PART TWO Week 28
Central Eurasian Mission - Week 28 - Sept 25 - Oct 1, 2017- PART TWO

Read Part One first, if you have the time

Wednesday was our second day of touring.  We headed south toward the Tien Shan Mountains.  These mountains are in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and to the north and to the east they meet the Altai Mountains of Mongolia.  Last May we went up into mountains that are to the east of Almaty.  Those mountains and today's mountains are in the same range of mountains just about two hundred miles apart.

The weather was perfect and the drive was delightful.  Our goal was the Ala Archa National Park which is about 50 km from Bishkek.  Leaves were turning yellow, clouds were pretty, and so forth.











All the evergreen trees I saw were spruce trees.



Some interesting signs

No! - No! --No!---Do not shoot the sheep!!!  Or tickle them either!



"It is forbidden to build a fire and barbecue"



This sign is really fun -  because the translation from Kyrgyz to Russian to English is gibbrish.  I've had two native Russian speakers tell me that.  Our guesses are:

"if you show disrespect to nature it will disrespect you in return"
"If you don't appreciate nature, then you don't appreciate yourself"
"If you do't love nature, you don't love yourself?

I like this one the best.
"Love nature and nature will love you."



And this one:
"Protect the environment to protect human life."



We finally got to the river and a bridge.  I gave it a unique name - the Whitewater River.  We could have easily been walking on the Barlow Road in Oregon which passes by the real Whitewater River.







Picnic tables!!  We had lunch and posed by the river.  I loved it here!











We made a new friend at lunch.



Before we left, I had to perform my river ritual - I touched the water.  Yes, it was wet and glacially cold.



We returned to Bishkek by way of a memorial park honoring victims of  one war and one revolution (wait, is a revolution a war?  or an incident?)  It is the Ata Beyit Memorial



I almost kinda sorta hesitate to copy and paste a published guide to this place, but it will do better job than I would do.  If you don't want to read it, pass it by.

"Ата-бейит (Ata-Beyit, Kyrgyz for “Grave of Our Fathers”) is a memorial complex located in Chong-Tash, a village and skiing destination in the Chui Province about 15 miles south of Bishkek. The site honors two dark episodes in Kyrgyzstan’s history: mass murders that occurred in 1938 at the hands of the NKVD during Stalin’s purges, and the deaths of the revolutionaries who fought in the nation’s 2010 Revolution. Powerful sculptures and monuments pay tribute to those who died in the two conflicts, and a modest museum, shaped like a yurt, covers the political climate in Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Stalin-era repressions."

"In 1991, the daughter of a former NKVD officer came forward with a secret her father had told her just before his death. He had witnessed a mass execution at the hands of the NKVD, and this tip eventually led to the discovery of a mass grave in Chong-Tash. In 1938, NKVD officers took 137 (possibly 138) people – members of the intelligentsia including ministers and scientists, and representing 20 nationalities – from a prison in the capital to Chong-Tash, where the prisoners were shot and secretly buried in an underground kiln once used for making bricks."

The woman in this account still lives in a house on the site.  Previously the Carters had been here when this woman came and talked to a group of school children.  She said that she was four years old when her father took her to the burial site.  He took a brick and placed it on the "spot" and told her to remember it and to tell someone when she felt safe.  In 1991, most people thought she was delusional (she was about 57), but one man believed her and began to excavate the site shown in this photo.

Here is the brick culvert by a brick bridge into which the bodies were thrown.

"After their discovery, the remains of the victims were exhumed and moved to a formal, shared grave about 100 meters away. This grave, in the center of a square beside the museum, lies beneath a horizontal sculpture of a тундук (“tunduk”) – the crucial circular piece at the apex of a yurt. The sculpture rests on a large, stone platform, the sides of which are inscribed with all the victims’ names. Stone reliefs along the stairway down to the square from the road above depict suffering at the hands of uniformed men. The kiln where the remains were found can be viewed across the road from Ata-Beyit, behind a glass partition."

The red roofed circular building on the left is the museum.  The monument behind the tree is where the exhumed victims were moved and buried.

The photo above shows the white memorial to Chinghiz Aitmatov as described below.

"The 1938 execution is the largest known to have occurred in Kyrgyzstan during Stalin’s anti-nationalist purges. One of the men killed in Chong-Tash was Torokul Aitmatov, a politician and father of Chinghiz Aitmatov, a writer and diplomat who is Kyrgyzstan’s most famous literary figure. Chinghiz Aitmatov helped found the cemetery in Chong-Tash, and after his death in 2008, he was buried there as well. His remains lie beneath a memorial of their own, in front of a white stone gate along the far edge of the square."

Here is photo of Chinghiz Aitmatov.  Who would be here if this were in the US?  Who is/was Americas most famous literary figure?

"One side of the gate is inscribed with a quote of Aitmatov’s: “Самое трудное для человека – быть каждый день человеком” (“The most difficult thing for a person to do is to be a person every day”). The other side features a portrait of the writer. In the middle, an archway frames a sculpture honoring Aitmatov’s novel, Jamila, and a view towards the village, fields, and mountains beyond."

