Day 3 - more mutton.

Ulan was keen to introduce me to more Kyrgyz food, and the next day we arranged to meet again for dinner. I remembered something he'd said the day before:
"In Kyrgyzstan, breakfast is at about 9am. Dinner is at 2 or 3pm and then supper is at 8.00 or 9pm."
When he told me he'd pick me up at 12.30 to go for a meal, I had my suspicions. After another sleepless night due to jet-lag I was ready by 12.30 and made sure I had enough to do to occupy myself for the next two hours. True to form, Ulan arrived some time after 2pm, with no explanation or apology.

Ulan was accompanied by his wife. Meeting her was a little odd because in Pakistan the only wives I met were over 50 years old. Ulan's wife was young, petite, and heavily pregnant. She didn't say much; I wasn't sure if this was in her nature or in her role as submissive housewife. In Kyrgyz culture there is a very distinct line between the man and the woman, and traditionally the man is involved in manly things like hunting and fighting while the woman does womanly things like raising the family and cooking.
Below: a Russian car. Not much to do with the post, but there are cars like this on the streets here. I can't get the photos off my camera yet and this is all I could find.

In the car, I tactfully raised the topic of punctuality in Germany compared with other countries like, I don't know, Spain, or even Kyrgyzstan, perhaps. Ulan confirmed that yes, people in Kyrgyzstan are not the most punctual in the world.
The reason seems to be that guests can call in at any time so if a relative makes a spontaneous visit to you, you are busy entertaining them and your own plans are put on hold. If this means somebody somewhere else has to wait for you, that's none of your concern. Anyway, the chances are that the person you're meeting is going to be late anyway, so no harm is done. I wondered if this lack of punctuality is connected to the fact that nomadic people probably didn't bother telling the time that accurately. Summer, winter, morning, evening, that's as much as you require. Do you really need to know when it's exactly 3.28pm if you're herding sheep from one pasture to the next?

We drove to the same restaurant as the day before. Partly because Ulan likes it, partly because yesterday they'd run out of the food he'd wanted me to try. Again, the bread and kajmak came; this time Ulan instructed me to break it. Again, omin was performed. Today, the tea arrived promptly, and Ulan's wife took care of the pouring. After yesterday's lesson on seating plans, I noticed that she sat closer to the 'door', giving Ulan the seat further from the waiter's aisle. At this table there was no seat facing the 'door' so I could sit opposite him. Although it didn't give me a seat as an honoured guest, it did make conversation a lot easier.

The food came and I beheld a bowl of manty. This is a very popular dish in Kyrgyzstan: think of ravioli, but much bigger. The filling is a mixture of minced lamb and onion, possibly with a little potato and carrot added too. It tastes similar to Shepherd's Pie without the mashed potato. The casing isn't pasta as we know it in Europe, but I don't know how else to describe it: Kyrgyz pasta, perhaps. It's quite sloppy as it sits in a bowl of meaty juices, and the manty tend to break when you pick them up - of course, traditionally the food here is eaten by hand. One dish is actually called "five fingers" because you dig your hand into a communal plate of rice and scoop a handful into your mouth. Hygiene? What's that? Chopsticks didn't spread this far west from China, and knives and forks didn't spread so far east from Europe. Picking up and trying to eat sloppy manty the size of a tennis ball requires a lot of slurping. After slurping our way through a few hot manty, Ulan ordered some spoons. The manty still tasted good when eaten with spoons, and less slurping was required.
Above: a photo of Uzbek manty. I couldn't find any photos of Kyrgyz manty. Kyrgyz manty are much paler, less wrinkly but much juicier (sloppier) and are not served with salad or slices of melon.

Throughout all this, Ulan's wife plied us with tea, served in small round bowls which you hold by the rim and the thicker porcelain at the bottom to protect your fingers from the heat. I found it a little odd that somebody so pregnant should be taking care of two healthy young men (Ulan is a year older than me); on the other hand, when we'd finished eating, she took advantage of her status as a pregnant woman. She said something to Ulan and he ordered more food for her; "the baby is hungry and wants meat" he explained to me. Then the baby apparently wanted some kebabs, and Ulan ordered kebabs. Then this baby with very specific demands wanted some green tea. His wife wasn't just 'eating for two', she was eating enough for three or four people and I was impressed at how much food she could tuck away.And it was true: the hot tea did wash away most of the mutton fat from the roof of my mouth.

Ulan's wife is not Kyrgyz, but Kazakh. I asked him what language they communicated in. He said it was a mixture. She could understand some English but never spoke any. He said he wasn't so happy speaking in Russian - I wasn't sure if he meant this because he is Kyrgyz and not Russian, or if he isn't so good at Russian after spending most of his life in the US - but they often speak in a mixture of Kazakh and Kyrgyz. And, for a change, they use a little Japanese from time to time; not that they speak much Japanese, but they both seemed to have studied it at some point. So five languages are used in their house.

Her family live in or somewhere near Almaty, a city in the south east of Kazakhstan, about three hours from Bishkek. In Central Asian tradition, the woman follows the man, so if he wants to live in another city, she lives there too. A certain somebody reading this should give serious consideration to adopting some of the wonderful cultural traditions when she comes to visit. ;-) On the other hand, unlike in Pakistan where the bride's parents pay a dowry for the husband to take the girl off their hands, in Kyrgyzstan the husband has to buy the bride from her parents.
There are some interesting marital traditions in Kyrgyzstan, not least the practice of kidnapping the woman you want to marry. I'll talk about them in another post.