Bishkek. It’s tough to know what specialization a bazaar has until I have been informed. Standard stalls which sell everyday foodstuffs, drinks and occasionally cell phone minutes as well as kiosks which sell papers, pens, and other everyday generally disposal items are the irreducible constituents prerequisite for any neighborhood bazaar. Mister Uzgunbek, the patriarch at home and Professor of Environmental Engineering, claims that this will all be gone – overrun by supermarkets. When I ask, why he explains simply, “Because that’s capitalism.”

He has a point. Though the pressure has often come from the state, not from sudden submersion in capitalism. Modern state leaders from Ata-Turk to the late Shah of Iran to contemporaries in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have viewed bazaars as an anachronism. These “uncivilized, unsanitary” representations of the pre-modernity must be overcome if the nation is to achieve dignity and autonomy on the world stage.

In actuality, one would be hard pressed to find a more robust example of capitalism in action anywhere in the world. Bazaar offer conditions of near perfect competition. Sellers of the same products are situated directly beside one another. The buyer and seller can come to a price which is suitable considering the quantity and regularity of purchase. It is, however, difficult to levy taxes reliably on goods which change in value with each transaction.

Business at the meat and cheese bazaar has apparently slowed over the years. On this Saturday about 2/5 of the stalls stood vacant. Still, every neighborhood hosts a mini-bazaar of some kind in Bishkek. And the overall activity does not seem diminished.

We shopped for a while. It always seems to take longer than necessary. This is due largely to the haggling posture taken up by Mister Ozgonbek’s wife, Anara. The family with whom I live is middle class in a land of rich and poor. They own a car, but it’s a Soviet Lada. They seem to have everything that they need but everything in the house serves a purpose. As I said, the father is a professor; the daughters work in tourism. Service jobs in a material economy.

Anara scrutinizes every stall and each potential purchase with an intense interest muffled with a well rehearsed air of total ambivalence. There is a great deal of looking at each item, picking it up, prodding it and then, scowling delicately while asking questions she already knows the answer to: “Is this any good? Is it fresh? It supposed to have this inconsequential potential defect?” Then she attempts to arrive at a price. Sometimes the posturing goes beyond where I comprehend the search for some leverage over the price. After purchasing a large quantity of bottled water, but before I had carried the bottles away, she noticed some small bubbles in most of the bottles. In a slightly accusatory tone she told the shopkeeper that she wanted NO gas. Surprised by the problem, the shopkeeper assured her with audible exasperation that despite the appearance of bubbles, there was no gas (“Look, when you squeeze it, it’s soft. No gas.”) Anara was unconvinced but was willing to risk it if there could be a slight price reduction. No dice. “Look, they are non-gas, if you don’t want them, leave them here and take you’re money.” So we did.

We bought the same number of bottles at a comparable price not long thereafter. And as we walked back to the car Anara said in order to explain, “We need the ones without gas.” The first batch were clearly gasless in my opinion but the haggling at the bazaar is about more than empty posturing. The only explanation for Anara’s cold feet is that she plays her hand close to her chest. None of the other interactions/transactions at the bazaar carried the odd incredulity of this example. Still, the air of skepticism and disinterest was heavy from the start of each approach.

That seems a long way to go for a seemingly pointless story, but it struck me for some reason that I have not put my finger on. I certainly do not see that kind of practiced posturing in a supermarket. What really grabbed my attention was Anara’s steadfast belief in her position in each case. I believe that if I asked her hours later why she did not just save time and buy the first batch of bottles, she would have replied that, as she already said, it was because the bottles had gas.

This reminds me of observing a politician at work. Each stance and word is calibrated by a keen sense of advantage. The entire argument expounded is too broadly sympathetic, too utilitarian to be honest. But the conviction with which the message is delivered remains remarkable. And, when they do their job well, it seems that they believe their own constructions are inherent and true. They articulate the truth. They would never dare to create it.

This somehow gets at something that draws me to the bazaar. It is laden with a very everyday kind of politics, rich in dynamic social interaction. The supermarket is straightforward transaction. The bazaar is veiled intention. People live and believe in these minute interactions, rather than simply going through the motions.