The most difficult thing for a person to do is to be a person every day - wars, repression, imprisonment, execution, long meetings.

Gravestones of 2010 Revolution Victims

"The revolutionaries honored here also have a history of their own. In 2010, Kyrgyzstan experienced its second Revolution in its decade of independence from the Soviet Union. On April 6 and 7, thousands of protesters filled Ala-Too Square and stormed the White House in Bishkek, reacting to economic hardship and government corruption. Battles with police culminated in bullets fired at the crowd, and over 40 protesters were killed. The protests ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev (though the Revolution continued, with escalating violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks). Most of the victims of the April protests were buried at Ata-Beyit, down the hill from the museum and the square in a graveyard of their own. They lie beneath individual granite stones inscribed with the names and images of the (mostly young) men. A wall beside the graves lists the names of all who were killed."

All of the gravestones had photographs on the granite - they were all young and all but a few had the same death dates- April 6th or 7th 2010.  I saw a big van park, and a large group of people exited and walked down and knelt in front of one of the gravestones.  They had come to honor a loved one.

"Ata-Beyit is not a popular destination for locals. Many of the people I asked in Bishkek had never been there, and those who had visited the site remembered it from a single trip long ago, perhaps with a school group. Our group encountered only two or three other people on the chilly morning we visited. The memorial’s visitors are mostly tourists to the area and relatives of the deceased. It appeared beautifully maintained, however, as well as beautifully designed. It is a powerful celebration of those who have died here at the hands of abusive power, and a glimpse into history both long-buried and fresh."

This photo pays tribute to WWI veterans (see date of 1916).  The dangling items are stirrups which pay honor to the nomadic heritage of many of the soldiers.

Each of the two evenings we were in Bishkek we walked around the downtown area and took in the sights.  The main plaza was alight in bright colors; the last warm days of the summer were being enjoyed by the locals.

Here are four of the yokels..........



 

A statue of Marx and Engles.  No plaque with any names, you just have to know.  Honestly, I guessed Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, famous authors, but I was wrong - just the creators of Marxism.





In 1991 when the USSR collapsed and Kyrgyzstan became an independent country, the leaders of the new government realized that they had no "father figure" of the country - no George Washington or Fidel Castro or Ringo Starr.  So they started looking for a figure and found Manas which was the hero of an epic poem written in the 18th century.  Apparently Manas did many good things back in the 17th century.  Here is his statue.  No!!!  NO!!! My bad.  This is a statue of Lenin.  But there is a monument to Manas somewhere.....and the name of the airport is Manas Airport.



This is the Eternal Flame Monument.  There was a strong wind that day, and the flame had been extinguished when we got up to it.



Because I know you love history I am including the following.  (Actually, Dad and I want to remember all of this, and if I don't publish it here, we will forget it all by Christmas).

Here is a bit of Wikipedia about Kurmanjan Datka, a famous historical figure.  I think she is mainly remembered for allowing Russia to take over the country peacefully rather than by..........guns.

"Kurmanjan was born into a rich family of the Mongush clan in the Osh. At the age of 18 she was supposed to be married to a man whom she did not see until her wedding day. When she met him, she did not like him and broke with tradition — first fleeing into neighboring China and later deciding to stay with her father, Mambatbai. In 1832, the local feudal lord, Alimbek, who had taken the title, "Datka", and ruled all the Kyrgyz of the Alai, was attracted by the young, vivacious woman, and married her. An instrumental politician in the increasingly decrepit Kokand khanate, Alimbek was murdered in the course of a palace coup in 1862 and Kurmanjan was recognized by the khans of Bukhara and Kokand as ruler of the Alai and given the title of "Datka".^[1] In 1876 the Alai region was annexed by the Russian Empire. Recognizing the futility of resistance, Kurmanjan Datka persuaded her people to accept Russian overlordship."

And her statue





This photo might be near the place where President Nelson, in August 2003, dedicated the country of Kyrgyzstan for the preaching of the gospel.  But it might not be.  Anyway, we were standing in the spot - based upon the description of the area given from the actual prayer.  At the time,  the dedicatory prayer was given in a wooded area- probably a park, but now it is a parking lot and there is a statue or monument there.  We'll pretend this is the Friendship Monument.  If we go to Kir again, we'll get the right picture.



In Kyrgyzstan there is a shrine of sorts - it is considered a shrine by Kazakhstan missionaries who frequent this place whenever they have to go to Kyrgyzstan to renew their visas.  If anyone goes to Bishkek they bring some back to their fellow missionaries.  Sister Carter is ordering.



Perhaps my favorite tripping hazard of all time!  An open manhole covered by a board with  tree trimmings thrown in for added safety.



I was late publishing this, the second part, of my weekly blog posts. ...because we, along with our two sisters watched the Women's Conference.  We had a dinner of baked chicken and baked potatoes, fresh bread, boring tomato slices, and an apple pie.  The conference was good!

Sister Nelson on the left, then Sister Cantrell, and US